Developing marketing capabilities for customer value creation through Marketing-Sales integration

The capacity to create superior customer value stems from the marketing capabilities a company possesses. A considerable body of research has indicated that market oriented companies have distinctive marketing capabilities which lead to superior organizational performance. Although it has been widely recognized that the development of marketing capabilities requires the joint effort of Marketing and Sales departments, almost no attention has been devoted to investigating the integration of these two functions. This study reports on an exploratory effort to use the means-end theory in explaining Marketing-Sales integration. Findings show that Marketing-Sales integration is a multi-faceted construct made up of different components that impact different marketing capabilities and highlight its antecedents and consequences.     

Business marketing in BRIC countries

This paper highlights the increased importance of the BRIC countries (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, and China) in the world economy. The BRICs are not only among the best economic performers but are responsible of a considerable part of the goods and services consumed globally and intensely trade one another. This means significant business interaction that existing research fails to explain. Hence, this special issue was prepared to encourage publication of empirical research of business marketing that involves one or more BRIC countries. This paper briefly introduces to the eleven research papers included in this special issue.     

Managing reverse logistics to enhance sustainability of industrial marketing

In this paper, a sustainable industrial marketing framework of latest requirement of green and sustainable operation is proposed. When literatures in strategy, marketing and operation have provided insight about the efficiency of reverse logistics and business value for the customer, the interrelationship is still under explored. This raises the question whether manufacturers could determine ecological friendly strategies to address their customer's environmental conscious needs and design the suitable solution to strike the balance between ecology and economics. Based on the case study of a medical product manufacturer, this study addresses this question by investigating how manufacturers identify the problem of reverse logistics; design and develop of sustainable product and service by enhancing the efficiency of operations, and market competencies that add value to their customers' business processes. Within the strategy for designing for effective reverse logistics, these findings contribute to understand the use of information system and technology for reverse logistics to enhance the customer's business process and provide value-added process for customer retention.     

Internet integration in business marketing tactics

Companies have got to learn to eat change for breakfast. Tom Peters

…it behooves us to adapt oneself to the times if one wants to enjoy continued good fortune. Niccolo Machiavelli

Business Marketing Management (BMM) over the Internet has been receiving a “lot of ink” in current periodicals and to a lesser degree in academic literature. Practice changes so rapidly that principles emerging from last month's successes may need revision before they are derived and printed. There is yet a general theory of business-to-business Internet integration. Nonetheless, there is a need to build such knowledge on “the fly,” and to attempt to see patterns even if they have a short life span. The present work takes a look at the state of business-to-business Internet marketing practices as the year 2000 came to a close for larger companies. Not surprisingly, and just like the hardware that make Internet distribution density so high, we find that the Internet is having an impact on: market size and structure, business buying and selling behavior, negotiation strategies and associated pricing practices. Moreover, distribution systems are experiencing a major realignment while logistics optimizing is even greater. The Web and e-mail are becoming more fully integrated into the business communication mix. The attempt here is to learn about the most rapidly emerging and changing communication technology of the past 100 years. Business-driven technology now appears to be driving business marketing tactics and results are augmented through multifaceted complex use of the Internet.     

Business marketing and the ethics of gift giving

This paper focuses on the common though ethically problematic practice of suppliers providing gifts and other benefits to buyers in a business-to-business context. It is argued that contrary to the claim that the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable practices is blurred when there is a focus on developing mutually beneficial, long-term relationships between suppliers and their business customers, there is a straightforward decision making procedure that can be applied. Central to this decision making procedure is the concept of a conflict of interest. While all organisations have very good reasons to address the issue of gifts and benefits, in a relationship marketing context there is even more reason to do so.     

Organisational, technical and marketing antecedents for successful new product development

Previous research in new product development has examined the role of organisational structure and marketing and technical skills and activities in encouraging successful innovation. This study examines the role played by organisational structure in supporting the marketing and technical/production activities in new product development, and direct and indirect effects of all of these antecedents on new product success. The goal of the study is to observe which factors lead to product success and to determine how they interconnect. Implications for new product management are provided in the concluding section.     

