Effective forms of market orientation across the business cycle: A longitudinal analysis of business-to-business firms

Macroeconomic developments, such as the business cycle, have a remarkable influence on firms and their performance. In business-to-business (B-to-B) markets characterized by a strong emphasis on long-term customer relationships, market orientation (MO) provides a particularly important safeguard for firms against fluctuating market forces. Using panel data from an economic upturn and downturn, we examine the effectiveness of different forms of MO (i.e., customer orientation, competitor orientation, interfunctional coordination, and their combinations) on firm performance in B-to-B firms. Our findings suggest that the impact of MO increases especially during a downturn, with interfunctional coordination clearly boosting firm performance and, conversely, competitor orientation becoming even detrimental. The findings further indicate that both the role of MO and its most effective forms vary across industry sectors, MO having a particularly strong impact on performance among B-to-B service firms. The findings of our study provide guidelines for executives to better manage performance across the business cycle and tailor their investments in MO more effectively, according to the firm's specific industry sector.     

Market-driving versus market-driven: Divergent roles of market orientation in business relationships

This study focuses on market orientation (MO) and customer intimacy (CI) in business-to-business marketing. These are generally regarded as key success factors in marketing. The authors argue, however, that the relationship between MO and customer relationship has not been properly examined, nor has its dependence on a firm's strategic market posture been understood. A contingency framework is proposed to test the postulated relationships between the key constructs. Our results indicate a strong positive association between MO and CI. Furthermore, this linkage is clearly influenced by the market focus and business logic adopted. In managerial terms, business executives must carefully match the strategic posture of the firm, its MO, and customer relationship management (CRM). Our findings strongly support a contingency modeling approach in studying the factors underlying marketing performance in business markets.     

Marketing metrics' usage: Its predictors and implications for customer relationship management

This research aims to determine the conditions that foster use of marketing metrics in customer relationship management (CRM) and identify the organizational factors that strengthen/weaken the impact of usage of marketing metrics on CRM performance. Based on the customer value-based theory of the firm and the contingency perspective, a research framework was developed to shed light on the predictor roles of customer value-based organizational culture and processes in determining usage of marketing metrics, and foster an understanding of the moderating roles of marketing-supply chain conflict, and innovative value proposition on the marketing metric-performance relationships. Empirical evidence from a sample of 209 business firms confirmed the main effect that customer value-based organizational culture and processes support a firm's use of marketing metrics that in turn enhance its CRM performance. Notable moderating effects were also identified. Although marketing-supply chain conflict weakens the impact of marketing metrics usage in achieving superior CRM performance, innovative value proposition strengthens the conversion of marketing-metric-related knowledge into superior CRM performance.     

The development and diffusion of customer relationship management (CRM) intelligence in business-to-business environments

CRM data is among the most important and comprehensive information available to management in many organizations. This is particularly the case in business-to-business marketing, where the firm's extended working relationship with its customers is frequently crucial for the maintenance of a healthy business. However, in many instances management has treated CRM data as highly specific to its client relationships and has therefore neglected to analyze this information across market segments, customer categories, and customer–firm relationship forms in order to draw meaningful conclusions for driving business decisions.     

A process-oriented perspective on customer relationship management and organizational performance: An empirical investigation

Research on the CRM-performance link has been fragmented due to various perspectives on CRM. This study, considering different concepts of CRM, proposes a process-oriented framework for examining the relationship among CRM resources, CRM process capabilities, and organizational performance. Based on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, CRM resources are classified as “technological CRM resources” and “infrastructural CRM resources”. Data from 77 Iranian Internet service provider firms were gathered in a field survey. The empirical work indicates that the measured constructs demonstrate key psychometric properties including reliability and validity. The results reveal that CRM processes are more affected by infrastructural CRM resources rather than technological CRM resources. Moreover, the findings indicate that firms with improved CRM process capabilities enjoy better organizational performance.     

