No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Marketing Excellence: Nature, Measurement, and Investor Valuations
Abstract
Marketing excellence is a foundational principle for the discipline that is gaining increasing attention among managers and investors. Despite this, the nature of marketing excellence and its effectiveness remain unclear. This research offers insight by addressing two questions: (1) How do managers understand and exercise marketing excellence? and (2) How do investors evaluate marketing excellence? Study 1 merges insights from 39 in-depth interviews with senior executives and secondary data from 150 firm strategies to find that marketing excellence is a strategy type focused on achieving organic growth by executing priorities related to the marketing ecosystem, end user, and marketing agility. Study 2 quantifies the impact of marketing excellence on firm value by using a machine learning algorithm and text analysis through an original dictionary to classify the text from 8,317 letters to shareholders in 1,727 U.S. firm annual reports. Calendar-time portfolio models reveal abnormal one-year returns of up to 8.58% for marketing excellence—returns that outpace those associated with market orientation and marketing capabilities. Findings offer guidance to managers, educators, and investors regarding how marketing excellence manifests—paving the way for the allocation of firm resources to ensure that marketing drives organic growth.
... Second, the intensity of international competition makes it more and more difficult for firms to differentiate properly as products become increasingly similar, a development also known as commoditization (Reimann, Schilke, & Thomas, 2010), or are developed/produced based on exact specifications given by their customers. Accordingly, business companies struggle in gaining and sustaining a key supplier status (Ulaga & Eggert, 2006) or try to improve their position in dyadic or multi-stage market channels (Dahlquist & Griffith, 2014;Geiger et al., 2015;Homburg, Theel, & Hohenberg, 2020) by applying multi-stage marketing. ...
... It is about creating demand in a market-driving sense (Jaworski, Kohli, & Sahay, 2000;Jaworski, Kohli, & Sarin, 2020;Nenonen, Storbacka, & Windahl, 2019) not only from the direct customers, but also from their indirect customers, i.e. customers of their customers (Dahlquist & Griffith, 2014). MSM can thus improve a supplier's power and negotiation position considerably (Cowan, Paswan, & Van Steenburg, 2015;Homburg et al., 2020;Makkonen, Siemieniako, & Mitrega, 2021;Munksgaard, Johnsen, & Patterson, 2015;Siemieniako, Mitrega, Makkonen, & Pfajfar, 2023). ...
... The triadic perspective is an important step in the conceptualization of multi-stage marketing as it allows to assess and strategically align business interest across multiple market stages (Wuyts et al., 2004). Due to the increasing importance of end-user priority (Homburg et al., 2020), the triadic approaches are not always comprehensive enough in multi-stage marketing as value creation often takes place across more than three market stages and also includes the involvement of various additional stakeholders. ...
Multi-stage marketing (MSM), a market-driving strategy applicable in multi-stage industrial markets to shape customer preferences, is still an underresearched field. While the strategic and operational dimensions of MSM have already been recognized and researched, MSM's processual dimension, i.e. its implementation, management and adaptation, has so far gone unnoticed. Based on a comprehensive case study of a German component and consumables manufacturer, this paper will derive in an exploratory research approach first insights on the determinants of a successful implementation and management of MSM, as well as the impact of market dynamics on the design of a firm's salesforce. The results indicate that a supplier applying MSM has to have unique resources and capabilities at its disposal, which are performance-relevant for the downstream market stages and allow for continuous organizational adaptation. Moreover, firms need to complement their traditional salesforce with additional indirect customers/stakeholder-oriented sales units for enabling MSM at the other market stages.
... Marketing agility allows firms to respond to market changes quickly by focusing on unpredicted incidences (Osei, Amankwah-Amoah, Khan, Omar, & Gutu, 2019). In conceptualizing marketing agility, Homburg, Theel, and Hohenberg (2020) focused on fast decision making, trial and error learning, whereas Kalaignanam, Tuli, Kushwaha, Lee, & Gal (2021) highlighted sensemaking, iteration, speed and decisions. Zhou, Mavondo, and Saunders (2019) identify marketing agility as a meta dynamic capability representing the novel attributes of market sensing, speed and flexibility to detect opportunities and respond speedily by reconfiguring marketing tactics in a changing environment. ...
... However, Khan (2020) extends marketing agility by focusing on under-studied dynamic capabilities, such as proactive market sensing, responsiveness, speed and flexibility. Overall, the extant literature identifies four predominant attributes of marketing agility as outlined by Zhou et al. (2019), which is consistent with Homburg et al. (2020), Khan (2020) and Kalaignanam et al. (2021) to a large extent. First, marketing agility is a higher-order organizational capability, which can adapt to changing market contexts better than rivals (Roberts & Grover, 2012). ...
... First, marketing agility is a higher-order organizational capability, which can adapt to changing market contexts better than rivals (Roberts & Grover, 2012). Second, marketing agility reflects flexibility, speed, responsiveness and proactiveness (Homburg et al., 2020;Sherehiy, Karwowski, & Layer, 2007;Zhang, 2011). Third, marketing agility implies sensemaking and marketing response (Kalaignanam et al., 2021;Roberts & Grover, 2012;Teece et al., 2016) by responding to opportunities and threats and proactively changing the resources and settings (Roberts & Grover, 2012;Teece et al., 2016). ...
The rise of sharing economy has accelerated the growth of marketing analytics to match demand and supply in industrial markets. However, the conceptualization of marketing analytics remains unclear in the sharing economy. Theorizing market turbulence as the dark side of the sharing economy, this study presents a marketing analytics capability model using dynamic capabilities and contingency theories to advance thought and practice in industrial marketing research. Using a thematic analysis and a survey-based empirical study on B2B cloud sharing platforms (n = 252), the findings present pattern identification, real-time solutions and data governance as the antecedents of marketing analytics capability with its holistic effects on marketing agility and marketing effectiveness. The empirical findings further support the mediating role of marketing agility and the moderating impact of market turbulence on marketing analytics-effectiveness and marketing agility-effectiveness chain. Overall, our results contribute toward a more nuanced understanding of the dark side of market turbulence on marketing analytics capability dynamics in the sharing economy.
... Even if the individual chains through which the value of marketing is created may vary, all such chains share a common role of marketing assets as "reservoirs of cash flows" (Rust et al., 2004a, p. 78), which in the long run translate into enhanced profits and shareholder value (e.g. Homburg et al., 2020;Rahman, 2020). In their comprehensive meta-analysis of studies linking marketing activities and assets to shareholder value, Edeling and Fischer (2016) conclude that marketing assetssuch as brands and, in particular, customers -play a major role in determining a firm's valuation in equity markets, whereas the role of individual marketing initiatives -such as advertising -is minor (albeit significant). ...
... These findings suggest that, despite not getting standardized information on firm's marketing assets as such, the financial markets have learned to pay attention to developments that signal changes in their value (see e.g. Homburg et al., 2020;Wies et al., 2019). Accordingly, firms have also learned to use information about marketing activities and outcomes to support their equity offerings, for instance, thereby generating more favorable reactions to their offerings in the stock market (e.g. ...
... In light of these developments, estimates of the financial value of marketing assets, such as brands, even when imperfect, will provide information that is valuable for shareholders (see also Barth et al., 1998;Homburg et al., 2020). Even more useful would be information on the direction and magnitude of changes in such assets over time because such changes provide information about how well they are being managed. ...
Building on an in-depth content analysis of letters to shareholders in the annual reports of 54 Fortune 500 firms, this study examines the types of marketing information currently being highlighted to stakeholders external to the firm. The study identifies seven types of marketing assets: customer relationships, other value network relationships, societal relationships, reputational assets, marketing information, offering-related assets, and market position. The study also reveals three distinct profiles of firms’ reporting. The findings shed empirical light on aspects of marketing that diverse firms perceive as meriting disclosure to external stakeholders, thereby providing insights into how senior management perceives marketing.
... Due to the devastating changes in markets emerging from complexity, unpredictability, volatility, and ambiguity, agility has become one of the mostly discussed topics in marketing domain as a novel approach to marketing capabilities. MA is seen as a strategic tool for the firms that supports companies' growth through trial-and-error learning, fast decision making and simplified processes and structures (Homburg et al., 2020). Zhou et al. (2019) consider marketing agility as an ability of a firm that supports the firm to forecast and sense the opportunities in the market place proactively. ...
... As AMCs take our attention to the importance of trial-and-error in order that consumers' preferences could be understood better in a fluctuated market, iteration between given marketing decisions and ongoing sense-making embarks on a similar role in MA. Iteration means fine-tuning of marketing decisions before they are executed (Kalaignaman et al., 2020) and it points out a continuous learning process (Homburg et al., 2020). Similar to adaptive marketing experimentation in AMCs, iteration in MA rejects the strictly regulated inflexible marketing decisions in favor of giving marketing managers freedom to develop best-suited strategies that meet the market needs. ...
... As mentioned in the interviews conducted by Kalaignaman et al. (2021, s. 5), one of the marketing professionals implies the importance of being fast by defining MA as "it is about being able to adapt quickly to one's environment" and in a similar vein, the other refers to being fast on decision making as "the basic tenet of marketing agility". At this point, it should be also reminded that a unique characteristic of MA that brings speed and flexibility to it is modularizing the tasks and processes (Homburg et al., 2020) which are not incorporated in AMCs. Although decision making is a common theme for marketing agility and adaptive marketing capabilities; marketing agility recons under certain conditions "not to act" as an appropriate strategy instead of taking actions; which means still being agile with respect to listening to the customers, sensing the market, learning the developments. ...
Agility in marketing necessitates adapting through continuous iterations between making sense of the market and marketing decisions. In order to understand what capabilities help organizations to be agile in marketing management requires a close focus on static, dynamic and especially adaptive marketing capabilities. Resource-based view, which argues that the main source of competitive advantage is the firms' own resources, considers the basic marketing mix among static marketing capabilities. Dynamic capabilities approach describes the processes through which key firm capabilities can be identified and how these capabilities and resources can be combined to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. Adaptive capabilities, unlike the static and dynamic approach, discuss that companies should develop an outside-in perspective in order to enhance existing capabilities while acquiring new ones. In this study, the relation and differences of these three capabilities with agile marketing will be discussed in order to set a domain in agile marketing.
... This echoes Rust's (2020a, p. 24) recent recommendation that companies "avoid seeking the past" and "demand abandoning business models and practices that used to be successful and profitable." There indeed seems to be little future for companies that are not able to implement efficient consumer tracking, as agility appears to be a pillar of marketing excellence (Homburg et al., 2020;Kalaignanam et al., 2021;Lewnes, 2021). Based on the affordances presented here, this research suggests two possible scenarios for marketing in legacy firms with a continuum between the two since practices are "context equipped" (Gheradi, 2012, p. 98): ...
