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Advancing marketing strategy in the marketing discipline and beyond: from promise, to neglect, to prominence, to fragment (to promise?)
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to advance the field of strategic marketing within the marketing discipline, which will in turn, the author argues, contribute to enhancing the discipline’s impact beyond the narrow confines of its own journals. Towards this goal, certain aspects of the history of marketing strategy need to be reviewed. However, though this article draws extensively on historical sources, it is not a history of marketing strategy. Rather, this article uses historical materials and arguments concerning the four ‘Eras’ of marketing thought to advance five major claims: the area of strategic marketing (1) had significant promise when the marketing academic discipline was founded in Era I (1900–1920), (2) was neglected in Era II (1920–1950), (3) rose to prominence in Era III (1950–1980), (4) has become a ‘fragment’ in Era IV (1980–present) and (5) has prospects that are both promising and problematic in the future ‘Era V’. Finally, a tentative prognosis for strategic marketing and the marketing discipline is suggested.
... Recently, there have been several calls to address the type and level of impact and the relevance of marketing research. These calls have been directed at mainstream marketing research (MMR; Clark et al. 2014;Hunt 2018), Consumer Culture Theory (CCT; Thompson 2019), and the Journal of Marketing audience (MacInnis et al. 2020) more generally. These critiques address issues of methodology (Clark et al. 2014), relevance for audiences beyond marketing academics (Clark et al. 2014;McDonagh and Prothero 2014;MacInnis et al. 2020), and the "dominant theoretical and analytical vernacular of marketing research and practice" (Thompson 2019). ...
... What it means for marketing researchers to work on an SSR program I join the decades of calls for expanding the scope and relevance of marketing research, citing its focus on micro-level constructs and increasingly sophisticated methodologies (Hunt 2018;Houston 2016;Varadarajan 2010Varadarajan , 2015Varadarajan , 2018, and lack of effort to integrate and extend its reach (Biggadike 1981;Hunt 2018), leading to a shrinking sphere of influence (Reibstein et al. 2009;Clark et al. 2014). MacInnis et al. ...
... What it means for marketing researchers to work on an SSR program I join the decades of calls for expanding the scope and relevance of marketing research, citing its focus on micro-level constructs and increasingly sophisticated methodologies (Hunt 2018;Houston 2016;Varadarajan 2010Varadarajan , 2015Varadarajan , 2018, and lack of effort to integrate and extend its reach (Biggadike 1981;Hunt 2018), leading to a shrinking sphere of influence (Reibstein et al. 2009;Clark et al. 2014). MacInnis et al. ...
This article takes stock of sustainability research in marketing and argues for developing a Strong Sustainability Research (SSR) program, led by a Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) approach. First, I define weak vs. strong sustainability and identify two main problems with continuing to research business with the weak sustainability approach. Second, I discuss past approaches to sustainability research in marketing, which primarily promote weak sustainability. Third, I use the agriculture industry to illustrate how an SSR program in marketing could be developed to bring insights to practitioners and policy makers and build new modes of production, consumption and exchange. Finally, I suggest that the SSR program facilitates collaboration between mainstream marketing and CCT researchers by providing a common ontological platform that can transform epistemological differences into complementary strengths. I argue SSR is a way that marketing research can gain broad impact and relevance.
... Enquanto isso, o marketing estratégico divide importância com o marketing internacional num mesmo tema (05 -Estratégias de marketing e marketing Internacional) (Anpad, n.d.). Chama a atenção também a denominação do tema: "estratégias de marketing" (marketing strategies), associado à administração de marketing e não ao marketing estratégico (strategic marketing) (Hunt, 2018;Varadarajan, 2010). ...
... A administração de marketing, surgiu no século XX como parte de algo mais abrangente (Hunt, 2018), e é comumente confundida com o marketing per se (vide os argumentos já apresentados). Este desenvolvimento foi fomentado pelos relatórios sobre a educação em administração da Fundação Ford e do Carnegie Council (Miles, 2016), e fez com que a disciplina acabasse por se tornar mais distante das decisões estratégicas (Hunt, 2018;Webster, 2002), necessariamente mais complexas e menos propensas a serem estudadas pelas relações relativamente muito mais constantes e perenes, que as ferramentas estatísticas, em teoria, são mais capazes da analisar. ...
... A administração de marketing, surgiu no século XX como parte de algo mais abrangente (Hunt, 2018), e é comumente confundida com o marketing per se (vide os argumentos já apresentados). Este desenvolvimento foi fomentado pelos relatórios sobre a educação em administração da Fundação Ford e do Carnegie Council (Miles, 2016), e fez com que a disciplina acabasse por se tornar mais distante das decisões estratégicas (Hunt, 2018;Webster, 2002), necessariamente mais complexas e menos propensas a serem estudadas pelas relações relativamente muito mais constantes e perenes, que as ferramentas estatísticas, em teoria, são mais capazes da analisar. ...
RESUMO Para que serve o marketing? Acadêmicos e práticos precisam ter respostas, precisam conhecer as possibili-dades e complexidades inerentes à disciplina. O marketing foi transformado em algo operacional, focado no método, o que levou à quase eliminação de sua relevância prática. Parte significativa dos que com ele traba-lham, reduzem-no a ações empiricamente comprováveis no curto prazo. Práticos têm dificuldade para aplicar o conhecimento e retiram-no de seu horizonte de consciência e de suas decisões. O marketing perde o que o fez importante: a capacidade de ajudar na compreensão sobre mercados. O ensaio trata das origens e conse-quências deste problema. Busca-se fundamentar a ideia de que o tratamento positivista-empiricista só faz sen-tido num contexto de compreensão da matéria ligado ao marketing estratégico. Para readquirir relevância, a academia precisa apresentar soluções além daquelas ligadas à administração de marketing, deve dar atenção ao marketing estratégico. Sugere-se que tal movimento seja liderado globalmente pelos acadêmicos do Brasil. ABSTRACT What marketing is for? Practitioners and academics must recognize its possibilities and complexities. The transformation of this academic endeavor into something operational and method-related resulted in great reduction in its practical relevance. Most people see it as short-term, measurable and empirically testable. Practitioners are unable to use the developments in their practices, marketing loses its relevance because it disregards what made it important. The paper deals with the origins and consequences of empiricism in marketing and how this approach affects its ability of impacting organizations. It aims at supporting the idea that the positivistic-empi-ricist treatment must be subjected to a broader context, connected to strategic marketing. We conclude that, to regain its practical relevance, marketing must deal not only short-term, marketing management ideas, but must start from its long-term implications, expressed in the strategic marketing approach. The work suggests that Brazilian professors have what it takes to lead that global movement.
... In the Northern Province, more than 99% of enterprises are MSMEs. The growth rates of GDP contribution from the Northern Province were 9% in 2011, 0% in 2012, −8% in 2013, 15% in 2014, 5% in 2015, 10% in 2016, and 0% in 2017(Central Bank Report 2015, 2018. These numbers display the fluctuating trend of GDP contribution from the NP. ...
... Furthermore, MSME marketing characteristics are also underpinned to produce and construct this model of MSMEs in a strong way. Resource advantage theory explains that superior resources lead to superior financial performance (Hunt and Morgan 1995;Hunt 2013Hunt , 2017Hunt , 2018. The resources can be tangible and intangible; a marketing strategy is an intangible resource to firms (Hunt et al. 2006). ...
... The resources can be tangible and intangible; a marketing strategy is an intangible resource to firms (Hunt et al. 2006). The managers or owners are the responsible ones and adopt suitable strategies to achieve superior performance, and resource characteristics are heterogeneous and imperfectly mobile (Hunt 2013(Hunt , 2017(Hunt , 2018. The firm's resources are financial, physical, legal, human, organizational, informational, and relational (Hunt 2018). ...
The study aims to investigate the influence of innovative marketing strategy on the development of MSMEs in Sri Lanka. Primary data collection was adopted to collect data from owners of MSMEs by using questionnaires. A stratified proportionate random sampling method was utilized to select samples. A total of 686 valid questionnaires were collected from respondents. The researcher used exploratory factor analysis to identify the dimensions of factors and structural equation modeling to investigate the strength of the relationship among variables. The results of the study proved that MSMEs enhance their performance through innovative marketing strategy. In particular, the application of the innovative marketing strategy for MSMEs caused an increase in the internal process performance, customer performance and learning, and growth performance and financial performance. This research indicates that owners of MSMEs need to apply the innovative marketing strategy to develop their firms and to upgrade micro firms towards small and medium level.
... A host of events and publications led to the rise of marketing management as the discipline's central focus Hunt 2018;Hunt and Goolsby 1988;Shaw 2012;Shaw and Jones 2005;Wilkie and Moore 2003). Here, we provide a succinct-very succinct-chronology of seven key events and publications that contributed significantly to macromarketing's displacement: (1) General Electric's marketing concept in 1952, (2) Borden's marketing mix in 1953, (3) Alderson's (1957) theory of competition for differential advantage, (4) Howard's (1957) marketing management textbook, (5) Kelley and Lazer's (1958) readings' book, (6) the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Foundation reports in 1959, and (7) McCarthy's (1960) marketing management textbook. ...
... Perhaps most strikingly, Wilkie and Moore (2006), Hunt (2018), and this article call attention to the fact that, of marketing's four major, institutionalized fields of study, only marketing management/strategy and macromarketing are both nominally and substantively marketing. First, readers should recall that both consumer behavior and quantitative/modeling are institutionalized through nonmarketing, academic societies. ...
... The word is a good one and we shall use it" (Butler 1917, p. 5) Another early, managerially oriented marketing textbook was White's (1927) Scientific Marketing Management, which applied Frederick W. Taylor's (1911) work to marketing. See Hunt (2018) for an introduction to White's (1927) approach. 7. Note that Kelley and Lazer (1958) refer to the subject of their book as "managerial marketing," not "marketing management." ...
