An evaluation of progress in the development of a definition of marketing

This study evaluates progress in developing a definition of marketing. A survey of marketing educators, managers, scholar-experts and students was conducted to determine elements important in a definition of marketing, a ranking of popular definitions of marketing and an evaluation of the definitions based on relevant criteria. All categories of respondents ranked the 1985 AMA definition of marketing as the definition that best represents the discipline of marketing.     

Recent evidence on the relationship between anonymity and response variables for mail surveys

Although most marketing researchers and texts recommend guaranteeing respondents anonymity in mail surveys, emirical evidence on this issue is dated, and often is based on results from student or occupational samples. The present study examines the impact of anonymity on item omission, response bias, and response quality. Based on a representative sample of respondents from a Southern SMSA, it was found that lack of anonymity had minor effects on response variables. Anonymous respondents provided slightly less information to complex questions, and lower-income respondents, nonwhites, and homeowners were more likely to identify themselves on the return envelope. Yet, the responses of these groups did not differ substantively from answers of other respondents on the range of questionnaire items examined.     

Marketing research for public health: A demonstration of differential responses to advertising

This study illustrates the use of marketing research techniques outside of the traditional limits of marketing. It examines awarencess of two distinct promotional themes promoting venereal disease prevention. The study is done with a relatively homogeneous sample and shows the need for a segmentation strategy in promoting this critical public health issue. Both attitudes and media behavior of respondents are examined and it is shown that the different promotional appeals are recalled by persons with different sets of values and different media habits. This study was supported by grants from the Graduate School, University of Missouri-St. Louis and the School of Business, University of Missouri-St. Louis.     

Analysis of marketing management practices of dance companies

On the one hand, 56% of the respondents believed that a dance company should be marketed using the same basic techniques as a business firm, while the remaining 44% either disagreed or were uncertain (Statement 23). On the other hand, 83% indicated that marketing techniques are not too commercial to be applied to a dance company (Statement 24). These two final statements summarize the entire study in that there appears to be a clear movement toward recognition of marketing approaches by dance managers, but considerable resistance is also apparent in the actual application of marketing techniques.     

Seeing relationships through the lens of psychological contracts: the structure of consumer service relationships

Serving as mental models, psychological contracts guide consumers’ service interactions with their service providers. This study incorporates a psychological contract perspective into the relationship marketing literature, exploring service customers’ beliefs about the terms and conditions of the resource exchange process and the types of relationships they form with service providers. It provides new insights that explain why and how some customers respond favorably to a company’s relationship overtures and investments while others do not. A latent class analysis on a sample of 700 consumers across three different service industries reveals that consumers form four distinct types of psychological contracts: relational, standard, transitional, and captive. To further validate the differences between the contract types, open-ended responses from the respondents were sorted by each class. The distinctive themes that emerged provide a richer understanding of the characteristics of each class beyond those inferred from the quantitative results. Each contract type is also profiled against its underlying level of trust, satisfaction, and commitment to understand the relationship between the contract types and these traditional relationship marketing variables. Marketers can differentiate their relationship marketing strategies and allocate their resource investments more effectively by segmenting consumers according to their psychological contract type.     

Differences in retail store images within husband-wife dyads

Aggregate measures of purchasing influence generally produce similar results whether husbands or wives serve as the respondents. However, this study indicates that wives should not be used as surrogates for husbands in studies measuring retail store images. The findings of this study indicate that developing marketing strategies based on the images held by wives may not be successful in dealing with the male segment of the market. There is substantial within-couple variation in the evaluation of specific aspects of specific retail stores. However, both groups do appear to use similar evaluative criteria. The differences are in the evaluation of the store characteristics, not in the underlying criteria.     