The integration between marketing and purchasing in the traceability process

This paper provides an overview of the implications of integrating marketing and purchasing offered by traceability. The research offers some evidence of the adoption of different traceability approaches by actors along the supply chain, illustrating the relevance of the traceability issue and how traceability can be exploited. The paper presents findings from a case analysis process of five actors in the fashion industry. This industry has experienced strong integration between industrial and retail functions and relevant changes in the organisation of production networks (global shift of production to new industrialized countries and emerging markets) which place emphasis on the traceability topic. Traceability emerges as a complex concept that concerns the sharing of information about the product and production processes along the supply chain in BTB networks up to the consumers in the final market. The issue analysed focuses on organising, with a discussion of two different uses of traceability: traceability as a tool for inter-organisational control and traceability as a tool for market power. The two approaches give rise to different implications at the individual company and business network levels. The traceability process has intraorganisational consequences in terms of contents, technologies and actors involved in its implementation. These consequences are different according to the role played by the process.     

Leveraging affiliations by marketing to and through associations

Associations offer a wide range of benefits to their members and thus offer a rich source for understanding relationship marketing practices. Yet, the marketing academic literature is devoid of any frameworks that help us understand the process of marketing to and through associations at the firm level. What are the appropriate dimension(s) of characterizing associations, and how might they be best classified? What are organizational factors that foster or hinder such characterizations, and, what are their consequences and implications?Based on literature review and field interviews with association executives and related exploratory research, we uncover “affinity strength,” or members' attachment to the association, as the key dimension distinguishing associations. We then test to determine antecedent factors (association systems characteristics) that foster or hinder affinity strength as well as its consequences and implications. The major study involved a survey of executives of a wide range of associations, selected from the Encyclopedia of Associations.Certain association systems characteristics do predict affinity strength. Also, affinity strength's relationship with some of the antecedents as well as consequential variables was shown to be stronger or weaker, contingent upon the type of association (i.e., Professional, Cause-based, Common Interest, or Demographic) being considered. Overall, however, attributes of associations (e.g., association systems and outcomes), rather than association types, were more critical in explaining several phenomena pertaining to marketing to and through associations.     

Business models: Impact on business markets and opportunities for marketing research

Business models have evolved in the context of new venture creation. By offering an entrepreneurial perspective to established marketing elements such as value propositions, value capturing and value networks, business models provide marketing discipline with both challenges and opportunities to engage with entrepreneurial environments. In particular, business models call for approaches that elucidate value-in-use of marketing offerings, reveal the performance of contracts in orchestrating value networks and identify the performance of network configurations. In this article we present some implications of and opportunities for business models for marketing research.     

Business models and their relationship with marketing: A systematic literature review

The purpose of this paper is to identify the degree to which the marketing discipline has hitherto engaged with business model literature. The results of a systematic review of business model literature are presented and utilise both the citation counts and the h-index to objectively demonstrate the limited engagement that the marketing discipline has had with business model literature, and the limited degree that the discipline has influenced that literature. The key findings reveal a growing, but formative body of literature that, hitherto, has been dominated by non-marketing disciplines and which has only just begun to be addressed by present day marketing scholars. Using the most influential articles identified in the analysis, the paper concludes with a case for the empirical development of the business model concept with industrial marketing scholarship. Such development is argued to be grounded in the potential of open business models, co-created with multiple stakeholders in a supply chain and the end users of a value proposition.     

Business relationships on different waves: Paradigm shift and marketing orientation revisited

Relationships with customers, also referred to as inter-organizational relationships, are a growing theme in marketing. The increased interest in these concepts has triggered views that a paradigm shift from mass marketing toward relationship marketing has taken place over the last 20 years and that only a relationship orientation secures firms' success. In this paper, we promote the idea that relationships exist along different orientations and paradigms. We identify five different orientations and the logic of a buyer-supplier relationship in each of these waves. Furthermore, we argue for a dyadic view of orientation, i.e., the supplier orientation must match the buyer orientation in order to allow smooth interactions.     

Processes and integration in the interaction of purchasing and marketing: Considering synergy and symbiosis

Effective integration of both purchasing and marketing functions is central to effective value creation and alignment of an organization with its business environment. Rapidly changing environments create gaps in the value creation process that compromises the delivery of value to the customer and risk misalignment of value propositions to their needs. Despite the clear imperative for research in this area, the extant literature is partial and delivers limited coherence. Ours is a theoretical article that—in drawing on previous literature—introduces the new work collected in this special issue and considers this against our own empirical evidence. We present a framework that maps out the landscape of internal organizational integration with a particular emphasis on purchasing and marketing integration. Implications for theory and managers are explored.     