A CRM performance measurement framework: Its development process and application

We suggest a performance measurement framework called a customer relationship management (CRM) scorecard to diagnose and assess a firm's CRM practice. The CRM scorecard was developed through a rigorous and stepwise development process collaborated with a number of firms in a variety of industries. During the development process, we conducted an extensive literature review to build a theoretical causal map, in-depth interviews with practitioners to extract a hierarchical map from industrial perspectives, feasibility tests to check whether or not Key Performance Indicators (KPI) could be measured, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) analysis to prioritize the evaluation factors on the CRM scorecard. The CRM scorecard contains antecedent/subsequent and objective/perceptual evaluation factors in four different perspectives to comprehensively measure corporate CRM capability and readiness. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed CRM scorecard, we apply the framework to a retail bank in Korea well-known for its exemplary CRM strategy.     

The impact of market orientation on the development of relational capabilities and performance outcomes: The case of Russian industrial firms

The article investigates the role of market orientation as an antecedent for the development of relational capabilities and performance in Russian industrial firms. We test the direct role of different aspects of market orientation on business performance in comparison to an indirect and mediated influence via improving a firm's ability to become embedded in relational structures. The results of an empirical study demonstrate the differential impact of components of market orientation - customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination - as direct and indirect antecedents of relational capabilities and thus subsequently of overall firm performance. It can be shown that in Russian industrial markets competitor orientation directly and positively impacts on performance, while the other two components of market orientation have only a mediated effect on performance via the development of relational capabilities.     

Customer relationship management: Finding value drivers

Despite significant interest from both academicians and practitioners, customer relationship management (CRM) remains a huge investment with little measured payback. Intuition suggests that increased management of customer relationships should improve business performance, but this intuition has only inconsistent empirical or real world support. To remedy this situation, this study identifies a core group of expected CRM benefits and examines their ability to increase a firm's value equity, brand equity and relationship equity which are components of customer equity. Ten propositions explore the anticipated effects of these drivers and form an agenda for future research. These propositions establish a framework for measuring CRM and supporting the link between CRM and performance.     

我国医药企业客户关系管理系统平台建设着力点简论

需求的拉动、信息技术的推动和管理理念的更新，由于这三方面的驱动，客户关系管理系统在我国企业中得到了大量的应用，医药企业也不例外。本文简略探讨了客户关系管理（CRM）系统与我国医药企业结合的状况及平台建设的着力点.     

Using supply chain management to leverage a firm's market orientation

Building supplier relationships and becoming more market oriented have similar building blocks and have similar effects. Strong supplier relationships tend to impact the firm's performance, in part, because the firm can respond to customer needs in a more timely fashion. Supplier relationships tend to be stronger in firms where there is cross-functional sharing of supplier and customer information. Market orientation is an organizational culture that focuses the company on generating market information, cross-functionally sharing that market information, and rapidly responding to that market information to positively impact the performance of the firm. This study explored whether the positive effects of strong supplier relationships are enhanced in market-oriented firms. Results support the notion that supplier relationships are one way of leveraging a firm's market orientation through improved customer responsiveness. Cross-functional sharing of information appears to be the link that ties market orientation and stronger supplier relationships together.     

SOCO's impact on individual sales performance: The integration of selling skills as a missing link

Conventional wisdom suggests that a customer orientation is a vital cornerstone upon which the success of salespeople is predicated in terms of serving their customers and prospects. However, at a pragmatic level, not all salespeople practice a customer-oriented philosophy in their day-to-day selling. In fact, decades of sales research provide largely inconclusive results with respect to individual salespersons' customer orientation and performance outcomes. We argue that for customer orientation to be a predictor of sales performance, specific selling skills must be present. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate that without these requisite selling skills, salespeople are better off utilizing a sales orientation approach, as opposed to a customer orientation approach. More provocatively, this research shows that a “missing link” in the long standing body of research on the SOCO (sales orientation/customer orientation) perspective is that specific selling skills can impact sales performance directly as well as moderate the impact that both a “sales orientation” and a “customer orientation” ultimately have on sales performance.     