This article contributes to the macromarketing field of study by tracing its evolution through five distinct stages. (1) In Era I (1900-1920), macromarketing was the raison d’etre of the marketing discipline. (2) In Era II (1920-1950), macromarketing became the marketing discipline’s central focus. (3) In Era III (1950-1980), marketing management displaced macromarketing as the discipline’s central focus, but macromarketing continued to be an important part of the discipline. (4) In Era IV (1980-2020), macromarketing became one of four, major, institutionalized fields of study in the marketing discipline, with the others being consumer behavior, quantitative/modeling, and marketing management/strategy. (5) In Era V (2020-?), macromarketing is well-positioned to be not only a major field within the marketing discipline, but also a field of significant promise.
... Asking why marketing has an image problem is an urgent question. Finding the right answers would help to revive the fortunes of a discipline that, as prominent scholars show (Clark et al. 2014;Varadarajan 2010;Hunt 2018;Jones and Shaw 2018), is troubled and in decline from an academic standpoint too. Clark et al. (2014), using ISI Web of Knowledge citation data, maintain that marketing is becoming the least influential of the four major business disciplines (i.e., accounting, finance, management, and marketing) in terms of interdisciplinary citation flows. ...
... Furthermore, according to Varadarajan (2010), the discipline is facing an "identity crisis" because "the growing balkanization of academic marketing into quantitative modeling and consumer behavior has diminished research on strategic marketing issues". On the side, Hunt (2018) observes that most of the current research in marketing is "modelling-based". This means that research, rather than starting with theory development in one or more of marketing's considerable domains, is guided by secondary datasets that have only proxy coverage of marketing concepts. ...
... Thus, dozens of articles, published in the top journal, deal with issues, such as consumer research, that are often non-marketing or business issues. Besides, Hunt (2018) highlights that another problematic aspect regarding the extant marketing discipline is that many doctoral programmes do not teach the history of marketing thought. This is a serious problem because in order to develop new concepts and theory both doctoral students and established scholars should understand the evolution of ideas, how concepts and theories are linked together. ...
This research discusses the social perception of marketing in the Italian context. The authors conducted a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of Facebook statuses. From data analysis emerged that marketing receives any kind of public criticism. The most evident accusation regards the adoption of misleading actions, manipulation, and pervasiveness. The study also reveals an accentuated confusion about what marketing really is as a discipline and in practice. Non-marketing people tend to depict marketing as the art of selling stuff. This negative view contrasts with the image that academic community and Organisations, such as the American Marketing Associations, wish to convey about marketing discipline.
... A host of events and publications led to the rise of marketing management as the discipline's central focus Hunt 2018;Hunt and Goolsby 1988;Shaw 2012;Shaw and Jones 2005;Wilkie and Moore 2003). Here, we provide a succinct-very succinct-chronology of seven key events and publications that contributed significantly to macromarketing's displacement: (1) General Electric's marketing concept in 1952, (2) Borden's marketing mix in 1953, (3) Alderson's (1957) theory of competition for differential advantage, (4) Howard's (1957) marketing management textbook, (5) Kelley and Lazer's (1958) readings' book, (6) the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Foundation reports in 1959, and (7) McCarthy's (1960) marketing management textbook. ...
... Perhaps most strikingly, Wilkie and Moore (2006), Hunt (2018), and this article call attention to the fact that, of marketing's four major, institutionalized fields of study, only marketing management/strategy and macromarketing are both nominally and substantively marketing. First, readers should recall that both consumer behavior and quantitative/modeling are institutionalized through nonmarketing, academic societies. ...
... The word is a good one and we shall use it" (Butler 1917, p. 5) Another early, managerially oriented marketing textbook was White's (1927) Scientific Marketing Management, which applied Frederick W. Taylor's (1911) work to marketing. See Hunt (2018) for an introduction to White's (1927) approach. 7. Note that Kelley and Lazer (1958) refer to the subject of their book as "managerial marketing," not "marketing management." ...
This article contributes to the macromarketing field of study by tracing its evolution through five distinct stages. (1) In Era I (1900-1920), macromarketing was the raison d’etre of the marketing discipline. (2) In Era II (1920-1950), macromarketing became the marketing discipline’s central focus. (3) In Era III (1950-1980), marketing management displaced macromarketing as the discipline’s central focus, but macromarketing continued to be an important part of the discipline. (4) In Era IV (1980-2020), macromarketing became one of four, major, institutionalized fields of study in the marketing discipline, with the others being consumer behavior, quantitative/modeling, and marketing management/strategy. (5) In Era V (2020-?), macromarketing is well-positioned to be not only a major field within the marketing discipline, but also a field of significant promise.
... Since CSR has historically been used as a resource for firms (Fauzi & Idris, 2009), we view this issue through the lens of the Resource-Advantage (R-A) theory and Resource Based View (RBV) of the firm, which considers firms as a bundle of strategically deployed resources (Hunt, 2018) with some resources leading to competitive advantages while others leadings to disadvantages (Hunt, 2018). For instance, CSR, as a firm resource, has been used to create competitive advantages; and additionally, CEOs are known to either help or harm brand value (Bendisch et al., 2013;Falkenberg & Brunsael, 2011). ...
... Since CSR has historically been used as a resource for firms (Fauzi & Idris, 2009), we view this issue through the lens of the Resource-Advantage (R-A) theory and Resource Based View (RBV) of the firm, which considers firms as a bundle of strategically deployed resources (Hunt, 2018) with some resources leading to competitive advantages while others leadings to disadvantages (Hunt, 2018). For instance, CSR, as a firm resource, has been used to create competitive advantages; and additionally, CEOs are known to either help or harm brand value (Bendisch et al., 2013;Falkenberg & Brunsael, 2011). ...
... For instance, CSR, as a firm resource, has been used to create competitive advantages; and additionally, CEOs are known to either help or harm brand value (Bendisch et al., 2013;Falkenberg & Brunsael, 2011). It is possible that one resource may negatively impact a firm's competitive advantage through decreased consumer perceptions (Carvalho & Fernandes, 2018;Faircloth et al., 2001;Hunt, 2018). Furthermore, it is also possible that not all types of CSR are seen the same way by consumers who may have various orientations toward CSR (Walker & Kent, 2009). ...
Through the lens of Resource-Advantage Theory, we find that consumer’s perceptions of CSR and CEO compensation influence their view of the firm in a post-fraud environment. Those who see CSR used in a post-fraud environment as a positive strategy prefer to see firms that engage in CSR that assists close stakeholders while those who do not like seeing CSR used as a strategy post fraud would prefer CSR that benefits the community at large. Our findings suggest that firms may wish to target consumers differently when communicating post-fraud CSR messages.
... Resource-based theory examines how organisational resources and capabilities are utilised to improve company performance (Hunt, 2018). Resources refer to tangible assets (liketools and finance), unlike capabilities which are intangible assets, including education and networks . ...
... Second, competitive aggressiveness was expected to negatively moderate the coopetition -customer satisfaction performance relationship 2 (Gnyawali et al., 2016;Tidstrom, 2009). Third, the outcome variable (namely, customer satisfaction performance) was controlled for firm size, firm age, and industry experience, as other factors that might be at play (Aspelund et al., 2007;Hunt, 2018;Vorhies et al., 2011). ...
... The outcome variable was controlled for firm size, firm age, and industry experience. First, larger companiescan succeed over smaller firms (Hunt, 2018;O'Cass et al., 2012). Thus, firm size was modelledas a control variable. ...
Although the existing marketing literature suggests that coopetition (simultaneous cooperation and competition) drives customer satisfaction performance, it is unclear whether hostile relations between industry rivals distorts this link. Thus, under resource-based theory and the relational view, this current paper examines the coopetition – customer satisfaction performance relationship under different degrees of competitive aggressiveness. Survey responses were obtained from a sample of 101 small wine producers in New Zealand, with such data passing all major reliability and validity checks (and common method bias). The results indicated that while coopetition has a positive association with customer satisfaction performance, this link is negatively moderated by competitive aggressiveness. These findings emphasise that on its own, coopetition is comprised of balanced levels of cooperativeness and competitiveness. Yet, competitively aggressive behaviours serve as firm-wide actions that can unhinge the coopetition paradox and prevent businesses from satisfying their customers’ wants and needs.
... O marketing nas empresas tem se consolidado como um conjunto de ações e estratégias determinadas, voltadas para o alcance de desempenho e sucesso empresarial (Katsikeas, Morgan, Leonidou, & Hult, 2016;Rust, Ambler, Carpenter, Kumar, & Srivastava, 2004). Desde sua primeira conceptualização até as definições atuais, o marketing passou por evoluções e redefinições, contundo, sem nunca deixar de ter em essência a maximização dos resultados e o alcance de desempenho (Hunt, 2018). ...
... (i) comodities, focado na classificação dos diferentes produtos existentes e os processos de marketing relacionados a cada um deles; (ii) institucional cujo foco era a analise dos vendedores e revendedores atuando no mercado e seus papeis nas relações sociais; e (iii) funcional, cujo foco era analisar cada uma das funções existentes em um sistema de marketing (Hunt, 2018). Foi na década de 1960 que o conceito do composto de marketing foi elaborado e desenvolvido (Borden, 1964). ...
... Mesmo com o advento de novas tecnologias e mudanças nas tendências sociais e econômicas, a função do marketing se mantém imutável em relação ao alcance do sucesso e desempenho (Varadarajan, 2015). Contudo os intermediários para tal sucesso é que tem sido o foco de discussão e de análise mais recentemente (Hunt, 2018;V. Kumar, Jones, Venkatesan, & Leone, 2011). ...
... De fato, a contribuição da estratégia de marketing para a estratégia de negócios e para a estratégia corporativa é um tema que vem merecendo destaque na literatura (Varadarajan & Jayachandran, 1999;Day, 1992Day, , 2011Chari et al., 2017;Hunt, 2017;Kumar, Sharma & Gupta, 2017;Olson et al., 2018). O presente estudo busca contribuir com esta literatura ao (i) Analisar quais práticas de marketing estão mais fortemente associadas a um maior desempenho nas organizações; (ii) Avaliar qual ou quais perfis de estratégia de negócios conduzem a um desempenho superior. ...
