Marketing and business performance

Academics and managers have struggled for many years to understand and delineate the role of marketing in explaining business performance differences between firms. Most of the theory base for any such attempts has to be informed by strategic management theory, since the primary question that strategic management seeks to answer is why some firms outperform others over time. This paper synthesizes three major streams of thought in strategic management with the empirical and theoretical literature on strategic marketing to develop an integrative theory-based conceptual framework linking marketing with firms’ business performance.     

Export marketing strategy implementation,export marketing capabilities,and export venture performance

Since exporting is the most popular mechanism by which firms engage with international markets, understanding the drivers of export market performance is key to explaining firms’ international competitiveness. The literature posits that the effective implementation of planned export marketing strategy is a key determinant of the performance of firms operating in international markets. Yet little is known about the specific nature and drivers of export marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. In this study we build on the implementation literature in marketing and strategic management to develop a new conceptualization of export marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, we empirically examine the export marketing capability antecedents and performance consequences of export marketing strategy implementation effectiveness in the context of manufacturing firms that are exporting to international markets. Results indicate that effective implementation of planned export marketing strategy contributes to export market and financial performance, and that marketing capabilities play an important role in enabling effective marketing strategy implementation in export venture operations.     

General alliance experience,uncertainty, and marketing alliance governance mode choice

Drawing from transaction cost economics (TCE), the knowledge-based view (KBV), and real options theory (ROT), we propose that the general alliance experience of alliance partner firms moderates the impact of market uncertainty and alliance-specific uncertainty on the benefits and costs of the two marketing alliance governance modes, i.e., non-equity alliances and joint ventures. Based on our systematic study of 18,616 marketing alliances occurring in 48 industries across 164 countries between 1992 and 2008, we find general alliance experience significantly moderates firms’ marketing alliance governance mode choices. Our framework reconciles some contradictory empirical results in the interfirm relationship governance structure literature by emphasizing the moderating role of partner firms’ general alliance experience. Specifically, when alliances can be characterized has having a large cultural distance between the partners or having a market with a broad geographic scope, it seems that TCE predictions regarding the marketing alliance governance mode choice hold for inexperienced firms while KBV and ROT predictions hold for experienced firms. In addition, by incorporating key aspects of all three theories, our proposed framework has the potential to provide deeper insights into the role of alliance experience and uncertainty in firms’ marketing alliance governance mode choices.     

An integrated model of buyer-seller relationships

Relationships in business markets are increasingly important in many companies’ operating strategies. A five-stage framework integrates the constructs most often examined in empirical relationship research with the stages of relationship development (partner selection, defining purpose, setting relationship value, and relationship maintenance). The proposed model recognized that a variable may be active at certain stages and become latent in others. Research directions are proposed and managerial implications discussed. He is an active scholar and publisher in the use of strategic alliances to create competitive advantage. He is the managing director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets.     

Reflections on international marketing: destructive regeneration and multinational firms

Constant in the evolution of the business enterprise has been its relentless search for competitive advantage. What has been phenomenally different about this quest is that it is, increasingly, a global landscape that defines the firm’s opportunities and challenges. The global marketplace has always been dynamic and complex in terms of the changes it brings, but the last two decades have been exceptionally transformational. In terms of opportunities, firms pursuing international customers have never before faced such open markets, rise in discretionary income, and modern tools for accessing global markets. In terms of challenges, intense competition, complexity of managing multiple markets and coordinating marketing strategy, a host of risk elements, and the sheer difficulty of managing geographic, cultural, and political barriers are among the factors which impede the firm’s success in global markets. Often, these changes come in the form of radical, transformative disruptions. This essay draws attention to major disruptions impacting international marketers and provides insights for appropriate firm response.     

A meta-analysis of gender roles in advertising

Although interest regarding gender role portrayals in advertising has persisted for many years, the degree of gender stereotyping in advertising, possible changes of gender stereotyping over the years, and the nature of the relationship between gender stereotyping in advertising and role changing developments in society have not yet been studied in previous research. To address these issues, this study provides a meta-analysis of the research on gender roles in TV and radio advertising based on 64 primary studies. The results show that stereotyping is prevalent in advertising. Stereotyping occurs mainly related to gender’s occupational status, meaning gender equality in advertising is least likely in an area that is the primary concern of gender-related politics. Stereotyping in advertising has indeed decreased over the years, although this decrease is almost exclusively due to developments in high masculinity countries. The results of a correlation analysis and a simultaneous equation model show that gender stereotyping in advertising depends on gender-related developments and value changes in society rather than the other way around. These results provide for the first time empirical support for the mirror argument over the mold argument in the long-standing debate about advertising’s consequences for society. The findings further provide implications for researchers, public policy makers, and marketing practitioners.     

