Trust and direct marketing environments: A consumer perspective

The desire to establish long‐term customer relationships has led companies to consider normative as well as outcome related aspects of relationship development. Much of the research undertaken in this field has focused upon such activity in business‐to‐business markets. The current study sought to examine these issues, from the consumer perspective, in relation to approaches made by firms using direct marketing techniques, specifically direct mail. Empirical assessment was made of a sample of consumers in relation to their receptivity to product and service offerings from firms, and the effects of commitment, trust and privacy concerns upon this receptivity. In conclusion, some implications for marketing practice in developing customer relationships in direct marketing environments are discussed.     

Content,Pedagogy, and Learning Outcomes in the International Marketing Course

Abstract

The early internationalization of business school curricula was in response to corporate needs and expectations, and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International) fostered changes by instituting accreditation outcomes that focused upon international content in the curriculum. By the late 1990s, a course in international marketing was standard at most accredited college and universities, and faculty in these courses reported on various approaches to teaching the course. The main objective of the current study was to examine the course content, pedagogy, and learning outcomes of current international marketing courses. As such, a content analysis of international marketing syllabi from 89 colleges and universities was conducted. Findings from this indepth analysis offer insights regarding knowledge content coverage, pedagogical strategy, and learning outcomes assessment and provide an update on the current status of teaching international marketing in schools of business.     

Master's Level Education in Business Marketing: Quo Vadis?

ABSTRACT

Given the paucity of knowledge on the state of business marketing education at the master's level, we conducted an exploratory survey of instructors at selected universities in North America and Europe. We supplemented results from this survey with discussions with our colleagues who teach business marketing at the master's level, and a review of articles on master's level programs.

Through our investigations, we discovered that there is a shortage of management cases that address contemporary issues in business marketing. We learned that nearly half of survey participants do not use a textbook and that the remaining participants use a wide variety of textbooks. We observed that many instructors still teach business marketing courses from a traditional functional perspective. Instead, we believe that business marketing courses must address a host of emerging issues such as value and its assessment, business process reengineering, global marketing, working relationships and business networks, and cross-functional coordination issues, among other things.

We believe that scholars can rejuvenate the discipline by tailoring business marketing courses to the new generation of accelerated master's programs, by creating a network for sharing information on new cases and teaching materials, and by writing more relevant and timely business marketing cases. Finally, we believe that the time is right for a faculty consortium on teaching business marketing.     

CCT applied research and the limits of consumers’ heroicisation

Abstract

The sum total of the research produced by Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) researchers has enabled a spectacular improvement in our understanding of markets and consumption. Yet, this knowledge has struggled to penetrate the business world due to a dearth of practical proposals appealing to managers looking for action-guiding toolkits. Based on a relatively small corpus of CCT-related articles published in the main applied journals with academic values, the present article traces the contours of CCT managerial knowledge revolving around the concept of cultural branding and composed of four main approaches: relationship marketing, retromarketing, tribal marketing and collaborative marketing. The article also synthesises the contributions that CCT researchers propose for each of these approaches and discusses the limits of the heroicisation of the consumers. The conclusion looks at potential research paths for the dissemination of CCT applied kind of knowledge.     

Commentary on “Business-to-Business Marketing Textbooks: A Comparative Review”

ABSTRACT

The proposal by Backhaus, Muehlfeld, and Okoye (2002) to design a business marketing text around a framework of customer-relationship types is provocative and spawns a useful debate on the issue of what should actually be taught in the business marketing course, particularly at the undergraduate level. We believe that the approach may increase the attention given to relationship marketing but do so by sacrificing coverage of core content that students and informed business marketing managers need to know. In the end, we opt for a more comprehensive approach in exploring strategy making for the business market while they chart a narrower and more specialized path.     

The Global and Regional Dispersion of Publishing in the Field of International Marketing

ABSTRACT

This paper empirically examines the research productivity of academic institutions in the leading international marketing journals, leading generalist marketing journals, and leading international business journals between the years 1999 and 2003 from a regional and country-specific perspective. The research found that across the three groups of journals, the majority of works were authored by academics at institutions located in North America, although North Americans contribute significantly less in the international marketing and international business journals than leading generalist marketing journals. The findings suggest that there is a broadening of non-U.S. influence within the international marketing and international business journals, which should lead to a broadening of international marketing theory.     