Planting food sustainability thinking and practice through STEM in the garden

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education has been identified as a keystone teaching and learning area for...     

A hub-and-spoke model for multi-dimensional integration of green marketing and sustainable supply chain management

Since the concept of sustainability was transformed into business mainstream, both sustainable supply chain management and green marketing have become key topics of academic research and managerial practices. Great advances have been made in the two areas in parallel. It has been recognized that green marketing and sustainable supply chain management should be seamlessly integrated so that green customer's needs can be better met by the supply chain capabilities. Existing research has explored point-to-point integration approach. This paper proposes a new hub-and-spoke integration model to integrate green marketing and sustainable supply chain management from six dimensions: product, promotion, planning, process, people and project (called the 6Ps). Empirical study has been undertaken with industries to test the 6Ps integration model. Results from the empirical study on integration dimensions, integration strategies, and drivers and obstacles for multi-dimensional integration are presented together with managerial implications. The new integration model allows the flows of resources such as information, materials and funds between green marketing and sustainable supply chain management through multiple direct pathways. It has the potential to achieve better overall business performance against the triple bottom line objectives.     

Winning through innovation and marketing: Lessons from Australia and Vietnam

We examine the role of innovation and marketing, two functional capabilities that have the capacity to play a major role in creating superior marketplace performance in firms. Our study of the two capabilities and firms' marketplace performance also takes into account the contribution of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO) to our focal functional capabilities and marketplace performance. The results of a study of firms in Australia and Vietnam show innovation capability, marketing capability mediate the effects of the firm's MO on its marketplace performance. The results also show that the interaction of innovation and marketing capabilities significantly influences firms' marketplace performance more than they do individually. Finally, our results show that MO partially mediates the relationship between EO and innovation and marketing capabilities.     

Pharmaceutical marketing through the customer portfolio: Institutional influence and adaptation

This paper discusses the dilemma of managing marketing in institutionalized business contexts. On the basis of a study of pharmaceutical marketing practices it is argued that business aspirations are dependent on understanding institutional influence and adaptation mechanisms on the customer-portfolio level. As relationships are perceived as such mechanisms, understanding network dynamics, institutional co-evolution and actor cognitions are key managerial issues. Furthermore, it is suggested that institutional discontinuities leverage institutional entrepreneurship to a critical extent.     

The impact of marketing capability, operations capability and diversification strategy on performance: A resource-based view

Using resource-based view (RBV) of the firm as a theoretical backdrop; we aim to find out the relative impact of a firm's functional capabilities (namely, marketing and operations) and diversification strategies (product/service and international diversification) on financial performance. We hypothesize that this linkage depends on the firm's relative efficiency to integrate its resource-capabilities-performance triad. Using archival data of 102 UK based logistics companies, we find marketing capability is the key determinant for superior financial performance. This study highlights that a market-driven firm is likely to have better business performance than a firm focusing solely on operational capabilities. Also, firms are better off when they focus on a narrow portfolio of products/services for the clients and concentrate on a diverse geographical market. Our findings provide a new perspective to model a firm's functional capabilities and diversification strategy on its financial performance and offer a benchmarking tool to improve resource allocation decisions.     

Creating or destroying value through mergers and acquisitions: A marketing perspective

A majority of mergers and acquisitions are horizontal, combining companies within the same industry. They are most frequently motivated by a desire to achieve revenue and profit growth through market expansion or by adding new product lines, with cost efficiencies being a secondary agenda. However, the modest body of literature on post-merger performance using marketing metrics indicates that marketing objectives such as sales revenue and market share growth are rarely achieved. This paper reports on a detailed study of 45 M&A deals undertaken to develop a deeper understanding of how marketing performance is affected by mergers and acquisitions. Our results show that marketing performance improved along two dimensions — sales revenue growth, and a reduction in selling, marketing and administrative costs as a percentage of sales revenue, suggesting the realisation of synergies in these areas — economies of scale and scope. However, these benefits did not follow through into better returns on sales suggesting that the marketing cost economies are not sufficient to outweigh cost diseconomies in other parts of the business.