The impact of product market strategy-organizational culture fit on business performance

Drawing on the organization theory literature concerning configuration theory, competing values theory, and fit assessment methodologies, we examine the existence and performance impact of product market strategy–organization culture fit. Specifically, we assess the relationship among three important elements of a firm’s product market strategy and the four cultural orientations that comprise the competing values theory of organizational culture using primary and secondary data from the US trucking industry. Using two different conceptualizations and operationalizations of fit, our results provide the first empirical support for the existence of interrelationships among product market strategy decisions and organizational culture orientations consistent with configuration theory conceptualizations of product market strategy–organizational culture fit. We also find support for theorized but previously untested relationships between product market strategy–organizational culture fit and firms’ customer satisfaction and cash-flow return on assets (CFROA) performance. Since product market strategy is heavily reliant on the input of marketers, and organizational culture has long been recognized as having an important impact on marketing-related decision making, these findings have important implications for marketing strategy research and practice.     

新经济社会学视角的中小企业国际化绩效研究——基于社会资本、核心资源的中介效应

中小企业通过识别和积累社会资本获得参与国际竞争的核心资源,进而实现成功进入国际市场的发展目标。获得国际化绩效是企业国际化的目的,积累核心资源是企业国际化的基础,而运用社会资本是企业国际化的出发点。基于这一思路,文章将传统企业国际化理论中的资源基础观同新经济社会学中的社会资本理论相结合,通过实地调查中小企业并构建结构方程模型,采用跨学科的研究视角探讨了中小企业社会资本、国际化绩效及核心资源三者间的影响机制,从而进一步丰富和扩展了现有中小企业国际化研究的思路。     

Brand related information as context: the impact of brand name characteristics on memory and choice

Consumer exposure to new brand names can occur in contexts with or without brand information being present. Whereas previous research has examined the effects of brand name characteristics (association set size and word frequency) on memory in the presence of brand information, this paper also assesses brand name effects in contexts without brand related information and extends it to brand consideration and choice. Two different processes are found to be operating as consumers retrieve brands and make a choice. Recall seems to benefit from a distinctiveness based route, which also guides consideration and choice. In contrast, implicit memory is influenced by familiarity, with corresponding consideration and choice effects. The implications are that firms’ choice of brand names and media needs to consider the combination of brand name characteristics that will lead to desired outcomes vis-à-vis distinctiveness or familiarity based processes.     

A critical note on “This time is different”

This article is structured as follows: the first section is based on Reinhart and Rogoff’s seminal papers (Am Econ Rev 98(2):339–344, 2008a, b, Am Econ Rev 99(2):466–472, 2009a, This time is different: eight centuries of financial folly, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009b, Am Econ Rev 100(2):573–578, 2010) and text book (2009), which today constitute the new cornerstones of conventional wisdom on the recurrence of financial crises throughout History, their development and aftermath. We deliver a critical view of this attempt to infer some systematic empirical relationship between debt, growth and inflation and underline the absence of core variables in this historical analysis. In Sect. 3, we go back 10 years to illustrate that conventional wisdom was much different at that time, emphasizing the peculiarity of each episode of the financial crises. This raises the issue of the relevancy of the cliometric approach to identify regularities down through History: so, should we trust cliometricians?     

Learning effect in multinational diffusion of consumer durables: An exploratory investigation

Literature reflects that a product/technological innovation introduced later in a country results in faster diffusion as the consumers in the lag market have an opportunity to learn about the new product from the consumers in the lead market. A systematic understanding of the learning that takes place between consumers in two countries—a pair of lead and lag countries—can provide insights for a firm’s international market entry decisions. To provide a richer understanding of the underlying structure and patterns that govern this process, propositions linking factors (country characteristics, product/innovation characteristics, and time lag) to the learning process are drawn. Subsequently, these propositions are tested through an empirical investigation of the diffusion patterns of four consumer innovations in multiple European countries. The findings help provide some preliminary guidelines for manufacturers regarding selection of foreign markets and the timing and order-of-entry decisions. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Houston in 1995. His research interests include global competition and marketing strategy, brand equity and brand extensions, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, and issues pertaining to product development and introduction. He has been recognized with numerous teaching and research excellence awards and has published numerous articles in many scholarly journals in marketing and forecasting. He has coauthored the textbookMarketing Research and is currently working on a book titledInternational Marketing Research, which is based on his marketing research experience across the globe. He is on the editorial review board of many journals and has lectured on marketing-related topics in various universities worldwide. His research interests include developing forecasting models, international marketing strategy and research issues, models for sales promotions, and new methodologies for product positioning and market segmentation. His research interests focus on marketing strategy and international marketing. He has published articles and presented at conferences on research in his area of interest.     