... Os resultados da regressão mostraram que empresas que praticam a conquista de mercado apresentaram maior desempenho, tanto na dimensão da rentabilidade quanto no desempenho de mercado. Tais resultados reforçam a importância do papel do Marketing nas organizações, tanto do ponto de vista gerencial quanto acadêmico (Hunt, 2017;. ...
Objetivo: Investigar em que medida um maior alinhamento entre estratégia de marketing e estratégia de negócios produz um maior desempenho das empresas, levando-se em conta o uso de métricas de marketing e financeiras. Método: A pesquisa se baseia em uma survey realizada com 238 empresas da região Sul do Brasil. As análises se baseiam em análise fatorial e regressão múltipla. Resultados: As empresas que possuem um maior alinhamento entre práticas de marketing e as estratégias de negócios possuíam um maior desempenho de mercado e maior rentabilidade. Este estudo mostra que o desempenho foi maior no grupo que combinou a estratégia do tipo “explorador” com o “marketing agressivo”, correspondendo a 29% dos casos. A pesquisa também mostra que a prática de marketing mais fortemente associada ao desempenho das empresas é de qualidade do produto/serviços. Contribuições Teóricas: O estudo contribui com a literatura de marketing estratégico ao analisar quais práticas de marketing estão mais fortemente associadas a um maior desempenho nas organizações e avaliar qual perfil de estratégia de negócios conduz a um desempenho superior. Por fim, as métricas de retorno sobre vendas e retorno sobre propaganda se mostraram mais associadas ao desempenho das empresas. Originalidade/Relevância: O presente estudo avança o campo de marketing estratégico ao demonstrar que o desempenho é maior no grupo de empresas que combinam uma maior frequência nas práticas de marketing (cluster “agressivo”) e uma estratégia de negócios do tipo “exploradores”. Além disso, avalia-se a utilização de métricas de marketing e financeiras.
... At a time when about three-quarters of scholars working in marketing departments identify primarily with an academic tribe that is not truly marketing, such as consumer behavior or mathematical modeling (Houston, 2016), Hunt calls those working in marketing departments to reassess their tribal priorities and identify again (or for the first time) as primarily marketing scholars (Hunt, 2018b). ...
... Mathematical modeling and consumer behavior research done by those posted in marketing departments are not among the top 20 most-cited marketing articles used by allied disciplines. With the increasingly narrow focus on data-driven studies utilizing sophisticated modeling or experimental work, marketing's influence on allied fields will likely become weaker in the future (Hunt, 2018b). Hunt views this as an ominous indicator about the prospects for marketing's future in academia. ...
To a new generation of marketing scholars, Shelby Hunt might be identified with Resource-Advantage (RA) Theory, marketing theory books, or philosophy of science debates from the 1980s. This article intends to put Hunt’s publishing efforts into a richer perspective for the reader. The outcome of Hunt’s works has strengthened the marketing discipline and allowed it to avoid being taken over by neighboring disciplines in business academia, such as management. The article first offers an overview of Hunt’s works and what characterizes his body of work that should matter to marketing scholars. This article then focuses on some of Hunt’s macromarketing and ethics contributions to highlight how his work in these areas has boosted the efforts of other scholars in the process of knowledge creation. The article closes with some thoughts on future research possibilities within the marketing discipline that are now warranted.
... These findings and their implications will be relevant for brand managers of brand communities and participatory cultures, a feature of which is their members high levels of consumer brand engagement behaviours. This research will also contribute to better understanding of participatory cultures and how they interact with brand communities and will address concerns regarding the low citation rates of marketing research and its influence outside of business disciplines (Hunt, 2018). Two research questions will be addressed by the research: ...
... Posters were also cognisant of the financial benefits that could result from BioWare listening to and acting on their feedback about their games. This is a finding relevant to the disciplines of Media Studies and Game Studies and helps to spread and the influence of marketing over other disciplines responding to Hunt's (2018) call and concerns. The fourth contribution is that many posters self-identified as fans and several remarked that joining the BSN had made them bigger fans or fans in the first place. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate members’ reactions to the forced closure of a narrative video game brand community and its participatory culture.
Design/methodology/approach
The BioWare Social Network forums closure was announced in a thread, which attracted 8,891 posts. These were analysed using thematic analysis, facilitated by the software program Leximancer and non-participatory netnography.
Findings
The brand community and participatory culture members were predominantly distressed because they would lose their relationships with each other and access to the participatory culture’s creative output.
Research limitations/implications
Previous research suggested that video game players cannot be fans and that player-generated content is exploitative. However, members, self-identified as fans, encouraged BioWare’s use of their player-created content for financial gain and articulated the community’s marketing benefits, all of which have implications for Fan and Game Studies’ researchers. Research using primary data could identify brand communities and participatory cultures’ specific benefits and their members’ attitudes about brands’ commercial use of their outputs. Further research is required to identify other products and brands not suitable for establishing brand communities on social media to determine the best ways to manage them.
Practical implications
Addressing narrative brand communities’ complaints quickly can prevent negative financial outcomes and using social media sites for brand communities may not be suitable structurally or because of members’ privacy concerns. Furthermore, consumers often have intense emotional bonds with narrative brands, their communities and participatory cultures, which marketers may underestimate or misunderstand.
Originality/value
This study of the unique phenomenon of the forced closure of a narrative brand community and its participatory culture increased understandings about them.
... AIDA, ATR) are integrated and used in the social marketing context. Lastly, research that integrates fundamental marketing concepts across the system of stakeholders (back to a philosophy of business operation -and beyond -to societal operation) is needed to understand which strategies contribute to better outcomes (Hunt, 2018). ...
... This systemic and holistic view of 'marketing as a philosophy of business operation' (Lazer and Kelley,p. 14) has endured, as have important fundamentals of marketing strategy (segmentation, competition, consumer/market orientation, value exchange) despite minor definitional changes or 're-branding' (Hunt, 2018). Rather than continuously introducing new models and frameworks, more marketers must go back and test whether the fundamentals of marketing are effective (Lahtinen et al., 2020). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is synthesise social marketing literature over the past fifty years and deliver a set of guiding tenets to propel social marketing’s agenda forward.
Design/methodology/approach
Across three strands, this paper amalgamates theoretical and practitioner evidence from social marketing. This synthesis commences with a review, summary and critical discussion of five decades of social marketing research. Across Strands 2 and 3, the authors review 412 social marketing interventions reported across 10 evidence reviews and 238 case studies.
Findings
This paper demonstrates social marketing’s use of fundamental marketing principles and capability to achieve behaviour change outcomes. Social marketers have built frameworks and processes that non-profit organisations, government agencies and policymakers seeking to enact change can use. This paper delivers five tenets that summarise the findings of the three strands and delivers research priorities for the next 50 years of social marketing research to drive the field forward.
Research limitations/implications
Drawing on five decades of learning, this paper proposes research priorities that can be applied to refine, recalibrate and future-proof social marketing’s success in making the world a better place.
Practical implications
This paper demonstrates the value of social marketing science and helps bridge gaps between theory and practice, and further strengthens social marketing’s value proposition. This paper provides confidence that money invested in social marketing programs is well spent.
Originality/value
This paper delivers a forward-looking perspective and provides social marketing academics and practitioners with confidence that it can assist in overcoming society’s most pressing issues. The paper encompasses key social marketing literature since it was founded 50 years ago. Five tenets will guide social marketing forward: evidencing marketing principles, operationalisation of processes, principles and activities, implementing systems thinking, creating and testing marketing theory and guiding a new social marketing era.
... Innovation is also core to marketing theory , and SM in particular sees innovation as fundamental (Finoti, Didonet, Toaldo, & Costa, 2018;Hunt, 2015Hunt, , 2018. In spite of the intrinsic relations between marketing and entrepreneurshipentrepreneurs guide or are guided by marketsvery little is said in marketing about entrepreneurs in general. ...
... A inovação é central para a teoria em marketing . Em particular, o ME vê a inovação como fundamental (Finoti, Didonet, Toaldo, & Costa, 2018;Hunt, 2015Hunt, , 2018. Esta orientação estratégica, no entanto, permanece viva no Marketing Estratégico (ME). ...
Objetivo: Apresentar as profundas e inexploradas conexões entre as teorias em Marketing Estratégico e Empreendedorismo usando a inovação como fenômeno basilar.Método: Este é um artigo conceitual que discute as literaturas mencionadas anteriormente e demonstra que a inovação pode ser vista como conexão entre o individualismo metodológico da teoria empreendedorial da firma e a literatura em marketing estratégico. A literatura fundamental em empreendedorismo deste ponto de vista, bem como as referências mais relevantes em marketing estratégico foram comparadas.Resultados Principais: Mais do que expor tais conexões, o trabalho traz dois resultados objetivos: um framework que conecta desenvolvimentos teóricos previamente vistos nas duas literaturas e; uma tabela comparativa com os conceitos teóricos e contribuições originais. Ambos oferecem caminhos para o desenvolvimento de pesquisas teóricas e/ou empíricas.Contribuições teóricas e metodológicas: O trabalho elucida a complementariedade entre as literaturas, melhorando a interdisciplinaridade e dando um primeiro passo para reinserir o individualismo metodológico como uma perspectiva metodológica válida no marketing e no marketing estratégico. Mais especificamente, isto se dá por posicionar o empreendedor como figura central em qualquer organização.Relevância/Originalidade: O presente artigo faz algo inédito do ponto de vista conceitual. Alguns acadêmicos discutem a importância de indivíduos que detém e exercem poder nas organizações, no entanto, ao usar a teoria empreendedorial da firma, damos um passo inédito nas discussões de marketing estratégico.Implicações sociais ou para administradores: Ao adotar uma abordagem individualista para a análise do marketing estratégico, acadêmicos aumentam a quantidade de ferramentas à sua disposição para compreender o dinamismo organizacional e mercadológico. Tal abordagem também contribui para aproximar as discussões teóricas a algo mais palpável para os práticos.
