What can Johnson & Johnson do to remain a giant in the health care industry?

As a major Fortune 500 corporation and manufacturer of significant drug products for the pharmaceutical industry, Johnson & Johnson has also had its share of marketing crisis, including the classic case example of The Tylenol Scare in Fall, 1982, so they can appreciate the need for effective marketing performance and customer responsiveness. This article will examine how Johnson & Johnson has adapted to a highly volatile business environment and how they can be benchmarked for highly competitive marketing strategies and practices.     

Using guanxi-style buyer-seller relationships in China: Reducing uncertainty and improving performance outcomes

Recent marketing literature has recommended that companies employ either long-term relationship marketing or short-term transactional approaches to buyer-seller relationships depending on the value of the customer to the company. This article found that in China, guanxi-style buyer-seller relationships similar to relationship marketing were strongly related to reduced levels of perceived uncertainty about the business environment and a variety of improved performance outcomes. The use of transactional relationships was related to higher uncertainty and lower performance. The use of gifts and favors seemed more characteristic of transactional relationships and were not related to positive outcomes. Both quantitative evidence from American sellers and qualitative evidence from Chinese buyers supported these conclusions. It is argued that guanxi-style buyer-seller.     

Tradition Versus Change: Evaluating the Currency of Some Traditional Chinese Values in Today's Business Environment

Abstract

In the last decade, the discussion about how marketing is changing has focused largely on practices in more affluent industrialized economies. Far less attention has been given to understanding the marketing strategies and practices of firms in emerging and transition economies. In this paper, we compare marketing of multinational firms versus local firms in Argentina. We identify the environmental characteristics of Argentina's emerging economy and, using survey data of 96 firms, we group firms into five clusters. We refer to two clusters as “traditional/local” as they use very basic marketing methods, with one serving business markets and the other consumer markets. The other three clusters we refer to as “progressive” as they represent state-of-the-art practices. The first two of these are foreign-owned and serve consumer and business markets, the third represents locally-owned service firms. The managerial implications are examined.     

Well-being Marketing: An Ethical Business Philosophy for Consumer Goods Firms

In this article we build on the program of research in well-being marketing by further conceptualizing and refining the conceptual domain of the concept of consumer well-being (CWB). We then argue that well-being marketing is a business philosophy grounded in business ethics. We show how this philosophy is an ethical extension of relationship marketing (stakeholder theory in business ethics) and is superior to transactional marketing (a business philosophy grounded in the principles of consumer sovereignty). Additionally, we argue that well-being marketing is based on duty ethics concepts, specifically the duty of beneficence and non-maleficence. Subsequently, we show how the well-being concept guides marketing decisions for consumer goods firms.     

Marketing strategies of ethnic minority businesses in the UK

This paper seeks to evaluate the influence of the entrepreneurs' educational backgrounds, the firm's target market, and the sector of operations on the marketing practices of Turkish ethnic minority businesses. The paper reports and analyses the findings of 227 face-to-face structured interviews with Turkish small business owners. The findings of the study indicate that Turkish ethnic minority businesses operating in different sectors use both transactional and relational approaches to marketing. Their choices of pursuing different marketing strategies are influenced by the entrepreneurs' educational backgrounds, the firm's target market, and the sector of operations.     

The Metrics of Relationships

Abstract

In the last two decades, it has been suggested that the marketing discipline is undergoing a paradigm shift from a transactional perspective to a relational perspective (Sheth & Parvatiyar, 2002). At the same time, there has been a call for the discipline to focus on accurate measurement of the outcome of marketing activities (Rust, Ambler, Carpenter, Kumar, & Srivastava, 2004). Extant research in this area has predominantly examined the sales and profitability of relationships through customer life time analysis or examined attitudinal measures such as satisfaction and loyalty. This paper attempts to combine both streams of research by examining the profitability, satisfaction and probability of switching associated with transactional customers, relationship customers (less than five years of relationship) and deep relationship customers (more than five years of relationship) in three business to business industries. The results demonstrate the transactional customers are most profitable followed by relationship and deep relationship customers. The probability of switching was in the reverse direction of profitability and there were no difference in satisfaction measures. Implications for research and practice and also derived in the paper.     

