Strengthening the link between marketing strategy and financial performance

From the perspective that integrates marketing and banking practice and theory, this work reaffirms the relevance of interactions between the issues of ‘what’ (marketing strategy) and ‘why’ (financial performance). The key finding is that the marketing strategy–financial performance link faces serious difficulties, but they do not inevitably prevent the promotion and greater acceptance of the basic idea. The strongest barriers include negative attitudes of marketers to the language of financial indicators, different paradigms of people from marketing and banking, insufficient presence of the key concepts in the basic literature and unrealistic requirements of academic models. On the other side, the demand that becomes more powerful and sophisticated, and intensifying competition, are the major drivers of positive changes in practice and theory. Greater respect for risk indicators, improved short-term/long-term balance, stronger integration of marketing strategy elements, as well as more realistic general frameworks, constitute the group of encouraging trends.