Since its foundation in 1986 the Chair for Business-to-Business Marketing (German: Institut für Anlagen und Systemtechnologien; abbr. IAS) has been run by Professor Klaus Backhaus. Before accepting the offer of a professorship at the University of Münster, Professor Backhaus  held chairs at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Mainz. He was also a visiting scholar at Penn State University (USA) and has received numerous professorship offers from well-known universities. He is an honorary professor at the Technical University of Berlin and belongs to numerous high-level committees and advisory bodies.

The current incumbent of Business-to-Business Marketing is supported by a young and highly motivated team consisting of non-professorial academic staff members, undergraduate assistants, and secretaries. All these people work hand in hand in order to resolve problems relating to teaching, student affairs, research, and practical matters. Since Professor Backhaus took over as director, seventy doctorates have been successfully completed under his supervision. Valuable contacts with former students continue to play an important role in the Chair's current work.

• Teaching

  We are committed to the needs of our students at the School of Business and Economics. Our courses deal with operative and strategic aspects of marketing. The primary focus is on topics such as strategic marketing, industrial marketing,  multivariate methods of analysis and international marketing. We currently offer a special module in industrial marketing as part of the msaster's degree course.

  We do our utmost to ensure that our teaching has a sound theoretical underpinning and a marked practical bias. We seek to provide all the necessary support for students who are working on dissertations or independent assignments. In order to facilitate contacts between staff and students we use a dissertation topic submission card where students can introduce themselves and indicate their interest in specific topic areas.

• Research

  Business-to-business marketing and the use and further development of multivariate methods of analysis are traditionally the IAS's main areas of research. The Institute's research programme is constantly being enriched by the addition of interesting current fields of marketing research such as phenomena of the sharing economy, modular upgradable products, early customer integration or scenario analysis. Practical partnerships play a crucial role here. As a result, most of the projects are implemented in co-operation with companies.

  The research projects carried out at the Institute of Business-to-Business Marketing have resulted in numerous publications. The latter include two well-known standard works – Industriegütermarketing (Business-to-Business Marketing) and Multivariate Analysemethoden (Multivariate Methods of Analysis). Findings produced by research conducted at the Institute have found their way into more than 70 doctoral theses and a large number of working papers. The high quality of these publications is mirrored in the fact that the authors have received a series of awards.