Use of the Customer Value/Mission (CV/M) Matrix in Strategic Nonprofit Marketing Analysis

ABSTRACT

Application of traditional portfolio methods to nonprofit marketing situations is difficult, to say the least. For the most part, they require detailed market share, market strength, market growth, market attractiveness, and cost and profit accounting information that many nonprofits do not have and may not be able to acquire given the nature of products typically offered by nonprofits, e.g., services and/or social behavior programs. We suggest use of a recently proposed product portfolio model, the customer value/mission (CV/M) matrix as a method that can help nonprofits in then-product planning endeavors. The CV/M matrix better serves the needs of marketing strategists not only in for-profit organizations but in nonprofit ones as well. This is because it reflects on customer value and differential advantage in the eyes of an organization's consumers. This paper directly compares the use of an older portfolio matrix that has been suggested for use in nonprofit organizations with use of the new matrix and discusses some advantages and disadvantages of each.     

Examining the Relationship Marketing,Marketing Productivity Paradigm

Abstract

The authors examine the relationship marketing research literature and identify three schools of thought regarding relationship marketing. The Inter-organizational, customer relationship, and customer valuation research perspectives are described and representative studies are discussed. The predominant conceptual approaches to marketing productivity in the research literature are identified and described. The shareholder value model of Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey (1998) is selected as the most useful conceptual framework linking relationship marketing and marketing productivity. The linking constructs of customer equity and brand equity are identified as the critical conceptual connections between relationship marketing and marketing productivity. A research agenda is suggested, covering both conceptual and operational issues for further development of both relationship marketing and marketing productivity.     

Using CRM to Manage Marketing Productivity

Abstract

The appropriate tool for measuring and managing marketing productivity is the present value of the total dollar contribution produced, divided by the total dollar value of the marketing effort expended to produce it. This ratio is referred to as the contribution return on marketing effort or CRM ratio. CRM integrated with activity based costing (ABC) and activity based management (ABM) systems, value analysis and value engineering (VA-VE) techniques offer a viable and practical foundation for managing customer relationship efforts and linking them to customer- and share holder value. The article offers a systematic approach for integrating contribution return on marketing (CRM) with customer relationship management (CRM).     

Uncertainty representation and risk management for direct segmented marketing

ABSTRACT

Mining for truly responsive customers has become an integral part of customer portfolio management, and, combined with operational tactics to reach these customers, requires an integrated approach to meeting customer needs that often involves the application of concepts from traditionally distinct fields: marketing, statistics, and operations research. This article brings such concepts together to address customer value and revenue maximisation as well as risk minimisation for direct marketing decision-making problems under uncertainty. We focus on customer lift optimisation given the uncertainty associated with lift estimation models, and develop risk management and operational tools for the multiple treatment (recommendation) problem using stochastic and robust optimisation techniques. Results from numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the effect of incorporating uncertainty on the performance of recommendation models.     

Operationalizing the Marketing Concept in the Nonprofit Sector

ABSTRACT

This paper questions the validity of applying the market orientation construct, which was developed ostensibly for and in large multinational organizations, to a sector whose characteristics differ greatly. Instead, this paper argues for a new approach to the operationalization of the marketing concept in the nonprofit sector. The components of this 'societal orientation' are delineated, as are the organizational imperatives, antecedents and the potential consequences and benefits associated therewith.     

Customer Lifetime Value as the Basis of Customer Segmentation

SUMMARY

In this article, we examine current trends in customer life-time value and customer segmentation models and identify key issues for future research. CLV-based segmentation is a segmentation approach that groups customers into meaningful segments based upon customer lifetime value and (potentially) other factors. In the article, we discuss the extent to which CLV-based segmentation meets the criteria for effective segmentation. We also identify six areas for future research: (1) models and management of “micro-segments,” (2) using CLV-based segmentation to improve the efficiency of marketing programs, (3) the need for more dynamic CLV-based segmentation models, (4) applying CLV-based customer segmentation to new products and new customers, (5) challenges associated with implementing CLV-based segmentation, and (6) the need for new models that enable firms to segment customers by response to marketing activities and CLV at different points in the customer decision process.     

