The customer value proposition: evolution,development, and application in marketing

The customer value proposition (CVP) has a critical role in communicating how a company aims to provide value to customers. Managers and scholars increasingly use CVP terminology, yet the concept remains poorly understood and implemented; relatively little research on this topic has been published, considering the vast breadth of investigations of the value concept. In response, this article offers a comprehensive review of fragmented CVP literature, highlighting the lack of a strong theoretical foundation; distinguishes CVPs from related concepts; proposes a conceptual model of the CVP that includes antecedents, consequences, and moderators, together with several research propositions; illustrates the application of the CVP concept to four contrasting companies; and advances a compelling agenda for research.     

Consumer reliance on intangible versus tangible attributes in service evaluation: the role of construal level

The services marketing literature has traditionally characterized intangibility as the most critical distinction between services and goods, but in practice service production and consumption often involve both intangible and tangible elements. While prior research has examined and debated service intangibility from the firm’s perspective, what is missing is an understanding of how consumers weigh the relative importance of intangible versus tangible attributes in their service evaluation. Drawing on construal level theory, the authors propose that consumers with a high (vs. low) construal level rely more on intangible (vs. tangible) attributes in service evaluation. Furthermore, the effect of construal level on service evaluation is mediated by imagery vividness, with service type (e.g., experience vs. credence services) serving as a boundary condition. The authors conduct two field studies and two lab experiments and find that under a high construal level, consumers rely more on intangible attributes in their service evaluation and choice formation; under a low construal level, consumers rely more on tangible attributes in their service evaluation and choice. The findings not only offer new insights to help reconcile the disparate perspectives on service intangibility in the literature but also have practical implications on service firms’ positioning strategies that vary across time (e.g., advance selling vs. on-site selling) and space (e.g., near vs. distant outlet), as well as which attributes to emphasize in their marketing communications.     

Sustainable marketing,equity, and economic growth: a resource-advantage,economic freedom approach

Sustainable marketing may be viewed as marketing that is within, and supportive of, sustainable economic development. Peattie (The Marketing Review 2(2):129–146, 2001) maintains that sustainable economic development poses major challenges for marketing. These challenges concern futurity, equity, and needs/wants. This article focuses on the equity and needs/wants challenges of sustainable development and argues that public policies and programs (of wealthy nations, poor countries, or bodies such as the United Nations) can improve economic equity by promoting the economic growth of poor countries. Furthermore, it argues that a major reason why past efforts to promote the economic growth of poor countries have so often failed is that such (allegedly) pro-growth policies have been guided by an impoverished theory of economic growth. Specifically, this article (1) discusses the implications of sustainable development for marketing, (2) shows seven ways that sustainable marketing and resource-advantage (R-A) theory intersect, (3) argues that the cause of sustainable marketing is furthered by promoting economic growth, (4) identifies the two major, radically different, theories of economic growth: neoclassical, static-equilibrium growth theory and dynamic competition growth theory, (5) shows how the two theories make four radically different, testable predictions, and (6) reviews the empirical evidence concerning the four predictions. The article concludes that the equity and needs/wants challenges of sustainable development and the cause of sustainable development more generally can be addressed by poor nations pursuing economic growth, which in turn implies that public policy should focus not on increasing investment, but on institutions that favor economic freedom and dynamic competition.     

Market-focused sustainability: market orientation plus!

The concept of sustainability is increasingly being addressed theoretically by scholars and practically by managers and policymakers. With this growing focus on sustainability efforts, marketing is in a unique position to elevate its focus from managing relationships with customers to strategically managing a broader set of marketplace issues. Overall, an organization achieves market-based sustainability to the extent that it strategically aligns itself with the market-oriented product needs and wants of customers and the interests of multiple stakeholders concerned about social responsibility issues involving economic, environmental, and social dimensions. To set the stage for marketing’s inquiry into sustainability efforts, I briefly review the concept of sustainability, compare it with corporate social responsibility, bring in stakeholders, argue for the notion of “market orientation plus,” and consider the possibility that the notion of what sustainability encompasses is converging in the marketing literature.     