... Another aspect of this controversy is revealed by Clark et al.'s (2014) recent bibliometric analysis of top accounting, finance, management, and marketing journals that clearly reveals marketing scholarship is by far the least influential among all of the business disciplines. Clark et al. (2014) confirm that a possible explanation for marketing's lack of influence is that while theoretical and conceptual articles are the most highly cited in the field, the production of such articles has declined (Yadav 2010; see Hunt 2018 for an updated review of theory article impact). Yadav (2010) adds that while conceptual work in marketing tends to win the most best paper awards and is highly cited, the number of such papers appearing in premier marketing journals has declined significantly. ...
... (Webster and Lusch 2013;Eisend 2015;Ferrell 2018;MacInnis et al. 2020). Hunt (2018) explores the development of our discipline throughout its various eras and his prognosis for the future of marketing scholarship is that we will be dependent on a new generation of scholars pushing the discipline forward in the area of strategic marketing research specifically in the form of theoretical and conceptual work. In fact, many journals have called for an increase in theoretical and conceptual research despite the decreasing number of papers that are currently published (see Moorman et al. 2019 for a summary of conceptual article decline). ...
This paper is composed of scholarly essays that explore the problematic nature of marketing’s influence within the academy and organizations, potential explanations and causes, and how conceptual and theoretical research can address and move our discipline forward. Each section represents material and research developed through interactive sessions from Academy of Marketing Science conferences. Topics include the history of the marketing discipline, its innovation and loss of domain expertise; important internal and external environmental concepts that have impeded relevance and theoretical impact; foundational elements of how the discipline frames problems, provides methodological-based solutions, and influences the very subjects of our research in such a way as to lesson our contribution to scholarship and practice; and finally the discipline’s inability to understand the intangible nature of marketing activities and outcomes, as well as marketers’ struggle to articulate relevance in a way that is easily understood in the language of finance. Through this critical self-examination of the field of marketing a central premise emerged—a discipline-wide drift and myopic approach to rigor and relevance.
... Many factors have contributed to marketing becoming almost exclusively a discipline that imports theories and concepts from other disciplines and then applies them to marketing issues. Five common explanations of the current state of affairs include (1) doctoral programs underemphasize marketing theory, (2) doctoral programs, by emphasizing data analysis, encourage researchers to search, ex post, for theories that fit the data, (3) authors, reviewers, and editors devalue the importance to the discipline of developing, using, and citing indigenous marketing theory, (4) many marketers actually define marketing as an "applied" discipline whose sole objective is to borrow theories from other, more basic, genuinely academic disciplines, (5) the sociology of the marketing discipline results in scholars who attempt to develop indigenous marketing theory being punished (instead of rewarded) for their efforts by editors and reviewers, and (6) marketers lack well-developed procedures and approaches for developing theories and writing conceptual articles (e.g., Hunt 2018;Varadarajan 2010;Yadav 2010;Zeithaml et al. 2020). ...
... Alderson then devoted decades of his work to developing the implications of the 1930s' premises. As Hunt (2018) and Wooliscroft et al. (2006) discuss in detail, the culmination of Alderson's efforts resulted in his dynamic "theory of market processes" (Alderson 1957(Alderson , 1965. This theory was then partially formalized in Hunt et al. (1981) and later served as a key building block of resource-advantage theory (Hunt 2000;Hunt and Arnett 2006;Hunt and Madhavaram 2019). ...
Marketing’s intellectual health requires indigenous theory development. However, marketing is a discipline that, almost exclusively, imports its concepts and theories from other disciplines and applies them to marketing issues. Articles that either develop indigenous marketing theory or use such theory as a foundation for empirical research are notably absent from marketing journals. A major reason for the absence of indigenous marketing theory is the lack of well-developed procedures and approaches for developing theories and writing conceptual articles. This article proposes, explicates, and illustrates with a concrete example (i.e., service-dominant (S-D) logic) an approach to theory development in marketing that is labeled the “foundational premises, inductive realist approach.” Although this approach is not an algorithmic procedure for theory development, it can provide a valuable conceptual framework for furthering the development of indigenous marketing theory.
... Through this theoretical lens, they evaluate marketing's value propositions optimistically. Shelby Hunt (this issue) takes a historical look at the development of marketing, based on a combination of Willkie and Moore's (2003Moore's ( , 2006 model of four Eras of marketing development plus his own (Hunt 2018) "five stage" modification. He sees Era IV (1980-2020) as being characterized by fragmentation and the Key et al. article as potentially presaging a needed legitimization process involving the "de-institutionalization" and "re-institutionalization" of the marketing discipline as part of Era V (2000-??). ...
... Based on this, three basic directions can be identified: 1) Customer Relationship Management (CRM), 2) One-to-one Marketing and 3) Mass Customization. Hunt (2018) examines the share of marketing field in five distinct seasons and discusses the potential of strategic marketing for the general marketing and related disciplines. He also discusses key factors that are likely to play a significant role in contribution reducing to the field (i.e a negative effect). ...
The article deals with the issue of using strategic marketing in the business of small and medium-sized enterprises. The main objective of this paper is to theoretically define the principles of strategic marketing and then practically analyse the level of strategic marketing use as a tool of business management in selected Czech small and medium-sized enterprises. In order to fulfil the research plan, secondary and primary research was carried out. The theoretical part defines the basic problem areas such as various approaches to strategic marketing defining and strategic management process versus strategic marketing process. In the practical part, 335 companies are analysed, the results are commented and hypotheses evaluated. The most important findings are generally low rate of utilization of strategic marketing management tools and the utilization of these tools is dependent on company size, with micro companies being the worst and medium companies the best.
... Considera-se como importante decisão, numa estratégia de marketing, a alocação de recursos, sejam recursos financeiros, internos ou externos, bem como recursos não financeiros, como equipamentos, pessoas e tempo (FINOTI et al., 2018), além de recursos físicos, legais, humanos, organizacionais e relacionais (HUNT, 2018). No caso da Zenir Móveis é possível perceber uma série de decisões que se relacionam quanto à adoção de estratégias de marketing, como destaque para o marketing operacional onde a empresa se posiciona quanto ao ambiente de atuação. ...
O caso apresenta a narrativa da Zenir Móveis e Eletros, uma rede de lojas que atua, por decisão estratégica, exclusivamente no território cearense. O enredo apresenta as decisões tomadas quanto aos métodos utilizados para a expansão da empresa, e outros aspectos relacionados à aplicação dos recursos físicos, materiais, humanos entre outros. Assim, prestes a atingir o limite de municípios no estado do Ceará que atende às especificidades da metodologia aplicada pela organização, o caso convida o aluno a elucidar a situação-problema de qual deve ser o novo ambiente de atuação da Zenir.
... For a firm to enhance competitive advantage and achieve superior financial performance through differentiation, marketing strategy literature underscores the need of developing and establishing strong and iconic brands, which may trigger favorable associations in the mind of both customers and consumers (Palmatier & Crecelius, 2019).Whether it is price, reputation, or prompted emotions, any attribute can either benefit or harm a brand depending on customer reactions and judgments. Marketing managers, thus, often link brands to other entities borrowing equity from persons, places, or things, to generate differentiation, and increase brand equity (Hunt, 2018;Keller, 2016). ...
This paper aims at theoretically positioning brand activism (BA) as a construct pertaining to the strategic marketing field. It is reasoned that despite the growing managerial relevance of the phenomenon, BA still lacks a robust theoretical body to be explored from the firm perspective. Considering that BA is usually related to and confounded with other activisms alike, especially from the consumer point of view, we propose an integrative framework to explain how BA can be evidenced as a marketing strategy. The proposed framework contributes to the extant literature as it is an attempt to organize the knowledge about BA and to clarify the understanding of the concept. In this vein, it is expected that this proposal generates new research avenues and leads to further refinement and consensus on certain issues regarding BA. Overall, it is expected that this framework contributes to delineate the phenomenon in the marketing strategy field.
... Hunt and Morgan (1997) claim that R-A theory is a general theory of marketing being the closest thing to a general theory of marketing provided by Alderson (1957). The R-A theory has been the subject of profound developments by numerous authors (Hunt, 2010(Hunt, , 2015(Hunt, , 2017a(Hunt, , 2017bHunt & Lambe, 2000;Hunt & Madhavaram, 2020;Hunt & Morgan, 1995, 1997Hunt &Wooliscroft, 2012) and states the following central premises. To achieve competitive advantage and, thereby, superior financial performance through business strategy theories, companies should adopt one of four alternatives: 1) industry-based strategy; 2) resource-based strategy; 3) competence-based strategy; 4) knowledgebased strategy. ...
This study identifies the criteria underlying the buying decision-making process of medical devices in reproductive medicine. This research had three main objectives. The first one was to translate the criteria mentioned by the decision-makers into theoretical constructs, while the second objective was intended to establish the relationship between the constructs, creating a conceptual model of buying decision-making for medical devices in reproductive medicine. The third objective was to identify suitable business and marketing strategies for such a decision-making process. Four constructs were evaluated in the pre-purchase phase, namely the brand, the product's performance, the training associated with the product, and the price. In the post-purchase phase, decision-makers evaluated the following constructs: service provided by the company, the relationship with the salesperson, and loyalty. Regarding marketing strategies, market-orientation strategy, relationship-marketing strategy, and brand-equity strategy were identified as possible strategies.
... Finally, for effective marketing strategy, the marketing mix elements should work together to deliver and communicate the desired position (Kotler et al., 2010). Organizations should avoid a 'one size fits all' strategy and should adapt the marketing mix for specific target audiences (Hunt, 2018;Kotler et al., 2010). The marketing mix includes products and services making up the offering, the price, distribution and accessibly, and promotion or communication (Kotler et al., 2010) and may also include the services mix elements of process, people and physical evidence (Lovelock & Wirtz, 2007). ...