Exploring the Internal Customer Mind-Set of Marketing Personnel

SUMMARY

With a traditional focus on external customers, marketing personnel could be expected to provide a leadership role in bringing an internal customer focus to the organization. In this study, we focus on the internal customer mind-set (ICMS) of marketing personnel and how this might impact the organization. We present a theoretically driven model that integrates current human resources literature by representing ICMS as a mediator of job satisfaction/organizational commitment and job performance/turnover intentions. The most notable results are found between ICMS and job performance, through both direct and indirect effects. Future research and study limitations are discussed.     

Cause-Related Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Campaign Donation Structures Issues

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, cause-related marketing (CRM) has become a popular and unique promotional tool for brands. Academic research indicates outcomes of such campaigns are generally positive for all stakeholders. Consumers feel they are making a difference, firms benefit from improved public image and increased sales, and the cause or nonprofit organization receives increased publicity and funding. However, there are ethical issues involved when linking a firm with a nonprofit organization as well as potential negatives (Smith and Stodghill 1994; Andreasan 1996; Meyer 1999; Polonsky and Wood 2001). An exploratory research study was undertaken to understand the impact of the structural elements of cause-related marketing campaigns, including how the donation is quantified, the size of the donation relative to the price of the product, the presence of donation deadlines and caps, and the level of promotion used to publicize the campaign. Findings suggest that the structural elements of cause-related marketing campaigns do influence consumers' perceptions of the campaigns. Based on these results, implications for CRM campaign managers and future research ideas are provided. This information will help practitioners, including marketing managers, advertising managers and advertising creative professionals to design the most effective communication tactics for a cause-related marketing campaign.     

Enriching Customer Value Research with a Relational Perspective

Abstract

Much of the research on customer perceived value in marketing has been guided by a transactional view, in which determinants of value perceptions are studied with a focus on discrete transactions rather than recurring exchange relationships. Using data collected from a survey of organizational buyers, we found that perceptions of both relational benefits and relational costs significantly influence organizational buyers' perceived value. These effects remained significant when compared with those of perceived episodic benefits and costs. Our research underscores the need for a relational perspective of customer perceived value, whereby both episodic and relational antecedents of value should be accounted for and influenced by elements of the marketing mix.     

How organisations generate and use customer insight

Abstract

The generation and use of customer insight in marketing decisions is poorly understood, partly due to difficulties in obtaining research access and partly because market-based learning theory views knowledge as a fixed asset. However, customer insight takes many forms, arrives at the organisation from increasingly diverse sources and requires more than mere dissemination if it is to be useful. A multiple case study approach is used to explore managerial practices for insight generation and use. Multiple informants from each of four organisations in diverse sectors were interviewed. Findings reveal the importance of value alignment and value monitoring across the insight demand chain, to complement the information processing emphasis of extant research. Within the firm, the study suggests the importance of customer insight conduct practices including insight format, the role of automation and insight shepherding, to complement the much-researched process perspective. The study provides a basis for assessing the effectiveness of insight processes by both practitioners and scholars.     

Adapting a book to make a film: how strategy is adapted through professional practices of marketing middle managers

Abstract

For an organisation to be competitive its strategy must be highly responsive to both environmental challenges and customers continuously shifting demands. Yet many organisations treat strategy making as an exclusively top management concern, even though the top management team is often remote from the daily interactions and communications taking place at the organisation, market, and customer interface. We challenge the assumption that strategy making ‘belongs’ to top managers and argue that marketing middle managers, possessing expert market and customer knowledge and insights, adapt top manager’s strategy to shifting customer demands in a changing environment. We explore this argument by adopting a strategy-as-practice perspective and analysing marketing middle manager’s practices across three case companies operating in a dynamic retail environment. Our research enables two key contributions. Our primary confirmation is to demonstrate that marketers are not passive implementers, but active adapters of top management strategy through three critical practices of sensing, challenging, and transmitting. We use the novel analogy of how adapting a book to make a film involves minor changes to the story line and characters to suit the new medium and to illustrate the strategically relevant and influential role marketing plays in adapting the strategy developed by the top management team for implementation. By demonstrating the value of the strategic practices of functional middle managers we also contribute to the growing debate of the need for greater inclusion and transparency in strategy making.     