The relationship of learning and memory with organizational performance: The moderating role of turbulence

Extensive research has documented how firms’ learning orientation and memory are related to organizational performance. The objective of this study is to examine the moderating role of turbulence on the relationships between firms’ learning orientation and memory and their organizational performance and innovativeness. The study also provides insight into the differential relationships of firms’ learning orientation and memory to their performance and innovativeness. Using survey data collected from 200 supply management professionals, the results suggest that the extent to which learning and memory are associated with organizational performance is contingent on the level of environmental turbulence. Specifically, under low environmental turbulence, learning orientation and organizational memory appear to be related to performance and innovativeness; however, under high environmental turbulence, only learning orientation is a useful predictor. Sangphet Hanvanich (hanvanich@xavier.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing at Xavier University. She received her PhD from Michigan State University. She has published in various journals including theJournal of Service Research andStrategic Management Journal. Her primary research interests are in the areas of marketing strategy, marketing alliances, international business, and international marketing. K. Sivakumar (k.sivakumar@lehigh.edu) (PhD, Syracuse University) is the Arthur Tauck Professor of International Marketing and Logistics, chairperson, and a professor of marketing in the Department of Marketing at Lehigh University. Before joining Lehigh in 2001, he spent 9 years as a faculty member with the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests include pricing, global marketing, and innovation management. His research has been published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing, theJournal of International Business Studies, Decision Sciences Journal, Marketing Letters, the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Interactive Marketing, theJournal of International Marketing, International Marketing Review, theJournal of Product Innovation Management, Pricing Strategy & Practice: An International Journal, Psychology & Marketing, Marketing Science Institute’s Working Paper Series, and other publications. He has won several awards for his research (including the Donald Lehmann Award) and is on the editorial review board of several scholarly journals. He has won outstanding reviewer awards from two journals. Home page: www.lehigh .edu/~kasg. G. Tomas M. Hult (nhult@msu.edu) is a professor of marketing and supply chain management and director of the Center for International Business Education and Research at Michigan State University. He serves as executive director of the Academy of International Business. He is associate editor of theJournal of International Business Studies, Decision Sciences, and theJournal of Operations Management. His research has been published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, theJournal of Marketing, Decision Sciences, theJournal of Operations Management, theJournal of Management, and theJournal of Retailing, among others.     

银企关系与中小企业贷款成本——基于对江苏东台和安徽滁州中小企业的调研

本文基于中小企业一手调研数据进行经验性研究,分析关系型信贷中的重要影响因素——银企关系对中小企业贷款成本的影响,并提出政策建议。研究发现,在银行信贷中,中小企业处于劣势地位,银企关系的加深并不必然降低中小企业贷款利率。中小企业对于银企关系也存在一定的抵触情绪,从而人为阻断与银行关系的进一步加深。     

Escalation bias: Does it extend to marketing?

Escalation bias implies that managers favor reinvestments in projects that are doing poorly over those doing well. We tested this implication in a marketing context by conducting experiments on advertising and product-design decisions. Each situation was varied to reflect either a long-term or a short-term decision. Besides these four conditions, we conducted three replications. We found little evidence of escalation bias by 365 subjects in the seven experimental comparisons. J. Scott Armstrong has been a professor at The Wharton School since 1968. During this time he has also been a visiting professor in Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. He is a founder and past editor of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting. In addition to forecasting, he has published research on strategic planning, the scientific method, social responsibility, and survey research methods. holds an M.Sc. (Technology Management) and B.Comm. (Marketing) from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Nicole’s dissertation research focuses on the internationalization process of software developers. In particular, she examines “deviations” in international linkage development by small firms, with a focus on marketing management issues. Her other research interests relate to entrepreneurial growth, the marketing/manufacturing interface, and strategic planning processes. Barbara Safranek worked as a marketing consultant in Japan and was then co-president of the Friends of Japan (Tokyo, Japan) for three years. Currently she is vice-president of Japanese Equities-Sales at S.G. Warburg & Co.     

Understanding the adoption of new brands through salespeople: a multilevel framework

So far there has been scant empirical attention paid to the role of the sales force in the adoption of new brands in the early implementation stages. We test a framework of internal (sales manager and salespeople) brand adoption using an empirical multilevel study. Our findings suggest that the construct of expected customer demand (ECD) plays an important role in sales force brand adoption. First, ECD directly influences salespeople’s and sales managers’ brand adoption. Second, ECD serves as a cross-level moderator of new brand adoption transmission. We find the influence of sales managers’ brand adoption on salespeople’s brand adoption to be stronger when salespeople’s ECD is lower.     