The purpose of this introductory chapter is to define and describe the two primary domains of this book and present an analysis of the literature at the nexus of these domains. The aim is to determine from literature, how strategic marketing can, and has been found to be, relevant in social enterprises. The analysis finds strong support for the value of strategic marketing in social enterprises and presents evidence of research proving this value. Recommendations are thus provided to social entrepreneurs and managers of social enterprises on the key elements of strategic marketing that should be applied in their organizations. The chapter provides a foundation for the complimentary Chapter 8, which looks for evidence of strategic marketing in three South African social enterprises. It also provides a strong platform from which other chapters in the book present research on specific elements of strategic marketing in a variety of social enterprise contexts.
... Capabilities are rooted in the interaction of multiple resources and are more difficult to transfer than resources (Liao et al., 2020). Resources and capabilities form a firm's competitive advantage and their heterogeneity explains why some firms perform differently (Hunt, 2018;Barney, 2018;Barney et al., 2021). Under this assumption, adolescent companies may inevitably face many resource disadvantages (Crick, 2021a). ...
Purpose
This paper aims to explore coopetition within the entrepreneurial ecosystem and answer the following two fundamental questions: How does coopetition affect the entrepreneurial learning and performance of startups? and What learning strategies should startups adopt to promote their growth in the coopetition activities?
Design/methodology/approach
Using the structural equation model and instrumental variable, this study used a sample of 371 startups to test the hypotheses. Data comes from startups in Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang, China.
Findings
This study finds that the coopetition-performance relationship of startups is marginally negative. This study also finds that exploitative learning and exploratory learning positively mediate this relationship. Ecosystem’s social capital can enhance the coopetition-exploration relationship, but the coopetition-exploitation relationship is not affected.
Originality/value
Many studies propose that the coopetition-performance relationship is ambiguous, which makes it meaningful to explore startups individually. Based on the resource-based view and the knowledge-based view, this study deepen the works of Bouncken and Fredrich (2016c), that is, how startups can learn and grow through coopetition activities. This study proposes that coopetition is one of the foundations of the ecosystem and explore the coopetition-performance relationship in this special context. Thus, the present paper adds to the budding literature on the effects of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and to the literature on coopetition.
... A variety of qualitative and quantitative methods are used in descriptive research design so that one or more variables are investigated. Any variables are unable to be controlled or manipulated by researchers instead of observing and measuring the variables as commented by Hunt (2018). Frequencies, trends, categories are identified in the research with the help of this design and considered as the aim of the research. ...
The global and fast-paced economy requires all types of businesses to cultivate their communication system for the efficient and smooth running of the organization. Various international crises can cause a shift towards a cheaper mode and methods of communication that can harm the overall business strategy and success. This study deals with the influence of strategic marketing approaches that can positively influence the communication quality and methods of a business. Particular emphasis has been put on business-to-customer communication targets along with new possibilities of developing more robust marketing communication tools. The paper aims to propose new approaches and trends in the current business-to-customer communication model that would help in mitigating both current and future challenges. Thereby, the paper incorporates pragmatism as research philosophy, Business Management and Strategy ISSN 2157-6068 2022, Vol. 13, No. 1 49 deductive as the research approach, and descriptive as the research design. Apart from that, a secondary method of data collection along with ethical modes of data collection is taken into consideration to present a comprehensive and efficacious paper.
... As relationship marketing is an approach to develop long-term loyal consumers and thus increasing profitability through interaction in networks of relationship (Gummesson, 2011), companies may enhance marketing productivity by achieving efficiency and effectiveness in managing relationship with consumers. Marketing should be regarded from the point of relationship, networks and interaction (Hunt, 2018). According to Sheth (2017), relationship marketing should measure the strength of the relationship beyond financial outcomes for an organization. ...
The current demand for maintaining successful relationship marketing has prompted companies to use various tools with diverse techniques to achieve their communication objectives. Crowdsourcing can be considered as a promising concept that has revolutionized the process of obtaining, managing and maintaining consumers via the seamless connectivity of the online environment. Through this concept, companies can incorporate brand advocates into their communication programs as an effort to establish relationships with potential consumers. This seems to be congruent with the act of brand advocates increasingly using social media to share opinions and provide positive mentions about a brand. Their participation and engagement on social media can be examined by their willingness to recommend a brand without incentives or rewards. In this research, the motivation for volunteering will be assessed along with the evaluation of brand relationship quality to demonstrate the intensity and strength of the relationship between the advocates and a brand. This paper presents a comprehensive framework of crowdsourcing practices on social media that describe the volunteering motives of brand advocates, which in turn leads to satisfactory and powerful relationship building. Data is proposed to be collected through a web-based survey and analyzed using the structural equation modelling technique. This study provides a practical framework to enhance brand relationship using technologically advanced crowdsourcing practices with digital communication as a platform.
... This socio-economic environment affects (1) how companies implement expansion and competitiveness strategies versus retreat strategies or become more efficient (Fuertes-Callén & Cuellar-Fernández, 2019;Mann & Byun 2017), (2) how much consumers give up their economies and buy more versus less, saving money (Białowolski, 2019;Pardede & Zahro, 2017), and (3) when investors have higher expectations of stock returns, company value and economic performance (Bouteska & Regaieg, 2020;Cheema et al., 2020). Normative marketing practices suggest that marketing activities depend on the macro-environmental context (Hunt, 2018), and the adherence between this context and marketing enhances business gains. In addition, improvements in a nation's well-being can directly correlate with increased shareholder valuations of companies in the stock market (Mertzanis et al., 2019) since variations in ambiance variables have influenced investor decisions. ...
The research ascertains which countries' well‐being metrics moderate the effects of marketing investments on corporate financial outcomes. We applied generalized estimating equations to firms in panel data from 131 countries covering 18 years. The results show that marketing investments raise market share regardless of country context, a global pattern. However, their effects are greater when considering economic growth. The impact of marketing on profitability and the companies' value increases when the country improves income distribution. The countries' developments generate higher financial outcomes, regardless of marketing investments. We highlight firsthand the global marketing–finance interface in its macro‐environment, using operant behavioral economics.
... Despite their stated focus on the customers, many organisations still struggle to embrace customeroriented decision-making because of a dominance of finance and accounting perspective in managerial decision-making (Homburg et al., 2012;Mintz and Currim, 2013;Rust et al., 2010Rust et al., , 2016. The key challenge for marketing is to shift the perception of marketing as a cost centre to customer-centricity as a managerial philosophy manifested through all organisational systems, practices, measures and decisions (Hunt, 2018;Joshi and Giménez, 2014;Strandvik et al., 2014). While new technologies have contributed to increased organisational capabilities (Brown et al., 2019;Erevelles et al., 2016;Foroudi et al., 2017;Lamest and Brady, 2019) in processing vast amount of customer information, the way in which organisational actors use customer perspectives in their decision-making is less well understood, especially at the critical marketing-finance interface (Hanssens, 2019;Sidhu and Roberts, 2008). ...
Purpose-This study aims to provide more insight into how customer voice is captured and used in managerial decision-making at the marketing-finance interface. This study's focus is on understanding how the customer voice, often communicated through online and social media platforms, is used in high-performing hotels.
Design/methodology/approach-This research is based on a case study of four high-performing Irish hotels. For each case, multiple informants, including marketing managers, general managers and finance managers, were interviewed and shadowed. Twenty seven decisions across the four cases were analysed to assess the use of customer voice in managerial decision-making.
Findings-Social media provides a stage that has empowered the customer voice because of the public nature of the interaction and the network effect. Customer voice is incorporated in managerial decision-making in three distinct ways-symbolically as part of an early warning system, for action-oriented operational decisions and to some extent in the knowledge-enhancing role for tactical decisions. While there is a greater appreciation among senior managers and the finance and accounting managers of the importance of customer voice, this study finds clear limits in its utilisation and more reliance on traditional finance and accounting data, especially in strategic decision-making.
Research limitations/implications-The cases belong to a highly visible open environment of hotels in an industry where customer voice has immediate and strong effects. The findings may not directly apply to industries characterised by a relatively more closed context such as banking or insurance. Moreover, the findings reflect the practices of high-performing hotels and do not necessarily capture the practices used in less successfully operating hotels.
Practical implications-While marketers need to enhance their ability to create a narrative that links the customer voice to revenue generation, finance managers also need to develop a skillset and adopt a mindset that appropriately reflects the influential role for customer voice in managerial decision-making.
... The marketing discipline did not take up the task of developing the work of Levitt and operationalising these ideas. Rather, it turned to the pursuit of "marketing science", which some scholars have attributed to the continued decline in influence and relevance of marketing departments ( Homburg et al., 2015 ;Hunt, 2018 ;Sheth and Sisodia, 2006 ). Clark et al.'s (2014) bibliometric analysis of the 'export' vs. 'import' of citations amongst the leading business journals of the four major business disciplines (i.e., accounting, finance, management and marketing), found that marketing is least cited, and that this gap is only widening with time. ...
This paper demonstrates that the concept of customer orientation has its genesis not in marketing, but rather in management thought; specifically, within the Scientific Management movement. We trace the concept through its popularisation in the marketing discipline with the work of Theodore Levitt, the subsequent difficulties in translating the concept into practice through the late twentieth century, and its eventual integration and application of into more recent streams of popular marketing thought and practice, such as service-dominant logic and co-creation. We conclude with an exposition of the contribution of customer orientation to the disciplines of marketing and strategy in the guise of design thinking, the business model canvas, disruptive innovation, and lean startup. In this way, we are “righting” two “wrongs” by correcting the received wisdom in both management and marketing. We are also helping researchers, educators and practitioners in these two disciplines avoid falling into the related traps of repeating their mistakes if do not have an adequate grasp of their past or ‘re-inventing-the-wheel’.
Inspired by Vargo & Lusch’s Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) and relying on the Austrian School’s individualism and subjectivism, we use knowledge from economics to better support the discussion of the primary topic of Marketing: that of value creation. Specifically, we draft a Value-Dominant Logic. We provide ten foundational premises stemming from the recognition that value is subjective and, consequently, cannot be created by entrepreneurs or firms. Entrepreneurs and firms propose value, but subjective value can only be perceived, created and thus experienced in the individual consumer’s mind. By adopting the perspective that logically follows from this understanding, the disciplines of management and marketing will be better able to narrow the uncertainties of the market process, and entrepreneurs can make better decisions about how to help consumers overcome felt uneasiness by adopting their proposed solutions.