... Another option is that the marketing team retains control over consumer data management, as they seem more qualified than IT or sales departments to understand and respond to consumers' needs (Rust, 2020b). As a result, capitalizing on a strong brand identity while acquiring marketing agility (Kalaignanam et al., 2021) and reaching a customer-centric organization could lead such firms to marketing excellence, as defined by Homburg (2020). Today, however, very few legacy firms manage both affordances successfully, as noted by the interviewees and the literature. ...
Evidence suggests that datafication is bringing a potentially profound yet poorly understood transformation of marketing work. Most companies still struggle to adapt to the data deluge, which challenges the role of marketing inside an organization. This research uses a single case study to analyze how datafication is reshaping marketing work through the lens of sociomateriality and affordance theory. The findings shed light on the agency and imbrication of the persona, the brand and the algorithm together with managers and consumers. They reveal two actualized affordances obtained through datafication: fragmented consumer tracking and organic branding. This research contributes to sociomateriality and affordance theory by introducing a new type of agent, namely, agents of fiction, which are characterized by a symbolic and immaterial nature. This research also contributes to the marketing-as-practice perspective by providing an in-depth understanding of marketing work as a result of dynamic imbrications between human and nonhuman agents.
... For example, informal networks allow SMI personnel to sense implementation challenges in a timely manner; targeted remedies provide direction regarding where to pivot and pursue new tasks to salvage the strategy. Together, our findings offer prescriptive guidance regarding how SMI personnel may engage varying marketing agility levers to monitor and respond to changing market conditions reflective of how marketing strategy should be executed (e.g., Homburg et al. 2020). Table 1 provides an overview of literature streams that detail past research on marketing strategy implementation and the nuances of SMI functional tasks. ...
... Finally, the collective insights derived from these theoretical implications align with an emerging priority for the marketing organization to drive growth activities through simplified structures and processes, fast decision making, and trial and error learning (i.e., marketing agility; Homburg et al. 2020). Given that marketing agility is related to the speed at which the firm responds to current market conditions-via sensemaking, decision making, and execution (Kalaignanam et al. 2021)our study contributes to the understanding of factors that aid the nimbleness of bringing intended strategies to market. ...
Why do marketing strategies fail? This persistent question attracts significant attention and resource investments given its associated performance implications. Existing research suggests that most marketing strategies suffer due to poor implementation; however, the nuances of strategy implementation impediments and their accompanying remedies remain underdeveloped. To contribute to this line of inquiry, the authors use multi-level qualitative data to capture cross-functional dynamics that traverse the organizational hierarchy and are critical to marketing strategy implementation. The data collection procedure consisted of depth interviews with 48 informants within eight organizations, constituting sales-marketing dyads at three hierarchical levels (senior, middle, and frontline) within each organization. Findings suggest that sales and marketing personnel’s varying self-interests at different hierarchical levels motivate them to engage in a distinct set of inter- and intra-functional activities that foment implementation impediments. In turn, findings explicate not only the individual effects of these impediments but also their cumulative between-level (trickle-down) and within-level, within-function (trickle-around) impact as the strategy moves through the hierarchy of the sales-marketing interface. The authors then offer prescriptive remedies embedded in the informal organization that may stabilize the implementation process. Viewed holistically, this study contributes to marketing literature by inductively deriving a theory of marketing strategy implementation within the sales-marketing interface.
... First, we could measure a construct, here brand (customer) focus, by treating the text as a bag of words and measuring the occurrence frequency of a single word or a few specific words and phrases that represent the construct (Loughran and McDonald 2016). Second, we could compile a longer list of words (usually referred to as a dictionary) to capture the construct of interest (Homburg, Theel, and Hohenberg 2020;Loughran and McDonald 2016). After compiling such a dictionary, we would then follow the first approach and measure the occurrence frequency of the words in the dictionary. ...
... Last, using textual analysis, future research could also measure other strategic management constructs of interest. Researchers have already attempted to measure a few strategic management constructs (e.g., innovation orientation, marketing excellence; Berger et al. 2020;Homburg, Theel, and Hohenberg 2020;Yadav, Prabhu, and Chandy 2007). With the appropriate methods and text data, future research could also disentangle more complicated, difficult-to-measure constructs revealed in the texts that firms publish (Berger et al. 2020). ...
This article uses information from two data sources, Compustat and Nexis Uni, and textual analysis to measure and validate the brand focus and customer focus of 109 U.S. listed retailers. The results from an analysis of their 853 earnings calls in 2010 and 2018 outline that on average, both foci increased over time. Although both foci vary substantially, brand focus varies more widely across retailers than their customer focus. Both foci are independent of each other. Specialty retailers have the highest brand focus, and internet & direct marketing retailers have the highest customer focus. A positive correlation exists between a retailer’s customer focus and its profitability, but not between a retailer’s brand focus and its profitability. The authors use the results to generate a research agenda that can direct future research in further systematically exploring firms’ brand and customer focus.
... Businesses that discover methods to improve consumers' and employees' well-being and minimize unintended negative well-being outcomes may benefit from satisfied customers and more productive employees. It can offer a competitive advantage in the market and improve customer satisfaction (Homburg et al., 2020). In fact, growing service research indicates that customers could be prepared to pay more for services from companies that support and care about their well-being (Rosenbaum, 2008). ...
... In many markets worldwide, marketing managers increasingly confront unprecedented events, issues, and behaviors that call for swift corporate responses, such as Brexit, the climate crisis, and the war in Ukraine. Recent literature views marketing agility as a key priority for marketing excellence, one that relies on simplified structures to pursue growth (Homburg, Theel, and Hohenberg 2020). A market-oriented subsidiary examines and understands the local market, and MO helps the subsidiary configure its MPS. ...
Multinational corporations (MNCs) must balance opportunity-seeking initiatives locally with global programs and imperatives. This balancing act between generating and responding to local insights and exploiting standardized marketing programs calls for some form of marketing agility. Under this lens, our study investigates the relationship between market orientation (MO) and marketing program standardization (MPS) — two critical marketing capabilities —and their dual effects on subsidiary performance. We compare the cases of Western MNCs’ subsidiaries operating in Japan and Turkey and inquire about the moderating role of a country’s economic development (advanced vs. emerging market) and an industry’s global competitive interdependence. Analyzing MO at the sub-component level, we find a positive relationship between responsiveness and MPS in both markets. MPS also functions as a partial mediator between responsiveness and profitability in an advanced market. In an advanced market, both responsiveness and MPS are positively related to profitability and market share. In an emerging market, MPS is negatively related to profitability in support of adapting the marketing program. Our results and follow-up discussions with executives from established multinationals support the conceptualization of MO and MPS as reflections of international marketing agility in subsidiaries.
... A better understanding of how and why end users develop engagement with the supplier firm and subsequent behaviors will help salespeople connect more effectively to end users and ultimately drive more sales. To effectively sell in any B2B context, salespeople must understand the motivations and interests of key stakeholders (Homburg, Theel, and Hohenberg 2020;Plouffe, Williams, and Leigh 2004). Hence, understanding that work identity and the need to belong are important drivers of end user engagement can help salespeople determine how to best connect with this important group of stakeholders. ...
While engagement has enjoyed an abundance of academic and practitioner attention recently, few studies have examined engagement from the perspective of end users utilizing products and brands at work. In acknowledgement of the important role end users play in B2B sales and service ecosystems, the current study applies both social exchange and social identity theories to illuminate the process through which B2B end user engagement develops. By using scenarios with random assignment – an under-utilized approach in sales research – our results suggest that the perceived interactivity of supplier firm activities moderates the relationship between cognitive engagement and behaviors such that it nudges end users toward proactively advocating for the supplier firm brand. Moreover, the supplier firm activity is even more effective when a salesperson personally introduces the initiative to end users. Hence, with intentional and interactive connection, salespeople can influence end user engagement behaviors and add value to the sales process, a key insight for supplier firms. Finally, we explore two key drivers of end user engagement: end user work identity and need to belong. A better understanding of how and why end user engagement and subsequent behaviors develop will help salespeople connect more effectively with end users and ultimately drive more sales. These contributions meaningfully increase our understanding regarding contextual influences of end user engagement within the B2B sales arena.
... We contacted these agencies via email or LinkedIn direct messages. Whenever possible, we attempted to directly contact the agencies' CEO. 13 managers (5 women) from 13 agencies agreed to participate in the in-depth interviews, for a satisfactory response rate of 42%, which underscores the high managerial interest in our research topic (Homburg et al. 2020). The agencies differ in size, ranging from small boutiques with a rather non-quantitative approach to influencer selection and management to large data-driven firms. ...
Influencers’ follower count, or indegree, is a key criterion that advertisers use when devising influencer marketing campaigns. However, whether influencers with lower or higher follower count are more effective in generating engagement remains an open question. This multimethod research effort—involving an observational field data analysis, based on 802 Instagram marketing campaigns featuring more than 1,700 influencers, together with an eye-tracking study and laboratory experiments—establishes conclusive evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between influencers’ follower count and engagement with sponsored content. A higher follower count implies broader reach but also cues a weaker relationship that reduces followers’ engagement likelihood. That is, engagement increases, then decreases, as influencer follower count rises. The authors further test the potential moderating effects of two campaign properties: Campaign content customization and brand familiarity. Higher content customization and lower brand familiarity signal that influencers value their relationships with followers and thereby flatten the inverted U-shaped relationship. Managers can leverage these novel results and the related actionable guidelines to improve their influencer marketing strategies.
... There are generic, cross-industry models of excellence, such as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (Baldrige), European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), Deming Prize Japan or the National Quality Award and Swedish Institute for Quality (SIQ) [22,27,28]. In addition, there also exist discipline-specific excellence models, such as the Service Excellence Model [29], the Marketing Excellence Model [30], the Sustainable Excellence Model [31], the Data Excellence Model [32] or the Construction Excellence Model [33] and many more. ...
The construction industry is characterized by low productivity and inefficient processes. In addition, the level of digitalization and automation in this industry is low compared to other industries. Although the added values of using robots in the industry have been known for a long time and the technology has been available for several decades. Nevertheless, the use and implementation of robotic systems is still slow. The aim of this work is to identify the barriers to the introduction of robots in the existing literature and to supplement them with an empirical study focused on the German construction industry, and subsequently to derive meta-barriers. In addition, a holistic model for overcoming barriers is developed Based on a literature review, the already identified barriers for implementation in the construction industry are identified, clustered and five meta-barriers are derived. The literature review is complemented by an empirical study in the German construction industry. Based on the results, the Construction Robotics Excellence Model is presented. The model serves as a generic framework for overcoming existing barriers and promoting the implementation of robotics systems in the construction industry. The results of the article show the versatility of the existing barriers in the construction industry and the need for a framework to support the implementation and use of robotics in the construction industry.