Web-based social movements contesting marketing strategy: The mobilisation of multiple actors and rhetorical strategies

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that marketing strategy is developed and used to mobilise and configure the actions of firm actors, creating a set of stabilising activities focused on the firm–customer dyad. Destabilising forces precipitated by the Internet and associated digital technologies involving contention and disruption by multiple actors are much less prevalent in the marketing literature. The central point we advance is that rather than marketing strategy being a controlled and stabilising force for firms in their relationships with customers, it can often lead to socially produced spaces where consumers and, importantly, other multiple actors form a social movement to actively attempt to destabilise it and contest its legitimacy. Using an innovative research approach, the findings of this study show how social movements proactively enrol and mobilise a wide range of relevant actors into a network of influence. Critical to this are rhetorical strategies, acting as important levers in attempts to destabilise and delegitimise a dominant firm’s marketing strategy.     

Critical factors underpinning the e-CRM activities of SMEs

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are vital components of our economies, but many struggle to perform the marketing prescribed theoretically for large organisations. In practice, marketing is performed in SMEs through an intrinsic customer orientation, which exhibits striking resemblances to customer relationship management (CRM) theory. This paper presents research evidence to help us understand the impact of Internet-based technologies (IBTs) on the CRM activities (that is e-CRM) of SMEs in Ireland. A quantitative approach (online survey questionnaire) was adopted and distributed to 1445 SMEs. Exploratory factor analysis uncovered eight distinct yet inter-related factors underpinning the practices and processes of e-CRM in SMEs. Briefly, findings illustrate that SMEs are performing e-CRM to varying extents, reaping a range of performance benefits and facing a range of challenges. It is true that SMEs are not adopting e-CRM per se, as described in the large organisation-biased literature, but they are adopting relatively simple IBTs to improve their customer communication and information management capabilities and thus to create competitive advantage in their own strategic way. The study adopts a strong managerial focus, where pertinent practical implications and recommendations around e-CRM are provided for SME owner-managers, helping to bridge the gap between theory and practice.     

Trialogue on Facebook pages of grocery stores: Customer engagement or customer enragement?

Abstract

The pervasiveness of social media is compelling businesses to review their way of managing customer experiences. Businesses use social media to interact and engage with customers. Several studies have studied why businesses have adopted social media. However, there is a dearth of research as to why customers interact with businesses on social media in the grocery sector. This paper aims to explore how and why customers react to corporate messages on Facebook pages of Tesco and Walmart. Netnography approach was adopted to gain an insight into the various ways customers engage with the grocery stores on its Facebook pages. This study reveals that social media empower customers, influence the relationships customers have with grocery stores and generate customer engagement. Findings also show that the social customer is both a curse and a blessing to Tesco and Walmart when they create or destroy value for the business. This paper contributes to knowledge by (1) uncovering how customers react to corporate and customer posts on corporate Facebook pages; (2) showing how value can be created and destroyed; and (3) proposing a model illustrating how the main constructs of the study are interconnected: social media, relationship marketing, customer empowerment and customer engagement.     

Impact of Traditional Chinese Culture on Business-to-Business Relationship Marketing and Service Firm Performance

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This work addresses the mixed findings in relationship marketing studies regarding the importance of traditional culture-level (i.e., interpersonal) relationships on service firm outcomes.

Methodology/approach: This article leverages customer relationship marketing (CRM) theory to advance a framework for understanding the causal relationship between the Chinese cultural worldview and relationship marketing in order to better predict firm performance.

Findings: The author suggests that five major Chinese cultural characteristics—iren-qing, wa-pao, mianzi, chaxu-geju, and collectivism—can qualify the business-to-business (B-to-B) relationship building process and impact the effectiveness of interpersonal and/or group relationships on service firm outcomes.

Research implications: The study’s framework suggests that Chinese cultural characteristics, universal concepts manifest in the activities of Chinese society and organizations, have a positive effect on customer relationship marketing. Chinese culture characteristics can be used to generate excellent relationships with customers and thus create a consumer preference for certain companies and drive service marketing repurchase.