This paper is a response to a recent special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management in which Shelby Hunt celebrates the achievements of 40 years of marketing strategy. In noting the passing of the ‘old guard’, Hunt calls on a new generation of scholars to meet the challenges confronting marketing and to develop new theories and frameworks to advance Marketing Strategy into Era V. We take for our inspiration Hunt’s own words, specifically his reference to the ‘promising’ and ‘problematic’ that he uses to characterise the current and latent state of marketing strategy. To build our vision and map out our agenda we offer an alternative reading of this discipline through the idea of Marketing Strategy as Discourse (MSAD). Within the paper, we outline the role that discourse can perform as a resource to reconfigure our appreciation of marketing strategy.
Three streams of strategic thought, (1) the “adaptive marketing capabilities” works, (2) the “dynamic capabilities” view, and (3) resource-advantage (R-A) theory, are converging on the view that, in today's dynamic, hypercompetitive, global economy, strategy must focus on firms' constantly renewing themselves in the marketplace. In turn, these three streams have implications for the controversies over whether strategy's focus should be “outside-in or inside-out” and whether strategy should be static or dynamic. This article addresses the three streams of strategic thought and the two controversies by (1) explicating their nature, (2) showing how strategies related to them have evolved through time, and (3) pointing toward the controversies' resolution. The article argues that all theories of strategy assume a theory of how competition works. In turn, theories of competition are housed within disciplinary research traditions. Therefore, understanding the controversies in contemporary strategy is furthered by understanding both the theories of competition that underlie each strategic approach and their respective research traditions.
This study investigates how customer value mediates the relationship between relationship marketing and firm value, and how brand equity mediates the relationship between relationship marketing and firm value in the telecommunications industry in Ghana. A quantitative research design was adopted. Data were collected from 1,000 customers from four main telecommunications companies in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze the relationship among the variables. The findings demonstrate that all five dimensions of RM—trust, empathy, shared value, communication, and bonding—have a significant positive influence on brand equity. The test further revealed that brand equity significantly leads to firm value and customer value. The research findings indicate that the relationship marketing concept and brand equity can be used to improve customer value and firm value issues in the telecommunications industry in Ghana. Moreover, the study revealed the usefulness of brand equity scales adopted in evaluating context-specific issues as exist in the telephony industry. The findings also indicate that customer value partially mediates firm value and brand equity. The study shows that brand equity components have varying mediating effects on firm value.
Today, businesses are developing various strategies to keep sustainable competitive advantage in the current competitive environment. Hunt and Morgan (1995) first introduced the resource advantage theory based on the resources and competencies of the enterprises that examined the competitive advantage. The basic proposition of the theory is that it provides superior financial performance by providing a competitive advantage to enterprises that cannot be imitated, valuable and rare. In addition, according to the theory of resource advantage, market orientation is expressed as a source of the enterprises because it provides proactive customer satisfaction information by producing an appropriate product according to the preferences of the market segments. The aim of the study is to evaluate the importance of resource advantage theory and market orientation in enterprises to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and to make suggestions to the literatüre. As a result, the importance of supply, consumer knowledge, human motivation, business purpose and knowledge, resources, the role of management, competitive dynamics, and the importance of providing sustainable competitive advantage in market direction are emphasized.
There have been numerous calls for more relevance in academic marketing, both for and by practitioners and for customers (e.g., Sheth and Sisodia 2006, Hunt 2018, Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay 2000). It might seem that these calls signal the need for more applied research, based on real data and real-world problems. However, it seems to me that there has never before been such a plethora of empirical articles in marketing journals as there are presently and thus the problem must be much more basic.
Over the years, marketing scholars have voiced concerns regarding the dearth of indigenous theory development in marketing, reliance on theories developed in other disciplines, and the downward trend in conceptual articles published in marketing journals. Advancing marketing theory encompasses developing organic marketing theories, refining and extending theories developed in other disciplines used to explain and predict marketing phenomena, evaluating theories currently in vogue in the field and discarding flawed theories, and developing overarching theories that in addition to explaining marketing phenomena also explain a broader range of phenomena that transcend disciplinary boundaries. Along the lines of the demonstrated potential of theories developed in other disciplines to shed light into marketing phenomena, the potential of organic marketing theories to shed light into phenomena that are the focus of research in other disciplines also merit exploration. Against this backdrop, drawing on theory insights from marketing literature and other disciplines, this commentary focuses on issues relating to development of new theories, extensions and revisions of theories in vogue, and discarding of flawed theories.
Marketing as a discipline has evolved to a current stage through five eras which cover more than one hundred years. During the years ICT and technologies have rapidly improved and marketing as a very dynamic discipline has successfully adapted most of them at least in some form. While marketing without modern ICT could have been perceived as an art, advanced technologies might shift the perception more to a science. The internet as already a well-established environment for modern marketing strategies offers data collection and procession, which in almost every case triggers marketing strategy decision-making process. The main aim of this article is to identify, whether digital marketers, who are the most affected subject by the rise of advanced technologies, perceive the marketing discipline more as an art or as a science. Quantitative research in form of online interviewing was used as the main research method. The results of the research offers digital marketers' point of view of the researched issue and suggests, whether modern marketing is more art or science.
Research has shown that supplier quality can lead to brand quality failures. However, what is not clear is whether a supplier’s country of origin (COO) plays a role in the evaluations of manufacturer brands after a recall is initiated. In this paper, through the lens of resource advantage (R-A) theory, we empirically examine whether a supplier’s COO hurts or helps the vehicle brand when a supplier is blamed during a vehicle recall event. R-A theory suggests that high brand quality can enhance competitive advantage for a firm. Through an experimental study, we find that high brand quality can override the spillover effect of COO after a product recall. However, the severity of a recall can nullify the impact of high brand quality.
In response to Kohli and Haenlein (2020), this paper addresses how, at this point in time, marketing can be maximally useful, both for contributing to the body-of-knowledge of marketing and for solving practical marketing problems. I first discuss the three current major dynamics in marketing and how to deal with them: (i) Vertical drift (movement away from marketing in the direction of its supplying disciplines); (ii) Lateral drift (new business fields becoming active in native marketing territories); and (iii) The ICT revolution. Next, the paper examines the alleged low tide of marketing theory and discuss how, in the absence of new grand theories but in an abundance of studies on specialized marketing problems, the field can organically develop marketing knowledge. Finally, the paper investigates the role of subdomains in marketing and related issues of the unity of the field and the self-identity of marketing scholars. The paper produces several recommendations, summarized in the last section.
Commentaries on the status of the marketing discipline conclude that it is significantly troubled, which raises the question: Do the troubles identified portend a de-institutionalization of the discipline in marketing’s Era IV (1980–2020) and its potential re-institutionalization in Era V (2020-?)? This article examines (1) the marketing discipline’s founding in Era I (1900–1920), (2) how the discipline became institutionalized in Era II (1920–1950), (3) how marketing was re-institutionalized in Era III (1950–1980), and (4) how the discipline’s fragmentation in Era IV (1980–2020) portends its de-institutionalization. The article concludes by arguing for the marketing discipline’s re-institutionalization in Era V (2020-?).
This article (1) explores the nature and origins of “high impact” (i.e., highly cited) articles in marketing, (2) argues that a major factor is that highly cited articles frequently are the result of their authors’ executing time-consuming, research programs, rather than simply working on individual articles that appear to be immediately publishable, (3) develops a “six-stage model” of programmatic research, and (4) illustrates the six-stage model by means of the author’s “marketing theory” research program.
This research proposes and empirically tests whether adjustments to post-recall advertising spending strategy can be used as an effective tool to create a competitive advantage in resources, thus impacting a firm’s future sales decline after a product recall event. This paper explores where the firm’s advertising resources should be allocated: the focal brand (the recalled brand), a non-focal brand (another brand in the portfolio), or the institutional brand (the family brand) in order to determine the optimal advertising spending strategy. The findings show that firms should allocate advertising spending to promote the institutional brand in order to mitigate the impact of spillover effects of recalls on a firm’s future sales performance.
Resource Advantage theory provides a normative and positive view of competition and serves as a more realistic approach to competition. As marketing enters Era V, some scholars note the lack of impact by marketing on other business-related disciplines. We address this lack of impact by teaching Resource Advantage theory to frame decision making related to both strategy and tactics in our Principles of Marketing course. Like most higher education institutions, this course serves as a graduation requirement for all business-related majors. We provide a discussion for other marketing instructors to replicate our effort in this specific course as well as in an upper division marketing course.
Of the three scholastic modes with which to develop ideas and create knowledge in research: logic, empirics, and the literature, the latter is perhaps one of the least understood and studied. This paper is a first-of-its-kind delve into what the literature is, how it is used, and its impact as a foundation for theory and conceptual work in the discipline of marketing. We create a novel approach that provides a framework to understand the way literature functions in the research process and expose the hidden mechanics of how it creates and ties together various forms of meaning through what we call, citation-based reasoning. It is through this lens that we conclude with insights for how a deeper understanding of the literature can stoke continued impact in the marketing discipline, especially for theory building and conceptual development.
Purpose
The objective of this study is to provide a systematic review of the literature on artificial intelligence (AI) in customer-facing financial services, providing an overview of explored contexts and research foci, identifying gaps in the literature and setting a comprehensive agenda for future research.
Design/methodology/approach
Combining database (i.e. Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO, ScienceDirect) and manual journal search, the authors identify 90 articles published in Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) journals for investigation, using the TCCM (Theory, Context, Characteristics and Methodology) framework.
Findings
The results indicate a split between data-driven and theory-driven research, with most studies either adopting an experimental research design focused on testing the accuracy and performance of AI algorithms to assist with credit scoring or investigating AI consumer adoption behaviors in a banking context. The authors call for more research building overarching theories or extending existing theoretical perspectives, such as actor networks. More empirical research is required, especially focusing on consumers' financial behaviors as well as the role of regulation, ethics and policy concerned with AI in financial service contexts, such as insurance or pensions.