... In terms of future research opportunities, the developed method can be tested by extension to more organizations that participate in the payments system industry and publish reports. The analysis undertaken here is initially a qualitative comparison and could be extended to look for correlations between the factors identified and stakeholders' financial performance indicators, temporal/evolutionary effects (Humphreys and Wang, 2018;Morgan, Miočević and Herhausen, 2019;Herhausen et al., 2020;Homburg, Theel and Hohenberg, 2020), and correlation and predictive evaluation of the strategic factors identified with organizational performance indicators (Davydov and Sihvonen, 2021). The reliability of our research could be improved by including additional coders' validation and the results could be verified by using surveys or interviews with industry participants. ...
Strategic reports are used by public companies as an information source to identify organizational priorities, established in this paper as strategic factors from a Resource-based View and Dynamic Capability View. Through an initial factor keyword coding, we use dictionary-based text analysis to detect the specific factors mentioned in the companies' strategic reports. Using a systems thinking approach, payments system stakeholders are defined: Acquirers, Banks, Merchant/Retailers, Payment networks, and Regulators. The identified factors are classified, clustered, and visualized using a bespoke framework to understand the stakeholders' strategic alignment, in terms of operational resilience, and environmental, social, and economic sustainability.
... Companies require focusing on three broad areas to excel in services. These areas are external marketing, internal marketing, and interactive marketing (Homburg, Theel, & Hohenberg, 2020;Wulandari & Suryawardani, 2020). These three broad areas are explained in the following sub-sections. ...
Innovation and differentiation are imperative for companies to sustain in the competition. Innovation and differentiation are possible more in services than in physical products. It is difficult to imitate differentiation incorporated in services. The study discusses the various marketing strategies adopted by service companies and the roles played by service profit chain. Service companies adopt different initiatives to achieve excellence. These include a strategic orientation, commitment from the top management, maintaining high standards, having profit tiers, monitoring service performance, and prompt action on customer complaints. The study discusses about differentiation of services, management of service quality, and management of service productivity. The study analyzes the strategies taken by service companies to achieve excellence. Proper implementation and execution of strategies provide a direction for service companies to excel, delight their customers, and develop long-term customer relationships.
... Kalaignanam et al. [44] point out that reacting, however, deciding not to do so, is part of agile marketing. Homburg et al. [63] also talk about agile marketing in terms of "simplified structures and processes, fast decision making, and trial and error learning." Lean start-up describes an iterative process to develop and improve a product or process through the loop build-measure-learn [37]. ...
The chapter presents two smart concepts of creating a new business without or with only low budget. Thus, it applies particularly e.g., for either students, refugees and/or people from developing countries. "Bricolage" stands for a behaviour in which the actor solves problems using only available resources. Contrary to the resource-creating mentality, only the resources of the repertoire at hand are used. "Growth Hacking" as a new method, using digital approaches in particular, can achieve high sales in a short time. The relevance of data-driven marketing within the framework of a growth strategy. Working primarily with data is a promising strategy for companies that can effectively, efficiently and cost effectively using online tools or online-offline combinations to achieve their growth objectives. Thus, the two concepts are complementing each other by dedication to two different stages of a start-up process. Bricolage for creating the start-up and Growth Hacking for getting it successfully to the market and make it grow sustainably. The Chapter is describing the two concepts and their interdependence by offering a conceptual framework.
... Finally, to support intraday actionable FGC design, we examine the extent to which key attributes of FGC, including content valence and subject matter, influence the occurrence of permanent and temporary impacts of FGC on price. Although FGC valence and subject matter have been examined by previous research (e.g., Elliott, Grant, and Hodge 2018;Groß-Klußmann, König, and Ebner 2019;Hewett et al. 2016) and are recognized as key components of marketing excellence (Homburg, Theel, and Hohenberg 2020), what constitutes the "right content" is largely unknown according to research priorities recently published by the Marketing Science Institute (2020). We show that FGC reflecting only one of the attributes of valence (positive or negative) or subject matter (consumer or competitor orientation) generates temporary price impact, whereas FGC that incorporates both valence and subject matter is associated with permanent price impacts on stock price and thus correlates with long-term firm performance. ...
Firms increasingly follow an ‘always on’ philosophy, producing multiple pieces of firm-generated content (FGC) throughout the day. Current methodologies used in marketing are unsuited to unbiasedly capturing the impact of FGC disseminated intermittently throughout the day in stock markets characterized by ultra-high frequency trading. They also neither distinguish between the permanent (i.e. long-term) and temporary (i.e. short-term) price impacts nor identify FGC attributes capable of generating these price impacts. In this study, the authors define price impact as the impact on the variance of stock price. Employing a market microstructure approach to exploit the variance of high frequency changes in stock price the authors estimate the permanent and temporary price impacts of the firm-generated Twitter content of S&P 500 IT firms. The authors find that firm-generated tweets induce both permanent and temporary price impacts, which are linked to tweet attributes; valence and subject matter. Tweets reflecting only valence or subject matter concerning consumer or competitor orientation result in temporary price impacts, while those embodying both attributes generate permanent price impact; negative valence tweets about competitors generate the largest permanent price impacts. Building on these findings, the authors offer suggestions to marketing managers on the design of intraday FGC.
... The extraction of web data can unleash the potential of hitherto inaccessible, unstructured data sources. For example, Homburg et al. (2020) obtained a measure on marketing excellence by automatically downloading and processing the annual reports of more than 8,000 firms over two decades from AnnualReports.com. Similarly, web scraping and APIs provide access to relevant variables describing a particular research context, including data about the weather (e.g., Weather Underground; Li et al. 2017), disease prevalence (e.g., CDC FluView Interactive; Galoni et al. 2020), and raw material prices (e.g., MSN Gas Prices; Nishida and Remer 2018). ...
Marketing researchers increasingly use web scraping and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to collect publicly available data from the internet. While guidance on the technicalities of collecting web data are abundant, much of the design decisions involved in collecting web data have remained largely neglected and undiscussed. A lack of awareness and understanding of these design decisions, both among authors and reviewers, threatens the credibility of research findings based on web data. To address these issues, this article develops a systematic workflow that guides researchers across the different stages of collecting web data. Throughout, the authors discuss how various design decisions affect the relevance and credibility of research findings. The workflow is accompanied by a comprehensive review of the use of web data in marketing research, identifying common themes of how web data has enriched past work. Finally, the authors highlight promising avenues for how future work might leverage web data to address important marketing questions and disseminate research findings.
... To offset any possible bias, the researchers discussed the interpretation with other researchers and marketing practitioners, not involved in the study (Maciel and Fischer, 2020). To increase confidence in the study's findings, three researchers independently conducted systematic coding of the transcripts, then jointly discussed the identified codes and checked the consistency of the analysis (Homburg et al., 2020). This process resulted in the development of two first-order themes for the "describing the gap" section (Table 3), 12 first-order themes for the "explaining the gap" section (Table 4) and 14 first-order themes for the "bridging the gap" section (Table 5). ...
Purpose
This study aims to investigate marketing managers’ views on the existence and nature of the academic–practitioner gap in the branding domain.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a purposive sampling method, the researchers conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with 20 experienced marketing managers from a wide range of industries and organisations, whose roles are focussed on the planning, implementation and management of broad marketing and branding strategies.
Findings
Branding practitioners have little or no contact with academics and their theories-in-use with regard to brand management suggest they do not consider academic research relevant to their work.
Research limitations/implications
The process of describing and explaining the gap provides valuable insights into bridging the gap; it provides actionable branding strategies that include raising awareness, building relationships, improving the benefits offer and communicating more effectively.
Practical implications
This research has practical implications for branding academics. The interviewed practitioners confirm the gap, viewing it as academics’ (not practitioners’) problem and responsibility. They characterise it as a branding problem that academics can overcome using branding strategies, to establish themselves as credible sources of branding expertise for practitioners. Key areas for increasing collaboration stem from practitioners’ desire for independent, credible, ethical and timely third-party advice on branding issues; relevant, timely and shorter professional branding education across their organisations; and closer connections with universities to identify new branding talent and ideas.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to empirically examine and recommend solutions to the academic-practitioner gap in the branding domain by studying marketing professionals with branding responsibilities, using in-depth interviews.
... The authors did so because the lab enabled them to manipulate factors that could 9 Control or agency includes variables that the stakeholder can use to change their thinking on a topic. If, for example, your research highlights novel organizational features of marketing excellence (Homburg, Theel, and Hohenberg 2020), the manager may include these features in future designs and perhaps plans for improving marketing knowledge and skills in the company but not act on them immediately. reduce or enhance psychological ownership in a way that (1) ensured the independence of the moderator from either the independent or dependent variable and (2) enabled them to achieve adequate power in the experiments by recruiting a sufficient number of participants (which is often a challenge in field studies). ...
The current research aims to study (marketing agility and its role in the organization’s marketing performance) in the
men’s clothing factory in Najaf. The statistical program Spss v.26 and AMOS program v.26 were used for data analysis. The
results showed a strong correlation between the marketing agility variable in its dimensions and the marketing performance
required in the men’s clothing factory in Najaf. The practical results showed a significant effect of marketing agility in
achieving Marketing performance and it was concluded that the former has a significant impact on the latter, as marketing
agility contributes to improving marketing performance, which is beneficial to the organization in addition to maintaining
customer loyalty.
Die Digitalisierung hat im Vertrieb einen Transformationsdruck erzeugt, der im Zuge der Pandemie ab 2020 nochmals an Stärke gewonnen hat. Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich vor diesem Hintergrund mit der Frage, welche Rolle Führungskräfte bei der Digitalisierung im Vertrieb spielen. Zunächst werden angesichts des allgegenwärtigen Führungsproblems im Vertrieb die grundsätzlichen Anforderungen an Führungskräfte rekapituliert (Leadership Skills). Sodann wird anhand aktueller Studien gezeigt, dass die digitale Transformation die Rolle der Führungskräfte im Vertrieb signifikant verändert. Die Herausforderung lautet „Digital Leadership“. Dieser Begriff wird kritisch diskutiert und aus organisationaler sowie personaler Perspektive konzeptualisiert. Das resultierende Konzept wird dann im Rahmen eines „Digital Sales Leaderships“ auf den Vertrieb übertragen. Nachdem so die Rolle der Führungskraft bei der Digitalisierung im Vertrieb beleuchtet wurde, werden schließlich mit Change-Management, Sales-Trainings und Data-Value-Management exemplarisch drei erfolgskritische Aspekte der Umsetzung in der Praxis von Vertriebsorganisationen dargestellt.