Firm orientations, innovativeness, and business performance: Advancing a system dynamics view following a comment on Hult, Hurley, and Knight's 2004 study

Hult, Hurley, and Knight's [Ind. Mark. Manage. 33 (2004) 429.] study reports correlations for each of the three subfactors of market orientation (competitor orientation, customer orientation, and interfunctional coordination) and innovativenss. However, their report fails to discuss the nature of these relationships. Such findings are worthy of discussion because they support prior evidence demonstrating the centrality of customer orientation in linking competitor orientation and interfunctional coordination with both innovativeness and business performance. Also, the finding that interfunctional coordination relates strongly with innovativeness supports the paradigm shift toward relationship marketing. The point needs mentioning that several different (more than one) standardized effects, structural equation models explain similar amounts of variance of business performance besides the models that Hult et al. examine. Thus, the implication by Hult et al. (p. 436) that “…learning orientation has no significant direct effect on performance” is accurate only for the model tested (shown in their Fig. 2). Applying the “quick clustering” method helps to inform interpretation when nearly all relationships among variables are statistically significant. The present article includes a proposal for advancing from one-directional structural equation modeling of innovativeness and business performance to system dynamics modeling that includes real-world feedback loops.     

Performance implications of the direct and moderating effects of centralization and formalization on customer orientation

Drawing on the control literature in marketing and management, this paper addresses the direct and moderating effects of control mechanisms on the formation and implementation of customer orientation. The key focus of this paper is to examine how two of the most widely studied control mechanisms — centralization and formalization — affect customer orientation formation and implementation differently. We hypothesize that centralization will reduce the effect of the formation and implementation of customer orientation. In contrast, we expect formalization to negatively influence the formation of customer orientation but bolster the impact of customer orientation on firm performance. Furthermore, we hypothesize a three-way interaction among customer orientation, centralization, and formalization on firm performance. Using top management team (e.g. CEO) data from leading firms in the industrial production sector, our results support the universal negative role of centralization on customer orientation formation and implementation. For formalization, our results did not support a negative effect on the development of customer orientation, but supported a positive effect on the implementation of customer orientation. Finally, customer orientation was found to have a positive effect on firm performance when a decentralized organization was coupled with formalization.     

Sales force automation systems: An analysis of factors underpinning the sophistication of deployed systems in the UK financial services industry

This study investigates organizational and strategic context variables that are linked to the sophistication of sales force automation systems in UK financial services firms. We find that increasing sophistication in SFA deployment, evaluated as a count of the number of types of results of sales campaigns that are measured, is driven directly by the information orientation of the host firm. We also find that the “sophistication” of deployed systems is, in fact, limited — the information held on the systems cannot underpin the strategic goals of the sales/marketing managers. We theorise that adoption of SFA systems is driven by managerial imperatives and that these have resulted in sales force resistance — shown by the paucity of information held on adopted SFA systems.     

The B2B-RELPERF scale and scorecard: Bringing relationship marketing theory into business-to-business practice

It is becoming increasingly important from both theoretical and managerial perspectives to measure Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as a key intangible asset. This paper seeks to bring relationship marketing theory into practice by developing a new measure of relationship performance between two firms, the business-to-business relationship performance (B2B-RELPERF) scale. Survey findings from a sample of approximately 400 purchasing managers operating in a B2B e-marketplace reveal that relationship performance is a high-order concept, composed of several distinct, yet related, dimensions: (1) relationship policies and practices, (2) relationship commitment; (3) trust in the relationship, (4) mutual cooperation; and (5) relationship satisfaction. Findings reveal that the B2B-RELPERF scale relates positively and significantly with customer loyalty. The paper also presents the B2B-RELPERF balanced scorecard, which combines tangible and intangible metrics. While existing IT solutions usually focus exclusively on the use of tangible CRM indicators, this new tool includes the “voice of the customer”. At the managerial level, both the scale and scorecard could act as useful instruments for short- and long-term management, controlling, planning, and improvement of B2B relationships. Implications for relationship marketing theory are also presented.     