Research limitations/implications
The review focuses on AI in customer-facing financial services. Future work may want to investigate back-office and operations contexts.
Originality/value
The authors are the first to systematically synthesize the literature on the use of AI in customer-facing financial services, offering a valuable agenda for future research.
Hunt’s (AMS Rev, 10, 189–198, 2020) notion of the re-institutionalization of marketing as a discipline provides the background for this commentary. This forward-looking context is used to address issues the marketing discipline is facing to reconcile problems we identify. Academic marketing research has become fragmented and polarized into narrow areas that do not provide holistic contributions to knowledge. Doctoral programs are focusing less on core marketing knowledge and theory and more on methodology. This brings into question the culture of both our doctoral programs and the culture of the discipline to provide high-impact research valuable to practitioners and society, as well as the firm. An agenda for change addresses hiring practices, projects, methods, and oversight on the importance of impact. It is suggested the marketing discipline engage in the study of marketing practice to find important problems to investigate.
For the efficient and seamless operation of the company, all types of enterprises must grow their communication system in today's global and fast-paced industry. Various worldwide crises can lead to a shift to a less expensive mode and manner of communication, which can jeopardize a company's overall strategy and performance. This research looks at the impact of strategic marketing tactics on a company's communication quality and methodologies. Targets for business-to-customer communication, as well as new opportunities for establishing more strong marketing communication technologies, have received special attention. The purpose of this article is to suggest new ways and trends in the present business-to-customer communication model that will aid in minimizing current and future issues.. Thereby, the paper incorporates pragmatism as research philosophy, deductive as the research approach, and descriptive as the research design. Apart from that, a secondary method of data collection along with ethical modes of data collection is taken into consideration to present a comprehensive and efficacious paper. Research background Strategic marketing is used in corporate communication by the organization so that it can focus on its strengths in order to provide better services and value to its core consumers. With the help of strategic marketing, the company will be able to look at things from a fresh perspective, allowing them to grab customer attention more effectively than their competitors. Strategic marketing principles include three questions: where to compete, how to compete, and when to compete. Initially, firms utilized relatively basic marketing concepts, but as rivalry developed, organizations were motivated to improve strategic marketing concepts. The impact of strategic marketing tactics on company communication was investigated in this study. The advantages of strategic marketing in the organization are discussed, as well as how it aids in improving service quality and attracting a large audience. Furthermore, the strategy is entirely centered on the viewpoint of customers, and it aids in the development of marketing campaigns that raise the organization's brand worth. Strategic marketing incorporates concepts such as market research, social media marketing, promotional strategy, customer behavior, and many others. It is critical for the business to adopt strategic marketing, which aids in the creation of marketing strategies to fulfill the organization's objectives and goals, while also understanding the consumer and market.
The subject of branding, customer-brand relationships, brand equity strategies, and branding as a societal institution has become so controversial that an anti-branding movement has become widespread across several continents. This movement maintains that branding is not just problematic, but ethically wrong. This article uses the Hunt-Vitell theory of ethics to provide a framework for explicating people's personal moral codes, which in turn, helps us to understand the ethical controversy over branding. The article (1) provides a brief discussion of the nature of branding, (2) identifies major arguments that support the view that branding is morally wrong, (3) overviews the H–V theory of marketing ethics, (4) explicates the H–V theory's “personal moral codes” framework, and (5) shows how it provides a starting point for those who seek to understand, evaluate, and investigate the ethics of branding.
The attainment of quality in products and services has become a pivotal concern of the 1980s. While quality in tangible goods has been described and measured by marketers, quality in services is largely undefined and unresearched. The authors attempt to rectify this situation by reporting the insights obtained in an extensive exploratory investigation of quality in four service businesses and by developing a model of service quality. Propositions and recommendations to stimulate future research about service quality are offered.
The emergence and evolution of service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch 2004a) has drawn increasing attention toward the integration of resources, especially intangible and dynamic resources and interdependent processes that drive the creation of value. The core of this developing mindset fundamentally shifts the focus of marketing and, more generally, business away from the production and distribution of goods (goods-dominant logic) toward service, the application of operant resources (knowledge and skills), as the basis of exchange. S-D logic's advancement is driven by the collaboration and contributions of marketing and non-marketing-related (and other) disciplines. Currently, evidence of this joint effort can be found in a variety of journal special issues and conference special sessions, a number of journal articles and other presentations, several dedicated conferences, and one book with fifty contributing scholars. This review consolidates the S-D logic writings of Vargo, Lusch, and their coauthors, as well as the related work (and viewpoints) of other scholars, to examine the implications of the S-D logic mindset for marketing. It (1) explores the need for S-D logic and summarizes its current state of development, (2) provides an S-D logic perspective of the market and marketing, (3) clarifies major theoretical misconceptions, (4) reviews the extension of S-D logic and its integration with existing marketing knowledge , (5) provides an assessment of the role of S-D logic in the evolution of academic marketing, and (6) offers directions for future research.
In the lead article of this issue, Hunt (2015) provides an exposition of how the resource-advantage (R-A) theory undergirds the sixteen foundational premises of marketing strategy advanced in Varadarajan (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 38 (2), 119-140, 2010). Hunt notes that R-A theory and its three foundational strategies, and the sixteen foundational premises of marketing strategy complement each other in securing the theoretical foundations of the field of strategic marketing. Building on Hunt’s article, this commentary provides additional insights into issues fundamental to the field of strategic marketing and R-A theory, and the foundational premises of marketing strategy and R-A theory. The commentary also provides a retrospective and prospective discussion of the domain of strategic marketing, definition of marketing strategy, issues fundamental to the field of strategic marketing, and the foundational premises of marketing strategy that I had proposed in my above referenced article. In the context of theory development, empirical research and organization of the cumulative body of knowledge in the field of strategic marketing, I highlight the conceptual distinction between marketing strategy and market strategy.
Evidence from past research and insights from an exploratory investigation are combined in a conceptual model that defines and relates price, perceived quality, and perceived value. Propositions about the concepts and their relationships are presented, then supported with evidence from the literature. Discussion centers on directions for research and implications for managing price, quality, and value.
If service quality relates to retention of customers at the aggregate level, as other research has indicated, then evidence of its impact on customers' behavioral responses should be detectable. The authors offer a conceptual model of the impact of service quality on particular behaviors that signal whether customers remain with or defect from a company. Results from a multicompany empirical study examining relationships from the model concerning customers' behavioral intentions show strong evidence of their being influenced by service quality. The findings also reveal differences in the nature of the quality-intentions link across different dimensions of behavioral intentions. The authors' discussion centers on ways the results and research approach of their study can be helpful to researchers and managers.
Marketing theory and practice have focused persistently on exchange between buyers and sellers. Unfortunately, most of the research and too many of the marketing strategies treat buyer-seller exchanges as discrete events, not as ongoing relationships. The authors describe a framework for developing buyer-seller relationships that affords a vantage point for formulating marketing strategy and for stimulating new research directions.
The authors outline an updated paradigm for scale development that incorporates confirmatory factor analysis for the assessment of unidimensionality. Under this paradigm, item-total correlations and exploratory factor analysis are used to provide preliminary scales. The unidimensionality of each scale then is assessed simultaneously with confirmatory factor analysis. After unidimensional measurement has been acceptably achieved, the reliability of each scale is assessed. Additional evidence for construct validity beyond the establishment of unidimensionality then can be provided by embedding the unidimensional sets of indicators within a nomological network defined by the complete structural model.
The authors investigate the conceptualization and measurement of service quality and the relationships between service quality, consumer satisfaction, and purchase intentions. A literature review suggests that the current operationalization of service quality confounds satisfaction and attitude. Hence, the authors test (1) an alternative method of operationalizing perceived service quality and (2) the significance of the relationships between service quality, consumer satisfaction, and purchase intentions. The results suggest that (1) a performance-based measure of service quality may be an improved means of measuring the service quality construct, (2) service quality is an antecedent of consumer satisfaction, (3) consumer satisfaction has a significant effect on purchase intentions, and (4) service quality has less effect on purchase intentions than does consumer satisfaction. Implications for managers and future research are discussed.
Marketing managers must know the time orientation of a customer to select and use marketing tools that correspond to the time horizons of the customer. Insufficient understanding of a customer's time orientation can lead to problems, such as attempting a relationship marketing when transaction marketing is more appropriate. The author suggests that long-term orientation in a buyer/seller relationship is a function of two main factors: mutual dependence and the extent to which they trust one another. Dependence and trust are related to environmental uncertainty, transaction-specific investments, reputation, and satisfaction in a buyer/seller relationship. The framework presented here is tested with 124 retail buyers and 52 vendors supplying to those retailers. The results indicate that trust and dependence play key roles in determining the long-term orientation of both retail buyers and their vendors. The results also indicate that both similarities and differences exist across retailers and vendors with respect to the effects of several variables on long-term orientation, dependence, and trust.
Relationship marketing—establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges—constitutes a major shift in marketing theory and practice. After conceptualizing relationship marketing and discussing its ten forms, the authors (1) theorize that successful relationship marketing requires relationship commitment and trust, (2) model relationship commitment and trust as key mediating variables, (3) test this key mediating variable model using data from automobile tire retailers, and (4) compare their model with a rival that does not allow relationship commitment and trust to function as mediating variables. Given the favorable test results for the key mediating variable model, suggestions for further explicating and testing it are offered.
The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. A brand is said to have positive (negative) customer-based brand equity when consumers react more (less) favorably to an element of the marketing mix for the brand than they do to the same marketing mix element when it is attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service. Brand knowledge is conceptualized according to an associative network memory model in terms of two components, brand awareness and brand image (i.e., a set of brand associations). Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory. Issues in building, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity are discussed, as well as areas for future research.