Bereits seit einigen Jahren beeinflussen digitale Technologien maßgeblich den Business-to-Business-Vertrieb und können bereits heute die Effizienz und Effektivität der Vertriebsmitarbeitenden nachhaltig steigern. Bisher wurde der Einsatz digitaler Technologien im Vertrieb meist aus einem operativen Blickwinkel betrachtet. Mit diesem Beitrag wollen wir den Einsatz digitaler Technologien im Vertrieb aus einer strategischen Perspektive beleuchten. Unter Berücksichtigung des Konzepts der Vertriebswertkette (Sales Value Chain) zeigen wir systematisch mögliche Arten und Ausgestaltungsformen digitaler Vertriebsmodelle. Diese Systematisierung erlaubt es, die große Heterogenität an digitalen Vertriebsmodellen zu strukturieren, und unterstützt Unternehmen dabei, digitale Transformationsstrategien zu entwickeln, die die Implementierung eines an die jeweilige Situation angepassten digitalen Vertriebsmodells ermöglichen. Darüber hinaus zeigen wir in diesem Beitrag, welche Herausforderungen es bei der Umsetzung eines digitalen Vertriebsmodells zu überwinden gilt und welche Vorteile digitale Vertriebsmodelle mit sich bringen. Abschließend zeigen wir anhand der Ergebnisse einer eigenen Befragung von B-to-B-Vertriebsmitarbeitenden, wie die Aktivitäten der Vertriebswertkette durch Social Selling umgesetzt werden können und welche Erfolgspotenziale damit verbunden sind.
In diesem Kapitel lernen die Leser, die Wichtigkeit eines integrierten B2B-Marketing- und Vertriebscontrollings zu erklären, den Beitrag von Marketing- und Vertriebscontrolling zur Erreichung der Marketing- und Vertriebsziele zu erläutern, die Aufgaben des strategischen und operativen Marketing- und Vertriebscontrollings zu unterscheiden, wesentliche potenzialbezogene, markterfolgsbezogene und wirtschaftliche Kennzahlen zu benennen, wesentliche Schlüsselerfolgskennzahlen mit Bezug zur Effektivität und Effizienz von B2B-Marketing und Vertrieb zu erläutern, die Relevanz eines fundierten, praxisorientierten Kennzahlensystems zu erkennen, die Bedeutung und den Aufbau einer Balanced Scorecard für B2B-Marketing und Vertrieb zu verstehen, die Bedeutung von Benchmarking in Bezug auf die Weiterentwicklung von B2B-Marketing und Vertrieb zu erklären, ausgewählte B2B-Marketing- und Vertriebsanalysen zu benennen und deren Zweck zu erläutern, das Konzept „Commercial Excellence“ zu beschreiben und Marketing- und Vertriebscontrolling darin einzuordnen und typische Bestandteile und Projekte von Commercial-Excellence-Programmen zu benennen.
Eine Vielzahl von Studien, die sich mit dem Status Quo sowie den Defiziten der Digitalisierung im Marketing vor, während und nach Corona beschäftigt haben, zeigen Handlungsbedarf auf, insbesondere auch in B-to-B-Unternehmen. Das Marketing kann die digitale Transformation von Unternehmen entscheidend voranbringen, wenn es eine interne (Bedeutung des Marketings innerhalb des Unternehmens) sowie externe (Exzellenz des Marketings im Vergleich zum Wettbewerb) Führungsrolle einnimmt. „Digital Marketing Leadership“ (DML) beschreibt die Existenz und interne Entwicklung materieller, immaterieller und menschlicher Ressourcen der Marketingorganisation sowie die Umsetzung dieser organisationalen Fähigkeiten im Rahmen interner und externer Verhaltensweisen in einer Art und Weise, die strategische Wettbewerbsvorteile durch eine digitale Führungsrolle im externen Marktumfeld ermöglicht. Es lassen sich fünf Dimensionen von DML identifizieren, konkretisieren und auf den B-to-B-Bereich anpassen. Aus Wirkungshypothesen lässt sich ein Modell ableiten, das im Rahmen einer empirischen Studie erfolgreich getestet wurde und sich als Denkmodell und Diagnose-Tool für die Management-Praxis eignet.
Literatürdeki değişimin ve gelişmelerin tespit edilebilmesi adına spesifik çalışma konularına yönelik içerik analizlerinin gerçekleştirilmesi önemlidir. Bu çalışma, 2020-2022 yılları arasında SSCI, ESCI ve Scopus indekslerinde yayınlanan, etki faktörü 5 ve üzerinde olan pazarlama dergilerini inceleyerek pazarlama alanında ortaya çıkan güncel gelişmeleri ve konuları tespit etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Belirlenen kriterler doğrultusunda ön plana çıkan 14 dergide ulaşılan 114 makalenin içerik analizi, nitel içerik analiz yönteminden yararlanılarak yapılmıştır. Araştırma sonucunda incelenen makalelerdeki pazarlama konuları “dijital pazarlama ve dijital pazarlama ile bağlantılı pazarlama türleri”, “diğer güncel pazarlama türleri”, “geleneksel pazarlama ile bağlantılı pazarlama türleri”, “sürdürülebilir pazarlama ve sürdürülebilir pazarlama ile bağlantılı pazarlama türleri”, “pazarlama stratejileri ile bağlantılı pazarlama türleri”, “nöropazarlama ve nöropazarlama ile bağlantılı pazarlama türleri” olmak üzere altı grup etrafında toplanmıştır. Teorik ve pratik çerçevede bu çalışma, pazarlama araştırmacılarına ve uygulayıcılarına güncel pazarlama konuları hakkında genel bir çerçeve sunmaktadır. Aynı zamanda, pazarlama alanında gerçekleştirilecek gelecekteki araştırmalarda irdelenmesi gereken sorunsallarla ilgili işaretler vermektedir.
Değişen teknoloji ve dijitalleşmenin hızlanması, salgın hastalıklar, ekonomide yaşanan dalgalanmalar ve tüm bunlardan dolayı müşterinin hızla değişen ihtiyaç ve beklentilerinden kaynaklı işletmelerin pazarlama ve gelir yönetimini dengeli ve sürdürülebilir bir şekilde ilerletebilmesi zorlaşmaktadır. İşletmelerin karşılaşmış olduğu değişimler doğrultusunda hızlı bir şekilde başarı elde edebilmesi için yeni yetenekleri kendi bünyelerine eklemeleri gerekmektedir. Özellikle bu değişimler arasında hızla ilerleyen dijitalleşmeye işletmenin uyum sağlamasında çeviklik kriterinin işletmeye adapte edilmesi önem arz etmektedir. İşletmede ilk olarak seri üretim alanında başlamış olan çeviklik sonrasında tüm üretim alanlarında devam ederek zamanla insan kaynakları, tedarik zinciri, organizasyon gibi diğer alanlarda da kullanılmaya başlanmıştır. Çeviklik ile işletmenin birçok alanında sağlanan hızlı uyumun pazarlama alanındaki ismi çevik pazarlamadır. Çevik pazarlama yapısı; Kanban, Scrum, Scrumban ve diğer çevik metodolojilerin uygulanması ile sürekli olarak yinelemeli bir yaklaşım türüdür. İşletmenin karşılaşmış olduğu dış ve iç kaynaklı sorunları çevik pazarlama yapısı ile yönetmek, karşılaşılmış olan sorunları fırsatlara çevirebilmek için işletmeye yeni yöntemler deneme imkanı sunacaktır. Bu nedenle işletme içerisinde çevik pazarlama yapısının uygulanması ile işletmenin dış ve iç kaynaklı karşılaştığı tüm problemler karşısında pazarlama tarafında alınacak olan aksiyonlara hızlı bir biçimde uyum sağlanacaktır.
The marketing literature shows the necessity of an increased disclosure of marketing metrics. However, very few studies have examined its importance from a reverse lens—the result of withdrawing disclosure is scant. This study provides a new perspective by examining whether and when the withdrawal of marketing metrics affects the shareholder value of a focal firm. We center on one voluntarily disclosed marketing metric: monthly comparable store sales (CSS) in the retail industry. We conduct an event study to analyze the monthly CSS cessation announcements of 94 chain retailers. The empirical results show that withdrawal events do not necessarily decrease retailers’ abnormal returns. The decrease or increase in abnormal returns depends on external and internal factors. Retailers facing lower industry competition and higher forecast errors experience lower abnormal returns. However, those with less diversified customer bases, better retailing outcomes, and fewer intangible resources experience higher abnormal returns for withdrawal decisions.
Marketing scholars increasingly use web scraping and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to collect data from the internet. Yet, despite the widespread use of such web data, the idiosyncratic and sometimes insidious challenges in its collection have received limited attention. How can researchers ensure that the datasets generated via web scraping and APIs are valid? While existing resources emphasize technical details of extracting web data, the authors propose a novel methodological framework focused on enhancing its validity. In particular, the framework highlights how addressing validity concerns requires the joint consideration of idiosyncratic technical and legal/ethical questions along the three stages of collecting web data: selecting data sources, designing the data collection, and extracting the data. The authors further review more than 300 articles using web data published in the top five marketing journals and offer a typology of how web data has advanced marketing thought. The article concludes with directions for future research to identify promising web data sources and to embrace novel approaches for using web data to capture and describe evolving marketplace realities.
The goal of this chapter is to explore the way in which companies can leverage new-age digital technologiesNew-age digital technologies in building marketing agilityMarketing agility to increase their performancePerformancein hyper-connected environmentsHyper-connected environments. To capture value from new-age digital technologiesNew-age digital technologies, companies need to be agile in innovating their strategiesStrategyand business modelsBusiness models and in developing new organizational capabilities. These developments lead to new decision-making issues and decision-making contexts, which in turn can raise both new requirements for and new capabilities of marketing management support systemsMarketing management support systems. By drawing on information systems, management, and marketingMarketing literature, we discuss the current understandings of organizational agilityOrganizational agility and provide a working definition of marketing agilityMarketing agility. Moreover, we discuss the contribution of new-age technologiesNew-age technologies to improving marketing management support systemsMarketing management support systemsand marketing agilityMarketing agility. We concluded that new-age technologiesNew-age technologies can enhance marketing management support systemsMarketing management support systems, which in turn can improve marketing agilityMarketing agilityand marketingMarketing-mix capabilities, so leading to improved competitiveness and performancePerformance of firms in hyper-connected environmentsHyper-connected environments.