Originality/value/contribution: This study’s theoretical framework (a) distinguishes between Chinese cultural characteristic and relationship marketing relationships; (b) suggests that Chinese cultural characteristics and customer relationship marketing have a positive and substantial effect on service firm performance and that Chinese cultural characteristics are related to customer relationship marketing in their effect on service firm performance; and (c) provides managerially relevant guidelines for strategic sales planning.     

Marketing orientation and activities in the arts-marketing context: Introducing a Visual Artists’ Marketing Trajectory model

Abstract

Answering the call by Fillis, this paper aims to build an ‘arts-marketing orientation’ model by exploring the parallel relationship that exists between the Product Life Cycle (PLC) and the notion of the ‘career trajectory’ (as it applies to visual artists). In so doing, this paper provides a finer-grained understanding of the marketing orientation and activities of visual artists as they progress through their career. Qualitative analysis of the data (and the subsequent development of the Visual Artists’ Marketing Trajectory model) suggests that the marketing orientation and activities undertaken by visual artists deviates significantly from the assumptions underpinning traditional marketing theory. Unlike customer orientation (central to traditional marketing theories), this research suggests that in the arts-marketing context, the marketing orientation and activities of visual artists change according to the career trajectory stage in question.     

The Grape Escape–A FUNdraising Bike Tour for the Multiple Sclerosis Society

ABSTRACT

As the fundraising climate for nonprofit organizations becomes increasingly competitive for the public's attention and charitable giving, social marketing research can help to gather information for mutual benefit. This paper describes a study that evaluated a weekend cycling fundraising event for the Multiple Sclerosis Society to better understand participants' experiences and improve the event. Data were collected via questionnaires (n = 78) revealing perceptions of the benefits and costs of participation, as well as cyclists' ratings of self and external efficacy. Telephone interviews (n = 25) captured participants' reactions to the event's marketing materials and communication strategies. Implications for improving the event to maximize benefits and reduce costs, enhance its marketing, recruit future and retain existing participants and positioning the event are offered.     

A Stakeholder Perspective on Relationship Marketing

Abstract

This paper proposes a broad framework of relationship marketing using the stakeholder approach. Drawing from Peck et al. (1999) framework and proposing several modifications, the authors identify the following relational groups-supplier markets, customer markets (channels), customer markets (end users), competitor markets, external influence markets, and internal markets. The growing importance of strategic alliances is reflected in all constituent groups as well as in a proposed modification of the Berry and Parasuraman (1991) levels of relationships. This paper also re-examines the strategic role of the traditional marketing mix strategies (namely, product, price, place, and promotion) in the new relationship paradigm. Finally, implementation strategies for the stakeholder markets, in general, and customer markets, in particular, are proposed. Several propositions are derived throughout the paper, many of which can be fertile areas for future research investigations.     

Dimensions and Implementation Drivers of Customer Equity Management (CEM)—Conceptual Framework,Qualitative Evidence and Preliminary Results of a Quantitative Study

SUMMARY

Customer equity has become a major marketing goal in many industries. In the existing literature on customer equity, there is a strong emphasis on measuring customer equity (or customer lifetime value), while there is a lack of research on how to manage customer equity and how to implement a systematic Customer Equity Management (CEM). In this paper, based on theoretical considerations as well as on qualitative and quantitative research applying confirmatory factor analysis, we identify three dimensions of Customer Equity Management structuring a firm's CEM activities: analytical CEM, strategic CEM and operational CEM. Further, three types of CEM implementation drivers are identified which represent determinants of the three CEM dimensions. We develop measures for both the three CEM dimensions and the three implementation drivers. These measures help companies evaluating their status regarding CEM and represent the basis for empirical studies regarding the determination and effects of CEM.     

Trends in Executive Education in Business Marketing

ABSTRACT

Business marketers in the 21st century are grappling with the harsh, tough demands of a consolidated customer base, rapid product and service commoditization, complex channel structures, and hyper-competition in a rapidly evolving, information-intensive global economy. Across the globe, firms concerned with developing managerial talent to respond to these trends are demanding and expecting changes in the executive education programs offered by business schools. We consider in this paper a number of recent trends and changes in customer expectations, program format, content development and delivery, and program marketing that we have observed in executive education in the field of business marketing.