Business Marketing Education: A Distinctive Role in the Undergraduate Curriculum

ABSTRACT

By extending their knowledge of markets beyond the consumer-goods domain, by deepening their understanding of how organizations make buying decisions, by strengthening their grasp of cross-functional processes, and by providing them with decision-making skills in this important area of marketing, the business marketing course makes a special contribution to undergraduates and the undergraduate marketing curriculum. Moreover, the content and focus of the business marketing course are closely tied to important themes that are transforming business practice. This article isolates the distinct contribution of business marketing education and examines important trends that are reshaping this domain. The central knowledge areas that comprise the undergraduate business marketing course are detailed and linked to specific course design strategies that can be pursued to strengthen the skill set of marketing students and respond to the needs of important constituents.     

Party time: recreation rituals in the world of B2B

Abstract

We examine the role of business parties in business markets: why do B2B companies spend such large amounts of money to sponsor events meant for public consumption, such as sporting events, when most of their activity involves selling to other organisations? Drawing from extensive qualitative fieldwork in the world of tennis tournaments, we detail the specific universe of parties that happen backstage, between companies sponsoring these events. This context helps illuminate the critical role of business parties in business networks. Far from being mere recreation at the company’s expense, business parties are important opportunities for executives to develop and manage their relationships. We show that a business party functions as a particular kind of ritual by creating a distinct universe with its own language, gestures, and other modes of interaction.

Summary statement of contribution Our theoretical contribution to the literature on relationship marketing is to detail the unifying function of business parties in local business markets, where relationships with a variety of organisations are key to a company’s success. Our methodological contribution is to illustrate the relevance of anthropological approaches and concepts, such as rituals, to the world of B2B.     

A Reply to the Commentaries on “Business Marketing: A Twenty Year Review”

ABSTRACT

In this article the authors respond to the commentaries by Professors Spekman, Wilson, and Woodside on their article, “Business Marketing: A Twenty Year Review” and share their thoughts on the future of business marketing. In responding to the commentaries, the authors concede that while their review has started the dialogue, much remains to be done. They conclude with a call for the establishment of a broad-based research task force to develop a research agenda and to coordinate research efforts that systematically address the key problems facing business marketing and research practices in business marketing.     

Examining the Role of Brand Equity in Business Markets: A Model,Research Propositions,and Managerial Implications

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a model of brand equity for business markets. It is argued that the potential benefits of branding and brand equity development have been neglected in business markets and that a general model and stream of relevant empirical research could be useful to managers in business markets depending on the situational nature of their market and competitive structure. The model adapts and extends existing brand equity literature to reflect the unique aspects involved in a business-to-business marketing context. The model developed considers marketing strategies as antecedents, two different classes of moderator variables, brand equity as a perception by the buyer or the market, a series of consequences of brand equity perceptions, and perceived risk as a moderator of the brand equity-consequences relationship. Propositions have been defined and discussed to help facilitate research and provide guidelines for industrial marketing managers.     

A Commentary on “Business Marketing in Master's Programs: A Part of the Fabric”: Cut from the Same Cloth?

ABSTRACT

The authors of this article and their colleagues at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario are to be commended not only for this well-crafted article but also for their efforts to elevate and incorporate essential knowledge of business marketing into the fabric of their school's master's program. The provocative argument that the authors make is that business marketing behaviors, concepts and topics should not be the focus of just one elective course but that they should serve as a foundation of a school's entire master's program. According to the authors, that foundation can be built around four pillars or business marketing essentials-organizational buyer behavior, relationship marketing, customer value, and business markets. In this article, they present not only a process and guidelines for imbedding these pillars into a master's program but also recommend specific topics and cases for various master's level courses. For these reasons, this article is a “must read” for marketing scholars who seek not only to create and/or improve elective courses business marketing but also to enhance the prominence of the study of business marketing at their respective universities.     