The statistical tests used in the analysis of structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error are examined. A drawback of the commonly applied chi square test, in addition to the known problems related to sample size and power, is that it may indicate an increasing correspondence between the hypothesized model and the observed data as both the measurement properties and the relationship between constructs decline. Further, and contrary to common assertion, the risk of making a Type II error can be substantial even when the sample size is large. Moreover, the present testing methods are unable to assess a model's explanatory power. To overcome these problems, the authors develop and apply a testing system based on measures of shared variance within the structural model, measurement model, and overall model.
A critical element in the evolution of a fundamental body of knowledge in marketing, as well as for improved marketing practice, is the development of better measures of the variables with which marketers work. In this article an approach is outlined by which this goal can be achieved and portions of the approach are illustrated in terms of a job satisfaction measure.
A model of distributor firm and manufacturer firm working partnerships is presented and is assessed empirically on a sample of distributor firms and a sample of manufacturer firms. A multiple-informant research method is employed. Support is found for a number of the hypothesized construct relations and, in both manufacturer firm and distributor firm models, for the respecification of cooperation as an antecedent rather than a consequence of trust. Some implications for marketing practice are discussed briefly.
The strategic marketing field of study has long suffered from an identity problem: the field has lacked clarity and consensus as to its theoretical foundations, its nature, and its scope. There have been two recent approaches that contribute to resolving the identity problem. First, Varadarajan’s (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 38, 119–140, 2010) approach focuses on strategic marketing's (1) domain, (2) definition, (3) fundamental issues, and (4) foundational premises. Second, resource-advantage (R-A) theory's approach focuses on how R-A theory provides a theoretical grounding for eight forms of business and marketing strategy. This article evaluates how the two approaches relate to each other and shows how R-A theory (1) grounds extant business and marketing theories of strategy, (2) illuminates, informs, extends, and grounds the sixteen foundational premises of the strategic marketing field that Varadarajan (2010) proposes, (3) implies that there are three fundamental strategies, “superior value”, “lower cost”, and “synchronal”, and (4) shows how the three fundamental strategies promote societal welfare. Therefore, the two approaches, when considered jointly, complement each other and foster the development of the field of strategic marketing and the forms of marketing strategy.
This article provides a review of the history of marketing education. Some of the pioneers who developed concepts and pedagogical material used in teaching marketing are identified and some schools of thought are reviewed, namely, the commodity, institutional, and functional schools, as well as marketing management. During the early part of the 20th century, a number of scholars contributed seminal ideas that laid the foundation of marketing thought. Their published texts influenced what was taught in the classroom. What we teach today reflects what previous thought leaders and textbook authors considered to be important for the dissemination of marketing knowledge to students. Educators need a historical background about the concepts they teach and the textbooks they use. This background will help put what we teach today in perspective. This overview should provide an opportunity to think critically about the challenges that marketing educators face in selecting and presenting content in the classroom.
Although research and managerial practice have demonstrated great interest in the role of marketing departments within firms and have raised repeated concerns that their influence is in sharp decline, prior research has not analyzed whether marketing departments are truly losing ground. To do so, we build on the work of Homburg et al. (1999), which assessed the influence of the marketing department two decades ago. Drawing on structurally equivalent data, the results demonstrate that the marketing department has indeed lost significant influence. Additionally, we analyze which department has benefited from this loss of influence. Interestingly, it is the sales department that has gained influence, rather than the finance department, as one might assume. We also study the performance consequences of the intraorganizational distribution of influence among the marketing, sales, R&D, operations, and finance departments. Our results are alarming because an influential marketing department makes the greatest contribution to company performance.
The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. A brand is said to have positive (negative) customer-based brand equity when consumers react more (less) favorably to an element of the marketing mix for the brand than they do to the same marketing mix element when it is attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service. Brand knowledge is conceptualized according to an associative network memory model in terms of two components, brand awareness and brand image (i. e., a set of brand associations). Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory. Issues in building, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity are discussed, as well as areas for future research.
Marketing managers must know the time orientation of a customer to select and use marketing tools that correspond to the time horizons of the customer. Insufficient understanding of a customer's time orientation can lead to problems, such as attempting a relationship marketing when transaction marketing is more appropriate. The author suggests that long-term orientation in a buyer/seller relationship is a function of two main factors: mutual dependence and the extent to which they trust one another. Dependence and trust are related to environmental uncertainty, transaction-specific investments, reputation, and satisfaction in a buyer/seller relationship. The framework presented here is tested with 124 retail buyers and 52 vendors supplying to those retailers. The results indicate that trust and dependence play key roles in determining the long-term orientation of both retail buyers and their vendors. The results also indicate that both similarities and differences exist across retailers and vendors with respect to the effects of several variables on long-term orientation, dependence, and trust.
This paper outlines an intellectual biography of Percival White whose major contributions to marketing thought focused on market research and the application of scientific management to marketing. White published 20 books during his career, 11 of those dealing with marketing, including one of the earliest texts on market research. Like other pioneers in the marketing discipline, White's legacy also includes major contributions to marketing practice. His company, Market Research Corporation of America, represented some of the best technical practices of the 1930s. Unlike many other pioneers in marketing whose education was in economics, White's background was in industrial engineering. He considered himself a marketing engineer.
In fhls his+orical note we find a direct application of Frederick W. Taylor's scien-tific management concepts to early sales management, scientific marketing manage-ment, and modern market-ing managennent. The authors of this article review the applications of scientific management to marketing during the period from approximately World War I to the depression of the early 1930s, and they show how the first large-scale application of man-agement concepts came about. M OST businessmen, including marketing men, think of "mar-keting management" as associated with the decade of the 1950s. Certainly many of the books and articles of this period heralded a "new" marketing management responsibility, the purpose of which was to establish a well-organized and controlled program based on a comprehensive marketing plan. But actually marketing management began much earlier than this. The original concept appeared in the early 1900s, when a mass-distribution system first became necessary to parallel a mass-production capability. Scientific marketing management as de-scribed in the early literature actually is a very close evolutionary forebear of modern marketing management. Scientific Management The early scientific-management movement embodied ideas of many men. But the movement is most often identified with Fred-erick W. Taylor.^ His writings express many of the concepts cen-tral to scientific management, such as: • Scientific study and analysis of work in order to discover the "one best way" and proper time to do a job. • Scientific selection and training of men to do each job. • Disciplined work performance by workers, coupled with scien-tific analysis and control by management. Implicit in Taylor's system of scientific management are several assumptions :2 1. Industrial man is, an individualist, reacting to his environ-ment as an individual and without regard to any ties with other people. 2. Man is primarily, if not exclusively, motivated by money; therefore, maximum productivity comes if pay is based on the amount produced. 3. Increases in efficiency depend upon increasing the specializa-tion of workers and managerial personnel. 4. There is a great belief in standardization; therefore, seek the "one best way" to do a job, design it, teach it, and see that it is followed.
Many inside mainstream academic marketing judge the discipline’s influence within the family of business disciplines (as well as in practice) to be in decline. Despite great research productivity, methodologies as sophisticated as any in the social sciences, and a large and rich literature, opinion and evidence suggest that academic marketing is the least influential of the mainstream academic business disciplines. Nevertheless, marketing’s decline is not inexorable. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this perplexing situation by: (1) assembling and evaluating a number of expert opinions from within marketing; (2) exploring relations and patterns of influence among the leading academic journals in accounting, finance, management, and marketing and evaluating the position and influence of each field; (3) attempting to understand marketing’s problems; and (4) exploring avenues to move marketing back to its once prominent position among the business disciplines.
This article contributes to theory development in marketing, in general, and to theory development in marketing ethics, in particular. The proposed “inductive realist model of theory generation” incorporates both (1) recent works in the philosophy of science on discovery processes in science and (2) Hunt’s (International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 25(2), 159–178, 2011, AMS Review, 2(1), 5–18, 2012) inductive realist model of theory status. To illustrate how the model can be used, the author shows how the model can contribute to understanding the development of a general theory of marketing ethics that is frequently referred to as the “Hunt-Vitell theory of ethics.”
Some marketing theories are empirically successful, while others are not. When a marketing theory is empirically successful, is its success a result of miraculous good fortune or something else? For example, market orientation (MO) theory has been empirically successful: it explains and predicts numerous marketing phenomena. What explains the empirical success of MO theory? This article furthers the development of the philosophy of science foundations of marketing research by detailing the recently developed, “inductive realism” model of theory status and using the model to articulate scientific realism’s approximate truth as an explanation of the empirical success of marketing theories, in general, and MO theory, in particular. This article (1) briefly reviews the approaches to explaining the empirical success of science, with particular emphasis on scientific realism’s “no miracles” argument in favor of the approximate truth explanation, (2) discusses the problems associated with realists’ efforts to conceptualize “approximate truth,” (3) focuses on MO as a case-example of an empirically successful marketing theory and develops a “partial formalization” of MO theory for analysis purposes, (4) details the new, “inductive realist” model of theory status and applies the model to MO theory, (5) shows how the model accommodates the fact that, at times, sociological/political factors influence theory acceptance in science, (6) discusses whether political or other inappropriate factors have influenced MO theory’s success, (7) discusses the inductive realist approach to approximate truth and applies it to MO theory.
A new theory of competition is evolving in the strategy literature. The authors explicate the foundations of this new theory, the ''comparative advantage theory of competition,'' and contrast them with the neoclassical theory of perfect competition. They argue that the new theory of competition explains key macro and micro phenomena better than neoclassical perfect competition theory. Finally, they further explicate the theory of comparative advantage by evaluating a market orientation as a potential resource for comparative advantage.
A firm increases its wealth by creating value for its customers. This article proposes that the main source of wealth creation is in the "behavioral assets" of the firm, that is, the routines and competencies of the people involved. These valuable behavioral assets are located not only inside, but also outside the firm. For this reason it is not sufficient to use the individual firm as a unit of analysis when looking for the sources of the wealth of the firm; one must look at the complete value-creating network surrounding the firm. The article classifies assets into three categories: physical assets, valuable paper, and behavioral assets. These are categorized in a matrix based on the degree to which a firm may exercise control of them and on the location of the assets relative to the firm. Marketing is a major contributor to the wealth of firms, especially as this wealth is generated from behavioral assets outside the firm itself