Charting industrial marketing perspectives on Port Marketing: an outlet-bounded literature review and research agenda

Purpose Ports operate as complex communities of interdependent organizations, yet Port Marketing research has only partially mobilized analytical perspectives that capture these relational dynamics. This study aims to explore how insights from the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) research tradition can inform the conceptual development of Port Marketing. Design/methodology/approach The study conducts an outlet-bounded structured literature review of IMP-oriented research published in journals closely associated with the IMP tradition. A corpus of 104 articles published between 1999 and 2025 is analyzed using a multi-method approach combining literature profiling, Theory–Context–Characteristics–Method analysis, lexicometric analysis, topic modeling and bibliometric mapping. Findings The results show that the IMP research consistently conceptualizes markets as networks of interacting actors, resources and activities. Across the different analytical layers, the literature highlights relational dynamics, network coordination and resource interaction as central mechanisms shaping business relationships. Building on these findings, the paper identifies seven key insights through which IMP perspectives can inform the study of Port Marketing, including network-based interpretations of port governance, supply chain coordination, sustainability initiatives and methodological approaches for analyzing port communities. Originality/value By mobilizing IMP-oriented research to interpret port environments as networks of interacting organizations, this study proposes a research agenda that bridges Industrial Marketing and Port Marketing scholarship. The findings clarify how concepts developed within the IMP tradition can support future research on port communities and multi-actor coordination in port systems. The agenda provides guidance for scholars and practitioners seeking to better understand coordination, governance and value creation within port communities. The study therefore contributes by clarifying how IMP concepts can be mobilized to analyze port communities as networks of interacting organizations and by identifying research opportunities at the intersection of Industrial Marketing and port studies.