0019-8501/01/$–see front matter PII S0019-8501(00)00139-5 Industrial Marketing Management 30, 135–148 (2001) © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010 Conceptualizing and Operationalizing the Business-to-Business Value Chain Joel R. Evans Barry Berman The value chain has been the subject of considerable discus- sion in the literature. Most of that dialogue has centered on the value chain itself, rather than providing a more comprehensive view of the business-to-business (b-to-b) value chain. This arti- cle examines the b-to-b value chain from two vantage points. First, the paper presents a holistic model of the b-to-b value chain. This model incorporates goals, the value chain (and value delivery chain), the total delivered product, and per- ceived outputs (which may result in value gaps and delivery chain breakdowns). The paper then suggests techniques for op- erationalizing the value chain. These include a value-driven marketing checklist, a flow chart for enacting a value-driven strategy, and an approach for measuring perceived value and for making necessary strategic revisions. © 2001 Elsevier Sci- ence Inc. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION The vital nature of value, the value chain, and the value delivery chain for business-to-business (b-to-b) marketing have been discussed for decades. In 1980, Levitt [1] said, “There is no such thing as a commodity. All goods and services can be differentiated and usually are. Though the usual presumption is that this is true more of consumer goods than of industrial goods and ser- vices, the opposite is the actual case.” More recently, Keep, Hollander, and Dickinson [2] have examined the historical relationships in four b-to-b scenar- Address correspondence to Joel R. Evans, Department of Marketing and International Business, Zarb School of Business, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549, USA.