The Effects of CEO Trustworthiness on Directors’ Monitoring and Resource Provision

This research investigates the interplay between leadership styles and institutional corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. A large-scale field survey of managers reveals that firms with greater transformational leadership are more likely to engage in institutional CSR practices, whereas transactional leadership is not associated with such practices. Furthermore, stakeholder-oriented marketing reinforces the positive link between transformational leadership and institutional CSR practices. Finally, transactional leadership enhances, whereas transformational leadership diminishes, the positive relationship between institutional CSR practices and organizational outcomes. This research highlights the differential roles that transformational and transactional leadership styles play for a firm’s institutional CSR practices and has significant implications for theory and practice.     

Relationship marketing

Relationship Marketing is emerging as a new phenomenon. However, relationship oriented marketing practices date back to the pre-Industrial era. In this article, we trace the history of marketing practices and illustrate how the advent of mass production, the emergence of middlemen, and the separation of the producer from the consumer in the Industrial era led to a transactional focus of marketing. Now, due to technological advances, direct marketing is staging a comeback, leading to a relationship orientation. The authors contend that with the evolution of Relationship Marketing, the hitherto prominent exchange paradigm of marketing will be insufficient to explain the growing marketing phenomena of collaborative involvement of customers in the production process. An alternate paradigm of marketing needs to be developed that is more process rather than outcome oriented, and emphasizes value creation rather than value distribution.     

Benchmarking Services Branding Practices

The results of research into the competitiveness of New Zealand firms that provide professional and other business services suggest that effective branding is a key source of success. Brand strength appears to be linked to four main practices: investing in marketing communications to improve customer awareness and understanding of corporate and product brand values; contributing to the wider community to improve corporate reputation; improving internal communications (internal marketing) so front-line and professional staff are kept better informed about customer needs, market changes and company initiatives, thereby enabling staff to help customers better; and improving service quality to improve market positioning. The paper answers calls for the development of an integrated theory of services branding and concludes by positing three main conditions for effective services strategies and practices.     

论网络口传中意见领袖作用的内在机理及其危机公关

网络时代,网络口碑传播已从众多的传统营销模式中脱颖而出,成为企业和广告商青睐有加的营销手段。越来越多的人利用网络这个平台,公开发表自己对于某种社会现象或社会问题的见解并提出意见,网络意见领袖应势而生。在网络环境下,意见领袖作用的内在机制表现在作用层面、作用平台和作用表现三个方面。对于网络口传中的负面影响,要充分发挥意见领袖的作用,做出适当的危机公关。企业应正确认识和对待网络意见领袖的作用机制、影响力及危机公关,为网络口碑营销开拓新路。     

产业集群“离合”营销模式研究——以长垣起重机集群营销创新模式为例

长垣起重机集群的快速崛起为我们提供了一种独特的营销模式——产业集群"离合"营销模式。在长垣起重机产业集群成长过程中,独立、分散、灵活的集群式产业营销团队起着十分关键的作用。这种分布广泛、规模庞大且相对独立自由的集群式产业营销团队并不属于任何企业,而是属于整个产业集群,他们根据客户需求和厂商产品属性进行最优匹配,将市场与厂商连接起来。这种离合式的产业集群营销运行模式,将生产与营销分离开来,使内部营销行为转化为外部公关行为,使生产企业专注于生产,营销人员专注于营销,同时营销人员将所收集的市场信息反馈给生产企业,为企业根据顾客导向调整生产结构提供参考,可为产业集群转型升级与高速发展提供低成本、低风险、高效率、高速度的产业扩张路径,具有重要现实价值;这种离合式的产业集群营销模式,使营销理论从企业内部扩展到产业集群,形成产业集群营销理论,是未来营销理论重要的研究方向,具有重要理论意义。当然,这种模式也具有局限性,仅适用于对品牌要求不高、购买决策模式为公共关系型的大型机械产业集群。     