Exploring CRM effectiveness: an institutional theory perspective

This study identifies the potential contribution that institutional theory can make to understanding the success of marketing practices. Based on institutional theory, we argue that the effectiveness of marketing practices decreases when firms are motivated to adopt such practices under the influence of institutional pressures originating in firms’ environments. However, alignment between a practice and a firm’s marketing strategy may buffer against these negative effects. We apply these insights to the case of customer relationship management (CRM). CRM is considered an important way to enhance customer loyalty and firm performance, but it has also been criticized for being expensive and for not living up to expectations. Empirical data from 107 organizations confirm that, in general, adopting CRM for mimetic motives is likely to result in fewer customer insights as a result of using this practice. Our study suggests that institutional theory has much to offer to the investigation of the effectiveness of marketing practices.     

Multiple emotional contagions in service encounters

This paper investigates the dynamic impact of multiple sequential emotional displays by employees on customers’ negative emotions. Using video-based stimuli to manipulate emotional displays by employees, this study shows the sequential occurrences of negative and positive emotional contagions in service failure and recovery encounters. The results suggest that higher levels of employees’ negative emotional displays lead to a greater increase in customers’ negative emotions through the process of negative emotional contagion during service failure. More importantly, we find that positive emotional displays by employees can decrease customers’ negative emotions through the process of positive emotional contagion during service recovery, i.e., higher levels of employee positive emotional displays lead to a greater decrease in customers’ negative emotions. In addition, no matter whether customers experience higher or lower levels of employee positive emotional displays during service recovery, their final negative emotions cannot fully return to their emotional levels prior to service failure. However, for customers experiencing higher levels of employee positive emotional displays, their final negative emotions can be greatly mitigated and are closer to their initial emotional levels, as compared to customers experiencing lower levels of employee positive emotional displays. The results further indicate that susceptibility to emotional contagion increases the effect of employees’ negative (positive) emotional displays on customers’ negative emotions during service failure (recovery). The findings of this study suggest that service firms should provide effective training to their frontline service employees so that they can display proper positive emotions during service encounters.     

Including the effects of prior and recent contact effort in a customer scoring model for database marketing

Database marketers often use a scoring model to predict the likely value of contacting customers based on their purchase histories and demographics. However, when purchase history has been a partial result of the firm’s own contacting efforts, these contacts should also be accounted for in the scoring model. The current work extends the existing literature to account for the firm’s contacts by focusing on each customer’s most recent purchase. Contacts prior to that purchase are designated “prior contacts” and those after that purchase “recent contacts.” A new latent variables formulation of the customer’s propensity to respond is used to predict the likelihood and time of response as well as the relationship to the independent variables. The methodology also addresses the statistical problems of “selection bias” and “endogeneity,” which have been largely ignored in most customer scoring models. An application to the database of a charitable organization confirms that, in this case: (1) the effect of the firm’s customer contact efforts is associated with a stronger propensity to respond than is the case for the included demographics; (2) the firm’s “recent contact” efforts are associated with larger returns in customers’ propensity to respond than the “prior contact” efforts; and (3) the “recent contact” efforts are associated with an at-first increasing but then diminishing propensity to respond up to a point beyond which actual decreasing returns are observed with further contacts. Clearly, too much contacting can alienate would-be donors. The proposed model is general enough to calibrate such impacts in other database marketing applications where the relative effects might be different.

The regional and global competitiveness of multinational firms

International competitiveness ultimately depends upon the linkages between a firm’s unique, idiosyncratic capabilities (firm-specific advantages, FSAs) and its home country assets (country-specific advantages, CSAs). In this paper, we present a modified FSA/CSA matrix building upon the FSA/CSA matrix (Rugman 1981). We relate this to the diamond framework for national competitiveness (Porter 1990), and the double diamond model (Rugman and D’Cruz 1993). We provide empirical evidence to demonstrate the merits and usefulness of the modified FSA/CSA matrix using the Fortune Global 500 firms. We examine the FSAs based on the geographic scope of sales and CSAs that can lead to national, home region, and global competitiveness. Our empirical analysis suggests that the world’s largest 500 firms have increased their firm-level international competitiveness. However, much of this is still being achieved within their home region. In other words, international competitiveness is a regional not a global phenomenon. Our findings have significant implications for research and practice. Future research in international marketing should take into account the multi-faceted nature of FSAs and CSAs across different levels. For MNE managers, our study provides useful insights for strategic marketing planning and implementation.     

Comparing market areas using kernel density estimation

From a managers’ point of view it is useful to know whether or not a market area has changed over time, and whether two market areas are different. In this paper we propose, using the kernel density estimation method, to estimate the density of a market area and show how the estimated market area densities may be compared for differences using Bayesian cross-validated likelihood methods. The proposed methodology is highlighted using two applications. One application involves comparison of lunch and dinner markets of a restaurant and the other application involves identifying the optimal area for a direct mail program.