Improving firm positioning through enhanced offerings and buyer-seller relationships

We analyze the strategic repositioning of firms through changes in their market offerings and buyer-seller relationships. Based on literature from strategy, marketing, economics, and information systems, we formulate a two-by-two matrix to examine alternatives for positioning. We evaluate the framework with four case studies of companies that have recently moved toward more complete product/service offerings and stronger relational linkages with customers. These moves followed two different paths. The product/service path initially focused on the development of new and related products, product bundles, and the addition of product-related services. The relational path first focused on establishing closer relationships with customers including closer operational linkages, enhanced information sharing, more fully articulated legal and contractual obligations, and enhanced cooperation. In all the cases, the strategic repositioning was influenced by customer needs and enabled by information technology and the acquisition of new competencies through networking.     

Perceptual gaps and similarities in buyer-seller dyadic relationships

The research aims to develop a conceptual framework to explore dyadic relationships across a range of industries, involving firms of different size (Medium Sized Enterprise (MSE) suppliers and Multinational Enterprise (MNE) buyers). The purpose is to explore dyadic views of three different relationship durations, identify where perceptual gaps may exist at the various stages, and address these in order to improve relational exchange. A triangulated methodology is implemented with data initially obtained from fifty-four dyads. These findings suggest: a) similar views are associated with the performance and importance attached to four relationship dimensions measured, b) significant perceptual differences are more apparent in shorter term relationships, c) overall suppliers have stronger views of the relationship, and d) relationships may not necessarily follow a linear development path over time. Three case studies offer qualitative insights, several managerial implications are extracted, and a strategic matrix developed related to the management of different typologies of relationship exchange.     

Developing the organization's sensemaking capability: Precursor to an adaptive strategic marketing response

Effective strategic planning demands that organizations develop an understanding of the forces shaping the situation by engaging the collective efforts and interpretive capabilities of various representatives of the organization. This study investigates the mechanisms by which such an understanding develops and, subsequently, shapes marketing strategy. Specifically, organizations are examined as sensemaking units stimulated by perceived environmental turbulence, cultural open-mindedness, and team functional diversity. These factors are modeled as determinants of an organization's sensemaking capability, which is comprised of communicative, interpretive, and analytical dimensions. This study argues that a developed sensemaking capability increases the potential range of strategic responses and, ultimately, enhances customer-based performance. The results from a sample of wholesale distributors suggest that organizations that maintain greater internal variety are better able to sense and respond to the environment.     

Introduction to the IMM special issue on ‘Project marketing and the marketing of solutions’ A comprehensive approach to project marketing and the marketing of solutions

This introduction to the special issue on ‘Project Marketing and the Marketing of Solutions’ starts by highlighting the major contributions made in the field of project marketing during the last decade. Then it points out the emergence of integrated solutions and details the major challenges facing the marketing of solutions. It concludes on the possible synergies between the marketing of solutions and project marketing.     

Exploring the impact of a supplier portal on the buyer-supplier relationship. The case of Ferrari Auto

This article concentrates on the relationship between companies and their suppliers with a specific focus on the impact that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have on industrial (business to business) purchasing processes. After reviewing the extant literature, we classify the potential impact of ICTs on the buyer-supplier interactions into three main categories, i.e. impact on buyer-supplier relationship, impact on purchase process efficiency and impact on logistics process performance. Whilst scholars generally agree on the impact ICTs may have on buyer-supplier exchanges, they have not investigated concurrently all of these three impacts to understand their comparative relevance and the context in which this comparative relevance may change. In order to redress this gap in the literature our research study focuses on a particular form of ICT solution - supplier portals - and takes a supplier (rather than buyer) perspective. We explore empirical evidence from a single customer-multiple supplier case study, that of the Ferrari Auto supplier portal. Our study leads us to contend that suppliers view such portals as offering far more significant benefits to their relationship with customers than to the improvements in purchase process efficiency or to the performance of buyer-supplier logistics processes. We conclude with a short discussion of the main managerial implications and suggestions for future research.     

Marketers expressing the future: Scenario planning for marketing action

Thomas Friedman exhorts us to imagine the future [1] - we urge marketers to invent the future, to learn the future faster, and to deliver the future earlier. Marketers are asked to develop scenarios about emerging technologies such as broadband wireless but more often than not have no education or training in scenario planning. Also marketers are often stuck in a strategic planning mindset based on successful replication of past marketing strategies. Strategic management and marketing learning has ventured into futures and foresight methodologies, but with strong focus on conventional macroscopic high-level scenario planning methods.This paper positions scenario planning as a method to express the future vision, both tacit and explicit, of business, products and services in a clear succinct story form, to underpin all elements of a marketing strategy (goals, position and execution). The scenario planning for marketing action (SPMA) model is introduced and discussed incorporating eight principles: moderation and time compression; storytelling led new product and service development; customer orientation; iterative dynamic scenarios; complexity science to foster non-linear thinking; risk weighted scenarios; participant hosted scenario workshops; springboard consolidation.The SPMA method was proven and evolved within postgraduate Executive education courses in Sydney and Bangkok from 2003 to 2007. This approach is fundamental for marketers to gain competences in “learning the future faster”, thus possessing capabilities to imagine and invent the future and deliver the future earlier.     

Margin practices and requirements during the National Banking Era: An early example of macro‐prudential regulation

The New York stock market was plagued by a series of financial crises during the National Banking Era, culminating in the Panic of 1907. The traditional view holds that the crises were rooted in structural flaws related to trade settlement as well as excessive and indiscriminate margin lending that remained unaddressed until the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank. An examination of the historical record, however, shows that brokers sought to control contagion and spillover effects through reform of the settlement process and by modulating margin lending rates and maintenance requirements according to macroeconomic conditions, counterparty credit‐worthiness and market volatility. Using newly gathered archival data, we show that the New York Stock Exchange enacted macro‐prudential regulations that may have reduced the severity of crises during this period. By providing early evidence of private sector responses to rising systemic risk, the paper addresses an important aspect of early market microstructure.     

European banking: An overview

Against a background of far-reaching structural change in the banking sector, this article reviews the recent academic literature on developments in European banking. European banking markets have become increasingly integrated in recent years, but barriers to full integration, especially in retail banking, still remain. European integration has possible implications for systemic risk, and poses various challenges for the current supervisory framework. The banks’ responses to the changing competitive environment include the pursuit of strategies of diversification, vertical product differentiation and consolidation. European integration has implications for competition in banking markets, for the nature of long-term borrower-lender relationships, and for the relationships between ownership structure, technological change and bank efficiency. The article concludes by reviewing recent literature on the credit channel in the monetary transmission mechanism, and interest rate pass-through.