In recent years, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) have attracted considerable attention in different industry sectors, including marketing. ML and AI hold great promise for making marketing intelligent and efficient. In this study, we conduct a literature review of academic journal studies on ML in marketing applications and propose a conceptual framework highlighting the main ML tools and technologies that serve as the foundation of ML applications in marketing. We use the 7Ps marketing mix, that is, product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical evidence, to analyze these applications from 140 selected articles. The applications are supported by various ML tools (text, voice, image, and video analytics) and techniques such as supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning algorithms. We propose a two-layer conceptual framework for ML applications in marketing development. This framework can serve future research and provide an illustration of the development of ML applications in marketing.
Health care providers and policy makers measure and report patient-satisfaction (PSAT) scores as an implicit proxy for quality of care (QOC), a metric used to reimburse physicians and determine bonus or penalties for Medicare payments. These practices assume i) a strong and positive association of subjective PSAT judgments and objective QOC outcomes (e.g., mortality, recovery time), and ii) accurate consumer beliefs about the PSAT–QOC association. Study 1 (a national survey of 9,449 respondents) shows that consumer belief about the PSAT–QOC correlation is .69. However, Study 2 reveals that the objective PSAT–QOC correlation is .24 based on a meta-analysis of 198 studies. Study 3, a choice-based conjoint analysis, shows that as consumer beliefs diverge from the objective correlation, they are more likely to choose hospitals producing worse clinical outcomes. Study 4 shows that interventions informing consumers of the objective correlation can increase the accuracy of consumer beliefs about it. For executives and regulators, the results elucidate the financial and consumer well-being risks of assuming high correspondence of consumer beliefs with objective reality, while suggesting interventions that can engender accurate consumer beliefs. Theoretically, the results suggest reimagining and evaluating the potential unintended consequences of information environments in health care.
Rapid technology advancements have changed the way customers research products and make purchases. This has led to an almost immeasurable increase in the number of customer touchpoints along the customer journey and a corresponding need for a richer set of digital tools that find and engage people on a global scale. The result has been a plethora of options that overwhelm most marketing teams. It's time for us to more carefully consider our approach to the tech frameworks we're creating inmarketing.
Start-ups werden oftmals dafür bewundert, wie wirkungsvoll sie neue, mitunter disruptive Angebote in agiler Weise an den Markt bringen – und das häufig mit sehr begrenzten verfügbaren Ressourcen. Growth Hacking ist eine von Start-ups entwickelte Methode zur agilen Einführung und Vermarktung innovativer Angebote. Ziel ist es, das Wachstum eines Unternehmens durch bestimmte Maßnahmen („Growth Hacks“) zu steigern. Der Beitrag stellt die digitalen Marketing- und Vertriebsansätze, die erfolgreiche Start-ups anwenden, vor und untersucht im Rahmen einer Umfrage deren Anwendungsgrad und Relevanz durch Start-ups und etablierte Unternehmen.
The authors propose that the current trends and developments in the international marketplace call for a new theoretical concept-based approach to inform and guide cross-border marketing strategy. Specifically, the authors label this approach marketing ecosystem orchestration (MEO). The marketing ecosystem is defined as connected, interdependent, and co-evolving sets of actors, activities, and institutions enabling the marketing of an offering that has value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. MEO is a new strategic approach for an internationalizing firm to achieve sustained value creation, value appropriation, and growth in a host market. Orchestration involves developing and/or coordinating the ecosystem’s interdependent – but independent actors, resources, information, processes, and services to create, co-create, and appropriate value from firms’ market-based assets. The authors theorize three components of MEO – the orchestration of supply chains and fulfillment networks, marketing communications, and transactions and payments sub-ecosystems – and develop a conceptual framework and propositions influencing the determinants of MEO adoption by the focal firm. This paper concludes with managerial implications and offers several new directions for international marketing research.
The marketing mix (MM) is an integral part of a firm’s marketing strategy sitting at the nexus between a company and the marketplace. As such, it evolves together with the marketplace and its stakeholders. Over the past decade, three fundamental global drivers have emerged—advancements in technology, socioeconomic and geopolitical shifts, and environmental changes—that have caused major ongoing and intensifying evolutions in the marketplace, its stakeholders, and, in turn, the MM. We describe the resulting evolutions in the MM along four central questions: who is involved in the MM, what constitutes the MM, how is it implemented, and where is it deployed. We identify a blurring of roles and responsibilities relating to the MM (who), an extension and integration of the MM instruments (what), an increase in customization and fragmentation of its actions (how), and a growing recognition of emerging-market idiosyncrasies (where). Taking a look into the future, we observe that along each of the four dimensions, the MM has arrived at a crossroad, with opposing scenarios for its future: (i) more inter-firm collaboration versus marketing-mix protectionism, (ii) added complexity versus increased simplicity, (iii) further automation versus an increased recognition of the human touch, and (iv) local adaptation versus global uniformity in the marketing mix. Applying a contingency approach, we derive relevant moderators for these forthcoming evolutions and provide an extensive set of future research questions.
Machine learning (ML) promises great value for marketing related applications. However, the proliferation of data types, methods, tools, and programing languages hampers knowledge integration amongst marketing analytics teams, making collaboration difficult. Visual-based programing might help by facilitating the orchestration of ML projects in a more intuitive visual fashion. This article introduces the KNIME Analytics Platform, a leading visual-based programing software, and its potential for implementing ML projects in Marketing. We contribute to the ML literature in marketing by creating a live repository of projects, hosted on the KNIME hub, where users can learn, share and reuse workflows (visual code). We developed a starting set of five annotated projects in the areas of customer churn, sentiment analysis, automated image analysis, search engine optimization, and customer experience. For two of these projects, we offer a step-by-step guide to facilitate learning by marketing practitioners, academics, and machine learning enthusiasts.
This article presents a synthesis of research that has drawn on the concept of psychological distance around questions related to prosocial consumer behavior, digitalization of consumption, and marketing practices. Our study is based on a meta-synthesis of 584 articles from psychology and marketing journals. It consolidates and validates the knowledge of the concept of psychological distance in these different marketing themes. It also shows how psychological distance can be used by managers to improve consumer responses. Managers can act directly on distance by reducing or increasing it to take advantage of the benefits of psychological proximity or remoteness. They can also adjust the variables of the marketing mix according to the psychological distance experienced by the consumer in order to make information processing more fluent and, ultimately, to improve the consumer’s responses.
Looking for the needs of the family are managed by proper planning. Financial backup holds a great importance in an individual’s life. In India, saving for the needs of family has always been the biggest priority which was usually done in many ways like post office savings, insurance schemes, fixed deposits etc. Earlier people saved their funds through secured investment instruments due to lack of financial knowledge, but in present scenario people are much aware of different financial instruments. these are very uncertain times and it is natural to be worried about your finances. Emergency savings have become the biggest reason for saving. There is increased focus on long-term planning for retirement. Specially learning from the ongoing crisis, one should have an emergency fund, spend only on what is absolutely needed, ensure that you have insurance to protect your family from any unexpected event and finally, keep investing regularly to build your long- term savings
Cet article propose une synthèse des recherches ayant mobilisé le concept de distance psychologique autour des questions liées aux comportements prosociaux du consommateur, à la digitalisation de la consommation et aux pratiques marketing. Ce travail s’appuie sur une méta-synthèse de 584 articles issus de revues en psychologie et en marketing. Il permet une consolidation et une validation des connaissances du concept de distance psychologique dans ces différentes thématiques du marketing. Il montre également comment la distance psychologique peut être actionnée par les managers afin d’améliorer les réponses du consommateur. Les managers peuvent agir directement sur la distance en la réduisant ou l’augmentant pour profiter des bienfaits de la proximité ou de l’éloignement psychologique. Ils peuvent également ajuster les variables du marketing-mix en fonction de la distance psychologique expérimentée par le consommateur pour fluidifier le traitement de l’information et, in fine, améliorer les réponses de ce dernier.
As the number of research outputs in the field of AI in Marketing increased greatly in the past 20 years, a systematic review of the literature and its developmental process is essential to provide a consolidated view of this area. This study conducted a bibliometric analysis for the knowledge domain of AI in Marketing by using 617 research outputs from the Web of Science database from 1992 to 2020. Knowledge maps of AI in marketing research were visualised by employing CiteSpace software.
Modularization, an important trend in innovation markets, allows for recombination of product components into multiple end-product configurations. Although modularization has consequences for how firms manage their relationships with upstream component suppliers, the governance implications of modularity for innovation sourcing relationships have not been adequately examined in the prior literature. We intend to bridge this gap. We argue that (i) buyer firms employ governance mechanisms (monitoring and socialization) to cope with the strategic hazards of innovation sourcing relationships (knowledge specificity, knowledge asymmetry, and knowledge spillover) and (ii) the consequences of deploying these mechanisms in response to the strategic hazards on relationship performance are contingent upon the degree of modularity of the system in which they are deployed. We provide empirical support for the developed moderated mediation model through an analysis of 194 innovation projects. The developed theory and findings contribute to the governance and modularity literatures. In addition, our findings may help change managers’ behaviors: we observe that managers do not consider modularity when selecting governance mechanisms, while our model findings suggest they should.
Changes in the way customers shop accompanied by an explosion of customer touchpoints and fast-changing competitive and technological dynamics, have led to an increased emphasis on agile marketing. The objective of this paper is to conceptualize and investigate the emerging practice of marketing agility. Toward this end, the authors synthesize the literature from marketing and allied disciplines and insights from in-depth interviews with 22 senior managers. Marketing agility is defined as the extent to which an entity rapidly iterates between making sense of the market and executing marketing decisions to adapt to the market. It is conceptualized as occurring across different levels in organizations and shown to be distinctive from related concepts in marketing and allied fields. The authors highlight the firm challenges in executing marketing agility, including ensuring brand consistency, scaling agility across the marketing ecosystem, managing data privacy concerns, pursuing marketing agility as a fad, and hiring marketing leaders. The authors identify the antecedents of marketing agility at the organizational, team, marketing leadership and employee levels and provide a roadmap for future research. The authors caution that marketing agility may not be well-suited for all firms and all marketing activities.
Keywords: Marketing Agility, Agile Marketing, Sensemaking, Iteration, Experimentation, Speed.
This article’s objective is to inspire and provide guidance on the development of marketing knowledge based on the theories-in-use (TIU) approach. The authors begin with a description of the TIU approach and compare it with other inductive and deductive research approaches. The benefits of engaging in TIU-based research are discussed, including the development of novel organic marketing theories and the opportunity to cocreate relevant marketing knowledge with practitioners. Next, they review criteria for selecting research questions that are particularly well-suited for examination with TIU-based research. This is followed by detailed suggestions for TIU research: focusing on developing new constructs, theoretical propositions (involving antecedents, moderators, and consequences), and arguments for justifying theoretical propositions. A discussion of TIU tradecraft skills, validity checks, and limitations follows. The authors close with a discussion of future theory-building opportunities using the TIU approach.