Competence resource specialization, causal ambiguity, and the creation and decay of competitiveness: the role of marketing strategy in new product performance and shareholder value

Marketing strategists should create, maintain, and arrest the decay of causally ambiguous resource competences that lead to competitiveness and thus performance. However, competence causal ambiguity, which helps create competitiveness, is also implicated in competitiveness decay. In this study we test a model of specialization-competitiveness-performance using primary and secondary data from 169 public respondents/firms, to examine the effects of negative internal barriers to replication and adaptation. These barriers develop due to resource lock-in arising from the same specialization processes that lead to the positive barriers to imitation that deter competitors. Results suggest that commitment to learning can mitigate resource lock-in problems with internal competence causal ambiguity, competence causal ambiguity among competitors appears more essential to competitiveness in more competitive markets, competitiveness positively relates to both shareholder value and new product performance, and an increased differential focus on marketing versus operations in the organization strengthens the positive bridge between organizational competitiveness and shareholder return.     

Opinion leaders and opinion seekers: Two new measurement scales

The authors describe the development and validation of multiple-item self-report scales to measure opinion leadership and opinion seeking for specific product or service domains. The concepts of opinion leadership and opinion seeking are defined, previous attempts to measure them are critiqued, and the scale development process is described. Five separate studies using data from 1,128 student and adult respondents provide ample evidence for the unidimensionality, the reliability, and the construct and criterion-related validity of the resulting scales. Finally, implications for consumer theory and marketing practice are discussed. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. Her research focuses on methodological issues in consumer research. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. His chief interest is in scaling consumer characteristics. where she directs the MBA program. She received her Ph.D. from Florida State University. Her research includes business ethics, scale development, and marketing to children.     

An application and extension of a multidimensional ethics scale to selected marketing practices and marketing groups

The purpose of this research was to test and extend a multidimensional ethics scale developed by Reidenbach and Robin to selected marketing groups. Different marketing practices and groups were used in order to give these measures a wide variety of exposures. These measures performed well in all settings and for all practices. Factor structures in fifteen different trials identified the same three dimensions with one exception. In that exception, two dimensions merged together in five of those fifteen trials. While these dimensions captured much of the variance in the global concept of “ethical/unethical”, they did a better job of predicting the respondents’ intention to behave than the global measure. These measures also provide the researcher with a partial explanation of why the respondents answered in the manner that they did. The shifting relative importance of the three dimensions in accounting for the variance in the behavioral intention measure provides this explanation.     

Business cycle research in marketing: a review and research agenda

Business cycles (BCs) may affect entire markets, and significantly alter many firms’ marketing activities and performance. Even though managers cannot prevent BCs from occurring, marketing research over the last 15 years has provided growing evidence that their impact on consumers, and hence on firm and brand performance, depends to a large extent on how firms adjust their marketing mix in response to these macro-economic swings. In this study, we review the growing marketing literature on how to attenuate or amplify the impact of BC fluctuations. Our discussion focuses on three key aspects: (1) the scope of, and insights from, existing BC research in marketing, (2) advancements in the methods to study various BC phenomena in marketing, and (3) some emerging trends that offer new challenges and opportunities for future BC research in marketing.     

The incidence of unethical practices in marketing research: An empricial investigation

The authros examine from the perspective of marketing professionals the incidence of unethical research practices and the influence of organizational factors as determinants of the incidence of unethical research practices. The results indicate some degree of indicence of unethical research practices, particularly of those involving respondents. In addition, the results suggest four organizational variables— extent of ethical problems within the organization, top management actions on ethics, organizational role, and industry category—as determinants of the incidence of unethical research partices.     

基于顾客资产的营销模式研究——以LG电子(中国)为例

顾客资产概念的提出对传统营销模式产生了极大冲击,迫使企业从传统营销模式走向基于顾客资产的营销模式。在改善的基于顾客资产的营销模基础上,我们对LG进行了实证研究,结果表明:基于顾客资产的营销模式不仅具有理论意义,且具有可操作性和分析价值,对企业的营销实践具有指导性。     

Improving customer-focused marketing capabilities and firm financial performance via marketing exploration and exploitation

Evidence within the marketing literature has shown that marketing capabilities are important drivers of firm performance. However, very little is known about how firms improve their marketing capabilities via the embedding of new market knowledge. Organizational learning theory provides us with a theoretical lens through which we can examine how existing customer-focused marketing capabilities may be improved and new customer-focused marketing capabilities may be created via marketing exploitation and exploration capabilities. In addition, this study investigates whether ambidexterity in marketing exploration and exploitation exists and finds that firms cannot do both at high levels without risking a negative impact on customer-focused marketing capabilities. This study also presents findings demonstrating how improving the two customer-focused marketing capabilities in our study, brand management and customer relationship management, impacts objective financial performance.     

