Mapping industrial marketing knowledge: A study of an IMP conference

The paper describes exploratory research into the nature of the International/Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) conference papers with particular focus on content. A qualitative analysis of the Proceedings of the 16th Annual IMP Conference is presented. The results provide insights into the diversity of academic thought that fuels the development of the IMP network and allows us to begin charting the development of knowledge structures within past IMP conferences. Of particular interest are, first, the tentative knowledge structure that emerges, second, the depth of analysis that emerges from using multidimensional coding, and third, the utility of the process of successive categorisation.