Marketing strategy is a construct that lies at the conceptual heart of the field of strategic marketing and is central to the practice of marketing. It is also the area within which many of the most pressing current challenges identified by marketers and CMOs arise.We develop a new conceptualization of the domain and sub-domains of marketing strategy and use this lens to assess the current state of marketing strategy research by examining the papers in the six most influential marketing journals over the period 1999 through 2017. We uncover important challenges to marketing strategy research—not least the increasingly limited number and focus of studies, and the declining use of both theory and primary research designs. However, we also uncover numerous opportunities for developing important and highly relevant new marketing strategy knowledge—the number and importance of unanswered marketing strategy questions and opportunities to impact practice has arguably never been greater. To guide such research, we develop a new research agenda that provides opportunities for researchers to develop new theory, establish clear relevance, and contribute to improving practice.
The amount of digital text available for analysis by consumer researchers has risen dramatically. Consumer discussions on the internet, product reviews, and digital archives of news articles and press releases are just a few potential sources for insights about consumer attitudes, interaction, and culture. Drawing from linguistic theory and methods, this article presents an overview of automated text analysis, providing integration of linguistic theory with constructs commonly used in consumer research, guidance for choosing amongst methods, and advice for resolving sampling and statistical issues unique to text analysis. We argue that although automated text analysis cannot be used to study all phenomena, it is a useful tool for examining patterns in text that neither researchers nor consumers can detect unaided. Text analysis can be used to examine psychological and sociological constructs in consumerproduced digital text by enabling discovery or by providing ecological validity. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
The growth of subscription-based commerce has changed the types of data that firms report to external shareholders. More than ever, companies are discussing and disclosing information on the number of customers acquired and lost, customer lifetime value, and other data. This has fueled an increasing interest in linking the value of a firm’s customers to the overall value of the firm, with the term “customer-based corporate valuation” being used to describe such efforts. Although several researchers in the fields of marketing and accounting have explored this idea, their underlying models of customer acquisition and retention do not adequately reflect the empirical realities associated with these behaviors, and the associated valuation models do not meet the standards of finance professionals. The authors develop a framework for valuing subscription-based firms that addresses both issues, and they apply it to data from DISH Network and Sirius XM Holdings.
Marketing organization is the interface of the firm with its markets and where the work of marketing gets done. This review of the past 25 years of scholarship on marketing organization examines the individual and integrative roles of four elements of marketing organization—capabilities, configuration (including structure, metrics, and incentives), culture, and the human capital of marketing leadership and talent. The authors indicate that these four elements are mobilized through seven marketing activities (7As) that occur during the marketing strategy process. These activities enable the firm to anticipate market changes, adapt the strategy to stay ahead of competition, align the organization to the strategy and market, activate effective implementation, ensure accountability for results, attract resources, and manage marketing assets. How well the firm manages these seven activities throughout the marketing strategy process determines the performance payoffs from marketing organization. Future ...
With the challenges presented by new media, shifting media patterns, and divided consumer attention, the optimal integration of marketing communications takes on increasing importance. Drawing on a review of relevant academic research and guided by managerial priorities, the authors offer insights and advice as to how traditional and new media such as search, display, mobile, TV, and social media interact to affect consumer decision making. With an enhanced understanding of the consumer decision journey and how consumers process communications, the authors outline a comprehensive framework featuring two models designed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of integrated marketing communication programs: a "bottom-up" communications matching model and a "top-down" communications optimizationmodel. The authors conclude by suggesting important future research priorities.
A debate about whether firms with superior customer satisfaction earn superior stock returns has been persistent in the literature. Using 15 years of audited returns, the authors find convincing empirical evidence that stock returns on customer satisfaction do beat the market. The recorded cumulative returns were 518% over the years studied (2000-2014), compared with a 31% increase for the S&P 500. Similar results using back-tested instead of real returns were found in the United Kingdom. The effect of customer satisfaction on stock price is, at least in part, channeled through earnings surprises. Consistent with theory, customer satisfaction has an effect on earnings themselves. In addition, the authors examine the effect of stock returns from earnings on stock returns from customer satisfaction. If earnings returns are included among the risk factors in the asset pricing model, the earnings variable partially mitigates the returns on customer satisfaction. Because of the long time series, it is also possible to examine time periods when customer satisfaction returns were below market. The reversal of the general trend largely resulted from short-term market idiosyncrasies with little or no support from fundamentals. Such irregularities have been infrequent and eventually self-correcting. The authors provide reasons why irregularities may occur from time to time.
Research in marketing has increasingly focused on building knowledge about how firms' marketing contributes to performance outcomes. A key precursor to accurately diagnosing the value firms' marketing creates is conceptualizing and operationalizing appropriate ways to assess performance outcomes. Yet, to date, there has been little conceptual development and no systematic examination of how researchers in marketing should conceptualize and measure the performance outcomes associated with firms' marketing. The authors develop a theory-based performance evaluation framework and examine the assessment of such performance outcomes in 998 empirical studies published in the top 15 marketing journals from 1981 through 2014. The results reveal a large number of different performance outcome measures used in prior empirical research that may be only weakly related to one another, making it difficult to synthesize findings across studies. In addition, the authors identify significant problems in how performance outcomes in marketing are commonly conceptualized and operationalized. They also reveal several theoretically and managerially important performance areas in which empirical knowledge of marketing's impact is limited or absent. Finally, they examine the implications of the results, provide actionable guidelines for researchers, and suggest a road map for systematically improving research practice in the future.
Advertising's influence on firm sales and firm value has drawn early attention from economists and accountants and more recent attention from marketers. Most studies that have investigated a link between advertising and sales have found such a link. However, studies that have investigated a link between advertising and firm value have only sometimes found that link. Meta-analysis has failed to determine moderators that govern the link between advertising and firm value. In this article, the authors hypothesize that advertising influences firm value for a differentiator because advertising can elaborate the firm's point of difference into brand equity, thereby building firm value. Advertising cannot build brand equity for a cost leader because such a firm has no point of difference on which to build. Identifying differentiators and cost leaders on the basis of firms' reactions to a change in accounting regulations, the authors confirm hypotheses: advertising is related to sales for all firms, but it is more strongly related to firm value for differentiators than for cost leaders. Beyond explaining differences in advertising effectiveness, this study's indicator of differentiation versus cost leadership should enhance future analyses of marketing's effect on firm-level outcomes using archival financial data.
Research has shown that advertising assets and R&D (research and development) assets increase shareholder value. Although one might conclude that their impacts on bankruptcy risk are merely the inverse of their impacts on shareholder value, we argue otherwise and show that the differences hinge on the fact that shareholder value is a function of expected cash flows from all future periods, whereas bankruptcy risk is a function of expected cash flow from only the next period. We show that current market turbulence moderates the impacts of advertising assets and R&D assets on expected cash flow from the next period but not on expected cash flows from more distant future periods. Therefore, market turbulence moderates the impacts of advertising assets and R&D assets on bankruptcy risk but not shareholder value. Market stability increases the impact of advertising assets on reducing bankruptcy risk, whereas market turbulence increases the impact of R&D assets on reducing bankruptcy risk. Using a data set of more than 1,000 firms covering three decades, we find support for our hypotheses. Out-of-sample validation indicates that bankruptcy prediction performance improves when including marketing variables in addition to the usual financial predictors.
Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2015.0913 .
As the roles of customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, and communities become more significant in today’s business environment, a precise understanding of the organization’s internal drivers in delivering value to its stakeholders is critical. To this end, this study integrates stakeholder theory and the organizational learning literature to propose that stakeholder-focused organizational learning drives organizations to respond to their stakeholders. Using a sample of 349 organizations, we introduce three stakeholder-focused knowledge acquisition mechanisms (experiential, vicarious, and contact) and, along with the other organizational learning processes (information distribution, information interpretation, and organizational memory), examine their influence on the behavioral actions of stakeholder-focused responsiveness, innovation, and imitation. Subsequently, we assess the impact of these behavioral actions on organizational performance. Overall, the results show that stakeholder-focused organizational learning is positively associated with responsiveness. More uniquely, the propensity to employ innovative or imitative stakeholder practices is found to be influenced by the way the organization acquires information about stakeholders. Lastly, the findings suggest that simply responding to stakeholders does not guarantee superior performance, but the manner in which the organization responds matters just as much.
On the basis of an extensive review of the literature, the authors have developed a framework of entry deterrence strategy. The major aspects of this framework are the interconnected elements of the competitive environment, the choice of entry deterrence strategy, ranging from strategies involving a single element of the marketing mix to corporate-level strategies; and the consequences that both the strategy choice and subsequent entry decision have for the incumbent. The authors' framework explicity acknowledges the role of perceptions in signal detection, interpretation, and decision making in the development of entry deterrence strategy. With their framework as a focal point, they review the extant literature to make it accessible to a wider audience and provide guidance for further research.
Firms with a customer-centric structure—an organizational design that aligns each business unit with a distinct customer group—are expected to exhibit superior performance compared to firms that are internally structured. Top executives invoke these customer-centric beliefs when initiating corporate reorganizations. However, a lack of empirical evidence linking these customer-centric structures to better long-term financial performance raises doubts if corporate structure can truly foster customer centricity and better position a firm to satisfy customers and hence exhibit superior performance. The current research addresses this question by using longitudinal data (1998–2010) that links Fortune 500 firms’ corporate-level structure to performance. Utilizing a dueling mediator model with allowance for endogeneity in a firm’s organizational structure choice, the study reveals that a corporate-level customer-centric structure translates to greater customer satisfaction, but simultaneously adds coordinating costs. Further explaining customer-centric structure’s record of mixed success, the benefits of increased customer satisfaction diminish (1) as competitors have already adopted customer-centric structures, (2) in fragmented markets where competitors leave few unique customer needs unaddressed, and (3) in less profitable industries. Ultimately, we show that aligning corporate structure around customers pays off only in specific competitive environments.
Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2014.0878 .
Despite theoretical and empirical research linking a firm's business performance to the satisfaction of its customers , knowledge of how firms collect and use customer satisfaction information is limited. The authors investigate firms' customer satisfaction information usage (CSIU) by drawing on in-depth interviews, a focus group of managers, and the existing literature. They identify key characteristics of the major processes involved in firms' CSIU and compare the CSIU practices revealed in their fieldwork with widely held normative theory prescriptions. They also identify variations in CSIU among the firms in the fieldwork and uncover factors that may help explain the observed differences.