The impact of service quality and marketing on financial performance in the hospital industry: an empirical examination

Service quality and service marketing have both been studied extensively in relation to service organizations. In this paper we examine these areas simultaneously in terms of their impact on financial performance in the hospital industry. Drawing from the literature in the quality and service marketing areas, the area of service quality is represented in terms of the constructs of quality context and quality outcomes. Quality context (QC) describes the environment related to quality practices within a hospital which generally encourages and enhances service quality while quality outcomes (QO) comprises of specific clinical and patient satisfaction outcomes of the hospital. The area of marketing is represented in terms of the constructs of marketing orientation and market/product development outcomes. Market orientation (MO) is a well accepted, albeit complex, construct within the marketing literature. Generally, market orientation can be thought of as the process of effectively collecting, disseminating, and responding to information in order to enhance the marketing function within the hospital. Such information generally relates to market trends, customers, and competitors. Market/product development outcomes (MPD) refer to specific outcomes in relation to product innovation and market segmentation that are general indicators of the marketing effectiveness of the hospital. Although the evidence in the literature suggests that both service quality and marketing are independently related to organizational performance, the precise nature of the relationships among the variables described above is not clearly understood.Based on theoretical considerations, we propose a framework linking the above-mentioned constructs to the financial performance (FP) of an organization. Since QC and MO are theorized to be multidimensional constructs we use the technique of structural equations modeling (SEM) to test the model. Data were collected for the study from hospitals in a five-state region in the US. The results show that the constructs related to both service quality and marketing impact on financial performance. However, the results do not support the proposed framework of relationships. Instead, the results support a sequential chain of relationships among the constructs where MO mediates the effect of QC on QO, and MPD mediates the effect of QO on FP. Implications of these results for the hospital industry as well as for future research in the area are offered.     

Systemic Cooperative Actions among Competitors: the Case of a Furniture Cluster in Brazil

The purpose of this article is to describe cooperation practices observed in competitors companies in a furniture cluster in Brazil. The literature refers to it as coopetition. The research method was the multiple case study. The main research technique was the semi-structured interviews with practitioners of the cluster. The study created a theoretical framework for cooperative practices in industrial clusters formed by four types of practices: logistics, marketing and sales, formation of the workforce, and innovation and technology. The study investigates these four types of cooperation in five large companies that compete in the same market, the anchor companies of the cluster. The only entirely complied type of collaboration is the formation of the workforce of the cluster. In the other practices, cooperation involving competitors is lower than reported in the literature. The main reason for this low cooperation is excessive rivalry and mutual distrust in the cluster, and competition by differentiation, which partially prevent the gain of scale provided by cooperative actions.     

商贸集群形成与发展机制的比较分析

为探索全球经济危机背景下商贸集群形成与发展的机制,论文从区位优势、公共服务、产业互动、发展困境与战略选择四个方面对山东临沂和浙江义乌两个典型的商贸集群进行比较研究,发现商贸集群产生发展具有循环结构;其根本动力源于战略性政府和创业型企业的持续有效协同;集群主导力量在各个主要阶段围绕商贸流通采取有效方式整合资源,保障了集群的发展;需要提高集群微观主体综合素质和实现集群环境的再造;集群组织结构具有渐进性,集群发展是动态的区域化和国际化。     

Relationship marketing: Back to basics?

Relationship marketing, however defined, has received considerable attention recently. To its advocates, relational exchange between buyer and seller represents a paradigm shift away from the traditional focus on individual transactional exchanges. Critics of relationship marketing argue that the concept is poorly defined and is merely a new way of describing what businesses have been doing for a long time.