Marketing planning: Operationalising the market orientation strategy

Abstract

Despite strong empirical validation of the relationship between market orientation and business performance, the literature is inconclusive on the implementation of the strategy. This paper reviews the implementation of market orientation, and investigates the associations between market orientation and marketing planning and their associations with business performance. A survey of 216 Australian larger business organisations was conducted to find evidence of these relationships. The results highlight a close association between market orientation and marketing planning, with virtually the same level of association between them, and the business performance measures used. This evidence suggests that they arguably represent the same domain. The results suggest that marketing practitioners may use the marketing planning technique as an intangible productive resource to operationalise the market orientation strategy, and use it to design a specific style and magnitude of market orientation suitable for an organisation.     

Evolving Relationship Marketing into a Discipline

Abstract

Relationship marketing is considered a paradigm change in both academic and practitioner literature. However, despite its popularity, relationship marketing has not yet evolved into becoming a discipline. The authors propose focus on eight areas to help relationship marketing evolve into a discipline. They compare the successful evolution of consumer behavior, services marketing and marketing strategy with the failure of international marketing, social marketing and business marketing as a discipline.     

Relational marketing: development,debates and directions

Abstract

Relationship marketing (RM) is an umbrella term for a loose collection of ideas and concepts that emerged in different empirical contexts from the late 1970s. Informed by diverse research traditions, it represented at one and the same time an extension of existing ideas within marketing management and a very different way of thinking about marketing. Though cooperation has not been a core element of the marketing management lexicon, debates about cooperation and competition predate the 1970s. Moreover, re-engaging with relational perspectives raises important questions about managerial autonomy and about the utility of the market as a regulating force. The paper calls for the development of a more realistic theory of networks with inputs from both business and consumer marketing contexts.     

Small business is big business

The number of small business start‐ups in the UK continues to increase. This article discusses the stages of business and marketing development that a small business can expect to encounter. Success in business depends upon a number of factors, these are described and discussed under the headings of individual qualities and key components.     

Marketing planning in the larger family business

In recent decades a considerable literature on marketing planning has accumulated. The larger part relates to marketing planning in big firms with specialized, professional managers. There are books on the subject, like that of Malcolm McDonald which has gone through several editions, and there is also a steady stream of articles in the academic journals. In addition, the marketing planning activities of big firms are referred to by many more writers in the overlapping but broader contexts of “strategic marketing” and “strategic planning”. A lesser part of the literature relates to marketing planning in small firms. The small firms in question are usually very small. Typically they are owner‐managed and employ just a handful of people in a single location. The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature by examining a medium‐sized firm; a category which seems to have been neglected by researchers.

Most modern economies are characterized by a significant group of middle‐sized firms, still owner‐managed, but with multi‐million dollar turnovers. Many of these remain family companies and constitute an important reservoir of business initiative. One such family business is the focus of this study. Given the relative lack of scrutiny of such firms to date, the author decided to conduct an in depth evaluation from within one large, family firm rather than seek by means of questionnaire to obtain information from a significant sample of the group. The results of the study suggest that neither the existing typologies of small firm approaches to marketing nor the formal models of marketing planning attributed to big companies necessarily characterize the marketing planning and management of larger, family businesses.     

Improving relationships between sales and marketing: the relative effectiveness of cross-functional coordination mechanisms

ABSTRACT

The importance of effective sales and marketing working relationships is well known and this article examines the effectiveness of various coordination mechanisms used to improve this cross-functional relationship. Six coordination mechanisms are measured to identify their effect on sales and marketing conflict and collaboration, which in turn influence business performance. The results reveal that not all coordination mechanisms are equally effective. Structuring sales and marketing as a single unit and creating cross-functional project teams improve the interface, as do providing opportunities for job rotation and establishing cross-functional meetings. However, employing cross-functional training and co-locating sales and marketing do not influence this working relationship. Finally, reducing conflict and increasing collaboration between sales and marketing is shown to independently, and positively, influence business performance.     

Marketing capability—A key success factor in small business?

This article focuses on the marketing problems of small manufacturing companies. The principal thesis is that marketing is generally perceived from too narrow a perspective. A more comprehensive and yet detailed view of marketing should benefit small business management. The authors develop a marketing capability framework which can be used as a qualitative tool for examining the “state‐of‐the‐art” of marketing in small manufacturing companies. This marketing capability framework is employed in examining the performance of 36 Finnish and Swedish companies using case study analysis.