Profit growth is one of the primary drivers of a firm's stock price and therefore is a clear priority for managers. Yet little is known about how a firm's marketing capabilities may be linked with its profit growth. In this study, we use data from a cross-industry sample of 114 firms to investigate how market sensing, brand management, and customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities determine firms' revenue growth and margin growth—the two components of profit growth. Our results reveal that these marketing capabilities have direct and complementary effects on both revenue and margin growth rates. Critically, we find that brand management and CRM capabilities have opposing effects on revenue and margin growth rates, such that a failure to examine these two underlying components would mask the relationships between these marketing capabilities and ultimate profit growth rates.
Market orientation refers to the collection, dissemination, and utilization of market information that promotes a sustainable competitive advantage. Despite the contribution of the market orientation construct to both the strategic management and marketing literatures, little attention has been devoted to exploring how market orientation relates to family businesses and how these relationships might differ from nonfamily businesses. To address this gap and stimulate further research in this area of inquiry, this study develops and validates a market orientation measure using content analysis of CEO letters from the S&P 500 and tests for differences between family businesses and nonfamily businesses.
Prior research has found that the announcement of marketing alliances tends to produce no effect on firm value creation In a high-tech context. This article reexamines this issue and Investigates whether the characteristics of a firm's network of alliances affect the firm value created from the announcement of a new marketing alliance. The authors investigate whether network centrality, network density, network efficiency, network reputation, and marketing alliance capability influence firm value creation. They examine this question using an event study of 230 announcements for marketing alliances in the software Industry. The results Indicate that, in general, marketing alliance announcements create value (i.e., abnormal stock returns) for the firm in the announcement period event window. Furthermore, network efficiency and network density have the strongest positive Impact when they are moderate; network reputation and network centrality have no effect. These results point to the greater role of relational network characteristics than size-/status-based benefits. Finally, marketing alliance capability, which reflects a firm's ability to manage a network of previous marketing alliances, has a positive impact on value creation.
This study draws on depth interviews with 49 managers in customer firms and 55 managers in supplier firms and on discussions with 21 managers in two focus groups to propose a new way of thinking about customer solutions. Extant literature and suppliers interviewed for this study view a solution as a customized and integrated combination of goods and services for meeting a customer's business needs. In contrast, customers view a solution as a set of customer–supplier relational processes comprising (1) customer requirements definition, (2) customization and integration of goods and/or services and (3) their deployment, and (4) postdeployment customer support, all of which are aimed at meeting customers' business needs. The relational process view can help suppliers deliver more effective solutions at profitable prices. In addition, field research suggests that the effectiveness of a solution depends not only on supplier variables but also on several customer variables. Supplier variables include contingent hierarchy, documentation emphasis, incentive externality, customer interactor stability, and process articulation. Customer variables include adaptiveness to supplier offerings and political and operational counseling that a customer provides to a supplier. Several of these variables underscore the importance of suppliers developing social capital with customers. The authors discuss implications for solution suppliers and identify areas for further research.
Market orientation is a foundation of marketing and is increasingly important in other fields, such as strategic management. Research in marketing has identified the characteristics of market-oriented organizations. However, how organizations change to become more market oriented has received less attention. In this article, the authors conduct an in-depth, longitudinal, multifirm investigation of firms that have successfully created a market orientation. Grounded by this in-depth understanding, they develop a theoretical model to explain how firms create a market orientation. The model identifies four path-dependent stages of change. In contrast to current conceptualizations, the authors find that creating a market orientation requires dramatic changes to an organization's culture and the creation of organizationally shared market understandings. The findings offer new insights into how organizations develop a greater market orientation, organizational change, and the nature of market orientation, including the role of intraorganizational power and organizational learning in creating and sustaining a market orientation.
Under increased scrutiny from top management and shareholders, marketing managers feel the need to measure and communicate the impact of their actions on shareholder returns. In particular, how do customer value creation (through product innovation) and customer value communication (through marketing investments) affect stock returns? This article examines, conceptually and empirically, how product innovations and marketing investments for such product innovations lift stock returns by improving the outlook on future cash flows. The authors address these questions with a large-scale econometric analysis of product innovation and associated marketing mix in the automobile industry. They find that adding such marketing actions to the established finance benchmark model greatly improves the explained variance in stock returns. In particular, investors react favorably to companies that launch pioneering innovations, that have higher perceived quality, that are backed by substantial advertising support, and that are in large and growing categories. Finally, the authors quantify and compare the stock return benefits of several managerial control variables. The results highlight the stock market benefits of pioneering innovations. Compared with minor updates, pioneering innovations have an impact on stock returns that is seven times greater, and their advertising support is nine times more effective as well. Perceived quality of the new car introduction improves the firm's stock returns, but customer liking does not have a statistically significant effect. Promotional incentives have a negative effect on stock returns, indicating that price promotions may be interpreted as a signal of demand weakness. Managers can combine these return estimates with internal data on project costs to help decide the appropriate mix of product innovation and marketing investment.
Words are part of almost every marketplace interaction. Online reviews, customer service calls, press releases, marketing communications, and other interactions create a wealth of textual data. But how can marketers best use such data? This article provides an overview of automated textual analysis and details how it can be used to generate marketing insights. The authors discuss how text reflects qualities of the text producer (and the context in which the text was produced) and impacts the audience or text recipient. Next, they discuss how text can be a powerful tool both for prediction and for understanding (i.e., insights). Then, the authors overview methodologies and metrics used in text analysis, providing a set of guidelines and procedures. Finally, they further highlight some common metrics and challenges and discuss how researchers can address issues of internal and external validity. They conclude with a discussion of potential areas for future work. Along the way, the authors note how textual analysis can unite the tribes of marketing. While most marketing problems are interdisciplinary, the field is often fragmented. By involving skills and ideas from each of the subareas of marketing, text analysis has the potential to help unite the field with a common set of tools and approaches.
Applying grounded theory, we comprehensively categorize capabilities needed for market-shaping and synthesize them into a conceptual framework that describes the process and its outcomes. We establish that in order to improve value creation in a market, market-shapers must consider a larger system of relevant stakeholders, recognize the institutional arrangements governing their behaviors, and foster new resource linkages within and across stakeholders. Based on our analysis, we identify eight triggering capabilities, which generate new intra- and inter-stakeholder resource linkages by directly influencing various characteristics of the market, and four facilitating capabilities, which enable market-shaping by discovering the value potential of new resource linkages and augment the impact of the triggering capabilities by mobilizing relevant resources. We show that triggering capabilities are context-specific, whereas facilitating capabilities are generic. We conclude that there are performance outcomes of market-shaping not only for the shaping firm, but also for other stakeholders, and at overall market level.
The authors review and integrate various theoretical perspectives, normative statements, and pieces of empirical evidence about the organizational structures and processes best suited for implementing different types of business strategies. Particular emphasis is given to the relationship of different types of structure, processes, and policies involved in the performance of marketing activities to the overall performance of different business strategies. Several specific research propositions are developed.
This research addresses three questions: (1) Why are some organizations more market-oriented than others? (2) What effect does a market orientation have on employees and business performance? (3) Does the linkage between a market orientation and business performance depend on the environmental context? The findings from two national samples suggest that a market orientation is related to top management emphasis on the orientation, risk aversion of top managers, interdepartmental conflict and connectedness, centralization, and reward system orientation. Furthermore, the findings suggest that a market orientation is related to overall (judgmental) business performance (but not market share), employees’ organizational commitment, and esprit de corps. Finally, the linkage between a market orientation and performance appears to be robust across environmental contexts that are characterized by varying degrees of market turbulence, competitive intensity, and technological turbulence.
On the basis of an extensive review of the literature, the authors have developed a framework of entry deterrence strategy. The major aspects of this framework are the interconnected elements of the competitive environment, the choice of entry deterrence strategy, ranging from strategies involving a single element of the marketing mix to corporate-level strategies; and the consequences that both the strategy choice and subsequent entry decision have for the incumbent. The authors’ framework explicitly acknowledges the role of perceptions in signal detection, interpretation, and decision making in the development of entry deterrence strategy. With their framework as a focal point, they review the extant literature to make it accessible to a wider audience and provide guidance for further research.
Our understanding of how organizations process market information can be advanced substantially on the basis of principles derived from models of organizational learning. Accordingly, the author examines the extant literature on organizational learning, proposes a hierarchy of market sense making, and provides research propositions that will enhance marketers’ understanding of information processing and knowledge creation in organizations.
The literature reflects remarkably little effort to develop a framework for understanding the implementation of the marketing concept. The authors synthesize extant knowledge on the subject and provide a foundation for future research by clarifying the construct's domain, developing research propositions, and constructing an integrating framework that includes antecedents and consequences of a market orientation. They draw on the occasional writings on the subject over the last 35 years in the marketing literature, work in related disciplines, and 62 field interviews with managers in diverse functions and organizations. Managerial implications of this research are discussed.
Marketing academicians and practitioners have been observing for more than three decades that business performance is affected by market orientation, yet to date there has been no valid measure of a market orientation and hence no systematic analysis of its effect on a business's performance. The authors report the development of a valid measure of market orientation and analyze its effect on a business's profitability. Using a sample of 140 business units consisting of commodity products businesses and noncommodity businesses, they find a substantial positive effect of a market orientation on the profitability of both types of businesses.
Considerable progress has been made in identifying market-driven businesses, understanding what they do, and measuring the bottom-line consequences of their orientation to their markets. The next challenge is to understand how this organizational orientation can be achieved and sustained. The emerging capabilities approach to strategic management, when coupled with total quality management, offers a rich array of ways to design change programs that will enhance a market orientation. The most distinctive features of market-driven organizations are their mastery of the market sensing and customer linking capabilities. A comprehensive change program aimed at enhancing these capabilities includes: (1) the diagnosis of current capabilities, (2) anticipation of future needs for capabilities, (3) bottom-up redesign of underlying processes, (4) top-down direction and commitment, (5) creative use of information technology, and (6) continuous monitoring of progress.
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.
“Quadrads” (double dyads) of interviews, each conducted with a pair of marketing executives at a Japanese vendor firm and a pair of purchasing executives at a Japanese customer firm, provided data on corporate culture, customer orientation, innovativeness, and market performance. Business performance (relative profitability, relative size, relative growth rate, and relative share of market) was correlated positively with the customer's evaluation of the supplier's customer orientation, but the supplier's own assessment of customer orientation did not correspond well to that of the customer. Japanese companies with corporate cultures stressing competitiveness (markets) and entrepreneurship (adhocracies) outperformed those dominated by internal cohesiveness (clans) or by rules (hierarchies). Successful market innovation also improved performance.
