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An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.
Introduction
Key accounts or strategic accounts are the most valuable customers for a company. To put it simply: a company cannot afford to lose these customers without getting into serious difficulties. Without a systematic approach key account management (KAM) becomes a process of trial and error that may miss some necessary elements, creates additional costs and offers no opportunity for corporate learning. Not surprisingly KAM is one of the most significant marketing trends of the past several decades (e.g. [16] Conlon et al. , 1997; [1] Abratt and Kelly, 2002). In practice strategic important customers have been treated differently all times. Almost every supplier in the business-to-business field realizes a kind of KAM ([8] Boles et al. , 1994, p. 25). In addition even most of the companies that do not have a formal KAM treat their most important customers differently ([61] Wengler et al. , 2006). Though KAM has a long tradition both in research (e.g. [45] Pegram, 1972; [51] Shapiro and Moriarty, 1982) and practice companies still struggle with the implementation of KAM programs ([27] Homburg et al. , 2002).
The intention of this paper is to introduce an integrated framework of KAM, that covers the existing knowledge of key account management from a research as well as from a practice perspective. From our point of view the framework is the first integrated one for managing key accounts and to optimize the corporate setup that is necessary for a professional KAM. It offers opportunities for further research as well as a guideline for companies that want to establish and optimize their way of working with their most important customers. Firstly, we give an overview of the existing literature according to the development of the topic over time. Then we identify two addressees of KAM (key account managers and the corporate management) with different needs and tasks. These can be structured according to five dimensions of KAM. We present a complete overview and provide definitions for the elements that can be used for research and practice. We conclude with practical implications and an agenda for further research:
KAM can be understood as a relationship-oriented marketing management approach...