Market-oriented sustainability: a conceptual framework and propositions

Utilizing Resource-Advantage Theory as the underlying theoretical foundation and drawing on literature from a variety of disciplines, we develop a market-oriented sustainability framework. By incorporating sustainability into market orientation, the goal of strategic alignment of sustainability with marketing strategies is achieved to create a competitive advantage. Three constructs identified in the model are DNA, stakeholder involvement, and performance management. These three constructs are the drivers of sustainability. DNA is used as an extended metaphor to clarify and illustrate the workings of an organization and how sustainability may be implemented. This construct includes core ideology, dynamic capabilities, and societal engagement. The firm’s DNA is communicated to both internal and external stakeholders, and stakeholders’ concerns should be an influence on strategic marketing planning. Performance management is the third major construct in the model and includes corporate social performance and corporate financial performance metrics. Within the model explication, we offer propositions to support market-oriented sustainability research and provide directions for sustainability theory, research, and practice.     

Customer relationship management and company performance—the mediating role of new product performance

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is widely accepted as an effective approach for collecting, analyzing, and translating valuable customer information into managerial action. However, the potential of CRM has been investigated only in the context of existing products. CRM’s potential to aid in future new product development (NPD) has been neglected. We develop a conceptual framework in which multiple facets of CRM are linked to new product and company performance. We test this model based on a cross-functional sample consisting of 115 R&D and 122 Marketing managers from firms spanning multiple industries. The results provide evidence that CRM has a positive effect on new product performance and further, that this effect is moderated by CRM reward systems but not CRM technology. We also show that new product performance mediates the relationship between CRM and company performance. These findings have important implications for research and practice in both the CRM and NPD areas.     

Extending the service-dominant logic: from customer centricity to balanced centricity

This is a contribution to the reorientation of marketing. It aligns the service-dominant logic with other developments in marketing and management. It claims that the marketing concept and customer-centricity are too limited as a foundation for marketing and have not—and cannot—but partially be implemented in practice. It urges marketing scholars and educators to accept the complexity of marketing and develop and teach a network-based stakeholder approach—balanced centricity—epitomized by the concept of many-to-many marketing.     

Identity, intended image, construed image, and gnreputation: An interdisciplinary framework and suggested terminology

Many scholars across various academic disciplines are investigating the following questions: What do individuals know or believe about an organization? How does a focal organization (and/or other interested entity) develop, use, and/or change this information? and How do individuals respond to what they know or believe about an organization? Cross-disciplinary research that centers on these questions is desirable and could be enhanced if researchers identify and develop consistent terminology for framing these questions. The authors work toward that end by identifying four central ‘viewpoints’ of an organization and proposing labels to represent each of these viewpoints:identity, intended image, construed image, andreputation.     

Identification management and its bases: Bridging management and marketing perspectives through a focus on affiliation dimensions

There has been growing interest in both management and marketing regarding how individuals become identified with organizations and how organizations attempt to manage these identifications. The authors present a framework built on explicit and implicit points of convergence in research conducted in both these disciplines. In their review of the management and marketing literatures, the authors suggest three fundamental mechanisms, or “bases”, for managing organizational identification: relational, behavioral, and symbolic. Furthermore, the authors argue that how an individual is affiliated with an organization will impact the relative influence of these identification management bases. The authors conclude by suggesting how management and marketing scholars can create a theoretical space for future interdisciplinary work Such a change would involve moving away from “employees” versus “customers” as a prime division between the fields and moving toward a more fine-grained approach that emphasizes the unique characteristics of individual-organizational relationships. M. Teresa Cardador (cardador@uiuc.edu) is a doctoral student in management at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research explores issues related to workplace attachment and identification, work orientation, and the experience of employees who find work highly meaningful and engaging. Michael G. Pratt (mpratt@uiuc.edu) is a James F. Towey Fellow and an associate professor of management at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. His articles have appeared in leading management outlets, includingAdministrative Science Quarterly, theAcademy of Management Journal, theAcademy of Management Review, andResearch in Organizational Behavior. He recently coedited (with Anat Rafaeli) a book titledArtifacts and Organizations: Beyond Mere Symbolism (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005). His current research examines issues of organizational attachment (e.g., identification and commitment), multiple identities and meaning, and intuition. Dr. Pratt’s work focuses largely on professionals in both traditional and dispersed work contexts.     

Bank–firms topology in Italy

An empirical analysis of the Italian system of banks and firms is carried out using the network theory. The emerging architecture of this economic network shows peculiar behaviors: (i) Multiple lending is very widespread; (ii) Small firms are preferentially financed by small banks; (iii) Large firms are financed by many banks; (iv) the ratio between loans and deposits is much higher for large banks than for small banks, while (v) strong size heterogeneity appears among co-financing banks, and (vi) the spanning-tree is very hierarchical.