地区形象营销理论研究综述

国内外的相关研究表明:地区形象营销的理论研究已由地区形象的设计研究演变为地区形象营销的战略研究;地区形象营销的研究学科以社会人文学科为主,地理学、市场营销学等学科对地区形象营销的研究也具有特别重要的意义。     

Strategic marketing and marketing strategy: domain,definition, fundamental issues and foundational premises

This paper proposes a domain statement for strategic marketing as a field of study and delineates certain issues fundamental to the field. It also proposes a definition for marketing strategy, the focal organizational strategy construct of the field, and enumerates a number of foundational premises of marketing strategy. The domain of strategic marketing is viewed as encompassing the study of organizational, inter-organizational and environmental phenomena concerned with (1) the behavior of organizations in the marketplace in their interactions with consumers, customers, competitors and other external constituencies, in the context of creation, communication and delivery of products that offer value to customers in exchanges with organizations, and (2) the general management responsibilities associated with the boundary spanning role of the marketing function in organizations. At the broadest level, marketing strategy can be defined as an organization’s integrated pattern of decisions that specify its crucial choices concerning products, markets, marketing activities and marketing resources in the creation, communication and/or delivery of products that offer value to customers in exchanges with the organization and thereby enables the organization to achieve specific objectives. Chief among the issues that are fundamental to strategic marketing as a field of study are the questions of how the marketing strategy of a business is influenced by demand side factors and supply side factors.     

Demographic contributions to marketing: An assessment

The use of demographics in marketing studies has a relatively long history. Given the proliferation of demographic data, and some of the concern over the shortcomings of demographic contributions to marketing, it is appropriate to assess the use of demographics in the marketing literature. This study examines the contribution of population data, methods, and models in six marketing journals from 1980 through 1988. The results show that even though demographics appear in over 15 percent of the studies, methodological and theoretical shortcomings limit their value. The findings are discussed with respect to application improvements that should be made.     

Instability and consumer alienation in France

As modern marketing institutions spread among advanced industrial countries, it is reasonable to expect similar social reactions across culture. One hard to measure aspect of new and changing distribution methods is the dysfunctional or negative consequences evoked in consumers. In the study by Pruden and Leonardi, an effort is made to empirically link a social condition of increased instability in the market to an increased sense of alienation from the marketplace among a sample of citizens in a medium sized city in France. In earlier and related studies Pruden, Longman and Shuptrine found significant associations among social conditions, alienation in the marketplace and a demand for political intervention. The present study sought answers to four questions: 1.) Is the French consumer alienated from the marketplace? 2.) Do increasing instability in the geographical, economical or marketplace patterns of the French family increase feelings of alienation? 3.) Does the French consumer support the French consumer movement? 4.) Does support of the French consumer movement increase with increasing alienation? In sum, the evidence was mixed with regard to the degree of alienation of the consumer. The most striking characteristic of the findings was the high level of stability present among respondents.     

Breaking bread with Abraham’s children: Christians,Jews and Muslims’ holiday consumption in dominant,minority and diasporic communities

Religion is receiving increased interest from marketing researchers due to the heightened relevance of religious affiliation to global marketing efforts. However, almost all studies in the marketing literature focus upon religion within dominant cultural settings, that is, in contexts where the religion being studied is the prevailing religious tradition in a given country. Our study uses depth interviews with Christians, Muslims and Jews in dominant, minority and diasporic settings to more fully document the role which cultural context may have on the interaction between religion and marketing. The central holidays of Christmas, Ramadan and Passover as celebrated in the United States, Israel and Tunisia serve as the focal points of the study.