This paper recognizes that the need to develop long‐term relationships between an organization and its customers is becoming greater. It is however questioned whether marketing educators are providing students with the abilities to take a mature approach to relationship marketing issues, in line with the changing nature of employers' business. Suggestions for introducing relationship marketing to the undergraduate syllabus are made at a number of levels, from an additional module for an introductory “principles of marketing course” to a multi‐disciplinary degree majoring in relationship marketing.     

Relationship formation and governance in consumer markets: Transactional analysis versus the behaviourist approach

Although relationship marketing (RM) is widely discussed in contemporary marketing literature, its theoretical foundations are rarely debated. Much published work on the subject relies implicitly on behaviourist exchange theory to support major propositions. Exchange theory neatly elucidates many RM hypotheses, but cannot explain the failure of campaigns that furnish customers with increasingly generous relationship rewards. Phenomenological approaches which explore the fundamental psychodynamics of supplier/customer relationships (especially the ways in which entities inwardly construct their own meanings for their experiences) represent a powerful alternative to the behaviourist model. A business, it is suggested, is like a person in that it possesses an ego, has a collective psyche, adopts specific ego states, and occupies a particular corporate life position which helps determine the nature of its relationships with its clientele. Core propositions of transactional analysis are commandeered to categorize managerial feelings towards customers. It is concluded that positive self‐regard, corporate openness and integrity, transparency of the corporate self, genuine liking for customers, and unadulterated confidence in the propriety of the company's mission are necessary prerequisites for successful RM. Also the firm has to view RM as an entire philosophy of marketing; not merely as a set of promotional practices and techniques.     

A cluster analysis of highly productive business and management education scholars

The authors examined the publications and impact of highly productive business and management education (BME) scholars across the business disciplines of accounting, economics, finance, information systems, management, marketing, and operations management. Results from a hierarchical cluster analysis revealed five clusters of scholars: leading BME Scholars, leading discipline-focused BME scholars, high-profile BME scholars, focused BME scholars, and recognized BME scholars. The article includes a discussion of findings and their implications for BME scholarship, future BME scholars, and business schools.     

Measuring performance during crises and beyond: The Performance Promoter Score

Many organizations are curtailing or even abandoning performance management because of difficulties measuring performance and disruptions in performance-based pay due to the COVID-19 crisis. Contrary to this growing and troubling trend, we argue that it is especially important during the crisis to not only continue but also strengthen performance management to communicate a firm’s strategic direction, collect valuable business data, provide critical feedback to individuals and workgroups, protect organizations from legal risks, and retain top talent. To do so, we offer a solution to overcome the challenges associated with measuring performance during a crisis. Specifically, we extend and expand upon the well-established Net Promoter Score measure in marketing and introduce the Performance Promoter Score (PPS) to measure performance. We offer evidence-based recommendations for collecting PPS information for individuals, workgroups, and other collectives, computing a Net Performance Promoter Score (NPPS); using multiple sources of performance data, and using PPS for administrative and developmental purposes as well as to provide more frequent performance check-ins. PPS is a convenient, practical, relevant, and useful performance measure during a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is also an innovation that will be useful long after the pandemic is over.     

The globalization of retailing: volumes I and II

As a form of crisis management, business continuity management (BCM) has evolved since the 1970s in response to the technical and operational risks that threaten an organisation's recovery from hazards and interruptions. This paper examines the development of business practices related to crisis management alongside the emergence of legislation, regulations and standards (drivers) requiring organisations to implement specific business continuity activities. From the resulting historical review, three distinct phases of management practice and four phases in the development of drivers are identified, revealing the influence of events over governance, the internationalisation of influence, and organisational resilience as a meta-institution.     

危机营销抗御策略的分析

在日趋复杂的环境中,企业随时面临着各种危机,迫切需要建立一套危机预防机制和危机处理措施。预防是力求以最低的成本和最小的代价把危机扼杀在摇篮里,而当防御出现偏失,危机又不可避免时,企业就必须用有效的危机处理措施来解决危机。