Market orientation and new-to-the-world products: Exploring the moderating effects of innovativeness, competitive strength, and environmental forces

Recently, there has been a keen research interest in exploring the relationship between market orientation and new product development. The empirical results, however, are mixed, and this means that we do not fully understand these linkages. Furthermore, research concerning the antecedents of new-to-the-world products has focused on the study of a single product. However, it is of obvious interest for organizations to understand what drives a firm's overall performance in the exercise of developing very innovative products. In this empirical study, the authors take a component-wise approach to investigate the effects of market orientation in new-to-the-world product innovation, and examine how other variables interplay with market orientation to affect product development. Firstly, the findings show that both customer and competitor orientations, together with interfunctional coordination, are important drivers of a firm's new-to-the-world product innovation. Secondly, the results indicate that the components of market orientation are differentially moderated by a firm's innovativeness, competitive strength, and also by environmental forces.     

Developing customised CRM projects: The role of industry norms,organisational context and customer expectations on CRM implementation

This research paper investigates the influence of industry, organisational, and customer context on customer relationship management (CRM) projects. Organisations go through four phases in their CRM projects (assessment, design, implementation, and evaluation), yet the impact of industry norms, organisational contexts, and customer expectations on each phase are rarely examined. A longitudinal case study approach with six cases was used to investigate the potential impact of contextual factors on CRM projects. The cases covered a range of industries, organisational structures, and customer types. We found that current industry conditions and customer expectations influence the reasons for undertaking CRM and the assessment stage of the project. The organisational context has a noticeable impact on the design and implementation project stages. At the evaluation level, customer responses combined with organisational expectations affect the perceived success of the projects. By understanding the impact of context, customised CRM projects can be developed.     

Utilization of business technologies: Managing relationship-based benefits for buying and supplying firms

There is increasing evidence to suggest that organizations often fail to fully capitalize on the purchased business technologies due to their failure to utilize the new procurement throughout their corporate system. To this end, this study sets out to identify the factors that play a tangible role in facilitating the utilization of procured business technologies. In this context, we not only examine the direct effects of technology and organizational culture on utilization, but also assess the moderating effects of user environments and supplier service orientation on these direct relationships. More importantly, we focus on the impact of utilization in creating the relationship-based benefits for both the technology user and supplier. Using data on purchase and use of customer relationship management (CRM) system, we empirically validate that the user firm's corporate culture, perceived technology attributes, environmental turbulence, and the supplying firm's service orientation are critical in increasing the utilization level of business technologies, which in turn helps to create/sustain relationship-based advantages for both parties.     

Outward-looking and future-oriented customer value potential management: The sales force value appropriation role

The management of customer relationships based on customers’ value to the selling firm has been a central topic in marketing research for decades. Yet, extant research has devoted only scant attention to the management of customer future value potential, focusing mostly on advanced statistical modeling based on firm-internal and historical data, which often lacks relevance in B-to-B settings. We employ a longitudinal intervention study, rooted in a constructive research approach, to assess the relevance of a novel customer value potential management model in business markets. The results, based on realized sales and customer portfolio dynamics, demonstrate that a firm can effectively manage customer value potential by adopting a non-statistical, sales force-driven analysis perspective. Further, the study presents evidence for the effectiveness of combinative outward-looking and future-oriented value potential criteria in value potential analysis. Finally, the findings demonstrate how a supplier can proactively manage customer portfolio dynamics in the long run by systematically enhancing its competitive position and capitalizing on customers’ organic growth at individual customer account level, through the interplay of organizational value management and sales force value appropriation efforts.     

Leadership, the buying center, and supply chain performance: A study of linked users, buyers, and suppliers

With conceptual foundations taken from leadership theory and the resource-based view (RBV), this study examines the influence of transactional and transformational leadership on the relationship between the value of the corporate buying center and performance in supply chains. The sample consists of 58 directly linked and matched supply chains, each composed of one user (internal customer), one corporate buyer, and one external supplier. The results indicate that transformational leadership has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the value of the corporate buying center and performance, while transactional leadership negatively moderates this relationship. Two “localness” dimensions (formalization and centralization) and two “openness” dimensions (participative and reflective) were included as controls in the analysis.