Strategy is about seeking new edges in a market while slowing the erosion of present advantages. Effective strategy moves are grounded in valid and insightful monitoring of the current competitive position coupled with evidence that reveals the skills and resources affording the most leverage on future cost and differentiation advantages. Too often the available measures and methods do not satisfy these requirements. Only a limited set of measures may be used, depending on whether the business starts with the market and uses a customer-focused approach or alternatively adopts a competitor-centered perspective. To overcome possible myopia, the evidence of advantage should illuminate the sources of advantage as well as the manifestations of superior customer value and cost superiority, and should be based on a balance of customer and competitor perspectives.
The authors develop a conceptual framework of the marketing–finance interface and discuss its implications for the theory and practice of marketing. The framework proposes that marketing is concerned with the task of developing and managing market-based assets, or assets that arise from the commingling of the firm with entities in its external environment. Examples of market-based assets include customer relationships, channel relationships, and partner relationships. Market-based assets, in turn, increase shareholder value by accelerating and enhancing cash flows, lowering the volatility and vulnerability of cash flows, and increasing the residual value of cash flows.
In collaboration with three companies selling a diverse set of products, we conducted randomized field experiments in which experimentally tailored email ads were sent to millions of individuals. We found consistently that personalizing the emails by adding consumer-specific information (e.g., recipient’s name) benefited the advertisers. Importantly, such content is not likely to be informative about the advertised product or the company. In our main experiment, we found that adding the name of the message recipient to the email’s subject line increased the probability of the recipient opening it by 20% (from 9.05% to 10.80%), which translated to an increase in sales’ leads by 31% (from 0.39% to 0.51%) and a reduction in the number of individuals unsubscribing from the email campaign by 17% (from 1.2% to 1.0%). We present similar experiments conducted with other companies, which show that the effects we document extend from objectives ranging from acquiring new customers to retaining customers who have purchased from the company in the past. Our investigation of several possible mechanisms suggests that such content increases the effort consumers make in processing the other content in the rest of the advertising message. Our paper quantifies the benefits from personalization and sheds light on the role of noninformative advertising content by analyzing several detailed measures of recipient’s interaction with the message. It provides external validity to psychological mechanisms and has clear implications for the firms that are designing their advertising campaigns.
Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2017.1066 .
Companies increasingly face product harm crises resulting in product recalls, which often have a negative impact on firm value. Whereas prior research has studied the short-term effects of product recalls on firm value, the authors of this article focus on the long-term effects. They develop a conceptual framework and hypotheses about the main effect of recall volume and the moderating effects of crisis management strategies on the relationship between recall volume and long-term firm value. They empirically test the hypotheses in the auto industry context using both short-term abnormal returns analysis and long-term calendar-time portfolio analysis of 280 product recalls during 2005-2015. The findings reveal that the negative impact of product recall volume lingers over time. Brand (promotion) advertising has a significant positive (negative) effect on the relationship between recall volume and long-term abnormal returns. Furthermore, both voluntary recall initiation and postrecall remedial efforts positively moderate the impact of recall volume on long-term returns. These moderating effects are contrary to those in the short term. The results suggest that managers should use different advertising types during and after a recall, strategically initiate recalls, and diligently prepare postrecall remedies to mitigate the negative effects of recall volume on long-term return.
Organizations often collaborate with stakeholders such as customers, communities, and other groups to pursue shared goals, and these partnerships are known to affect an organization's legitimacy with those groups as well as its access to information from them. While these concerns could be examined within each of their own independent literatures, existing theories are ill-equipped to handle this process in tandem. Thus, studying these collaborations provides an opportunity to more broadly explore how organizations balance knowledge search or exploration efforts with their needs to manage organizational legitimacy. Accordingly, I suggest that collaboration facilitates access to external information, and that organizations pursue it when the information is needed to solve related problems. However, I also argue that collaborations reciprocally allow stakeholders to more directly scrutinize organizational practices. Thus, I predict that organizations suppress their use of collaborations to solve problems when their legitimacy is potentially or already at risk, such as when powerful stakeholders can hold an organization accountable for inappropriate acts or when some organizational actions have already been deemed as controversial. I test related predictions on the community policing efforts of a law enforcement agency panel, finding general support for several of the study's predictions.
Relative to quantitative methods traditionally used in accounting and finance, textual analysis is substantially less` precise. Thus, understanding the art is of equal importance to understanding the science. In this survey, we describe the nuances of the method and, as users of textual analysis, some of the tripwires in implementation. We also review the contemporary textual analysis literature and highlight areas of future research. © 2016 University of Chicago on behalf of the Accounting Research Center
This corpus-based keyword analysis investigates the letters to the shareholders from two commercial banks, Bank of America and Citigroup, over a 3-year period from 2008, 2009, and 2010. The letters were compiled to facilitate a diachronic analysis, an assessment of language change over a specific period, of profit/loss reporting from two prominent financial institutions over a time period in which the recession commenced, peaked, and concluded. To conduct the analysis on the node texts, two sets of reference corpora were compiled. One reference corpus set consists of the letters to shareholders from eight consistently high-performing corporations not within the commercial banking industry for each of the 3 years; the other reference corpus set consists of the letters from the 10 banking institutions that also appeared in the Fortune 500 listings for the 3-year period. The corpus-based analysis revealed that in years of low performance companies create messages that assert a vision and forward a strategy for ensuring future success while also establishing distance between management and past failures. In contrast, when companies perform well, the keyword lists display a clear tendency of the company/author to accept praise and attribute success to actions of management.
Although the value gained from partnership formation (through alliances) or through the firm's position in a network has received significant research attention, little is known about the risks that can accompany this increasing reliance on partners. The authors investigate the change in firm idiosyncratic and systematic risks after the announcement of marketing alliances and analyze whether the density of the firm's network of alliance partners moderates the risk exposure, demonstrated through investors' expectations of a firm's risk or the equity risk of a firm. The results indicate that marketing alliances reduce firm risk, so long as the alliance is a novel connection between the partnering firms. Furthermore, at high levels, the interconnectedness of partners or density of a firm's network can cause idiosyncratic risk to increase, and the density of a partner's network can also result in increases in systematic risk of a firm after alliance formation.
Senior leaders play an essential role in facilitating knowledge creation processes and driving firms’ innovation performance. However, little is known about the underlying relational mechanisms by which CEOs help build knowledge integration capability and drive firm innovation. We developed and tested a conceptual model about the ways in which CEOs shape a context conducive for knowledge creation processes and drive multiple innovation performance. A field, survey-based, study among small- to medium-sized high technology organizational ventures (SMVs) showed that CEO visionary innovation leadership (manifested by both vision for innovation and enactment of the vision through specific leadership behaviors) was positively related to a context of connectivity. Connectivity was related to firm knowledge integration capacity, which in turn resulted in enhanced firm innovation (new product quality, development speed, and product innovation). The findings also indicate direct links between CEO visionary innovation leadership and knowledge integration, and between connectivity and product innovation. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm this research investigates how an integrated marketing communication (IMC) capability drives a brand's financial performance through influencing the effectiveness of communication campaigns and the brand's market-based performance. The results illustrate that an IMC capability has a significant direct effect on campaign effectiveness and significant indirect effect on a brand's market-based performance and financial performance. The study highlights the role of IMC as a key firm-specific capability with significant impact on performance outcomes. Competitively, the more the firm is able to build its distinctive IMC capability, the greater its campaign effectiveness, which in turn leads to superior brand market-based and financial performance.
Recent research on the governance of hybrid organizational forms has investigated the contractual foundations of collaborations by examining how firms craft complex contracts, as well as plan for changing circumstances during contract execution. We build upon and extend this research by considering the contractual delegation of authority to a dedicated structural interface for a collaboration. In particular, our theory suggests that partners are more likely to employ steering committees to help partners guide their interactions, address unanticipated contingencies that materialize, and mitigate incipient conflicts when partners have substantial needs for coordinated adaptation. An analysis of alliances in the biopharmaceuticals industry explicates the formal governance mechanisms that support high-tech partnerships and identifies determinants of the administrative structures firms utilize in contractual agreements to enhance their adaptive limits.
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.
Annual reports are utilized to study the corporate strategy of fortysix American companies in the minicomputer/peripheral industry. Based in part on a previous study of the food-processing industry, the effects of five explanatory variables on commercial success are investigated. These variables are: (1) environmental coping; (2) customer orientation; (3) international activities; (4) controlled growth; and (5) vertical integration and value added. The results of the analysis support the hypothesis projected, permitting a theoretical summary to be offered.
The authors introduce and examine a new marketing concept that a small set of leading firms has begun to adopt: marketing doctrine. Marketing doctrine refers to a firm's unique principles, distilled from its experiences, which provide firm-wide guidance on market-facing choices. As such, marketing doctrine provides a firm-wide common approach to decision making. Importantly, marketing doctrine helps a firm address the classic consistency flexibility conundrum by providing high-level guidance to all decision makers in the firm (thus ensuring consistency) but not specifying execution details (thus allowing for local flexibility). Across three samples, the authors explore the concept using a discovery-oriented, theories-in-use approach with 35 executives from several industries. This article makes four contributions. First, it offers a parsimonious definition of the marketing doctrine construct and contrasts it with related constructs. Second, it offers insight into how firms can develop marketing doctrine. Third, it develops a conceptual model that identifies the antecedents and consequences of marketing doctrine use. Finally, the authors explore the moderating effects of three unpredictable environments (competitive intensity, market turbulence, and structural flux) on the marketing doctrine use performance relationship.
Marketers are being challenged by a deluge of data that is well beyond the capacity of their organizations to comprehend and use. Their strategies are not keeping up with the disruptive effects of technology-empowered customers; the proliferation of media, channel, and customer contact points; or the possibilities for microsegmentation. Closing the widening gap between the accelerating complexity of their markets and the limited ability of their organizations to respond demands new thinking about marketing capabilities. Three adaptive capabilities are needed: (1) Vigilant market learning that enhances deep market insights with an advance warning system to anticipate market changes and unmet needs, (2) adaptive market experimentation that continuously learns from experiments, and (3) open marketing that forges relationships with those at the forefront of new media and social networking technologies and mobilizes the skills of current partners. The benefits of these adaptive capabilities will only be realized in organizations that are more resilient and free-flowing, with vigilant leadership and more adaptive business models.
While the Baldridge Award has been dominating management thinking and behavior since the late 1980s, studies that attempted to identify determinants of corporate excellence such as In Search of Excellence dominated management thinking and behavior in the early 1980s. Based on the financial performance of excellent companies, this article explores whether we should expect the Baldridge Award to be a predictor of the financial success of a firm. The article argues that such an expectation is unjustified and calls for a longitudinal study to examine the relationship between total quality management and the financial success of a firm.