Mastering the complementarity between marketing mix and customer-focused capabilities to enhance new product performance

Purpose: This study addresses the extent that the deployment of and complementarity between marketing mix, brand management, and customer relationship management capabilities provide firms the capacity to transform their market knowledge into effective responsive actions that help to achieve new product success. Methodology: A questionnaire was used as the primary means of data collection. Data from 160 large B2B firms across a variety of industries in Iran were analyzed using partial least squares regression to test the hypothesized paths. Findings: The results show that (a) market-oriented firms are better at deploying marketing mix, brand management, and customer relationship management capabilities, and these capabilities help to drive new product performance and (b) the complementarity between these marketing capabilities enhances the firm’s capacity to achieve new product success more than deploying each capability in isolation. Contributions: In contrast to many existing studies, this study is the first to examine the role of marketing mix, brand management, and customer relationship management capabilities and their complementarity as intervening mechanisms in the relationship between MO and new product performance. Further, this study extends the marketing literature by investigating the role of different forms of marketing capabilities in a complementary fashion in the context of a Middle-Eastern economy

The effect of materialism, gender and nationality on consumer perception of a high priced brand

This study examines the link between materialism, gender and nationality with consumers’ perception of a high priced brand of apparel. The work focuses on the differences in perception of a high priced brand. It indicates that young people hold different perceptions of a brand depending on their sex and nationality. The study also examines the materialistic tendencies of customers, focussing on gender and nationality differences. Five research questions were put forward and the results indicated that there is a difference in perception of a high priced brand between domestic and international customers and between customers of different sex.. However, materialism was found to have little effect on brand perceptions.Rajeev Kamineni, Aron O’ Cas

Achieving new product success via the synchronization of exploration and exploitation across multiple levels and functional areas

While ambidexterity has been identified as a critical prerequisite for new product success, synchronizing exploration and exploitation in practice represents a multifaceted enigma. Ambidexterity is not in reality limited to a single organizational level, or a specific functional area. Firms become ambidextrous when corporate-level exploratory and exploitative strategies interact with operational-level exploratory and exploitative capabilities across multiple functional areas. Data from a sample of technology-intensive industrial firms using a multi-informant design shows that operational-level exploratory and exploitative product innovation and marketing capabilities allow firms to implement corporate-level exploratory and exploitative strategies in the context of new product development (NPD). Further, the findings reveal that the integration of exploratory product innovation–exploratory marketing and exploitative product innovation–exploitative marketing is significant for the implementation of exploratory and exploitative strategies over deploying each capability in isolation. Finally, we show that the implementation of exploratory and exploitative strategies drives new product success through creating distinct positional advantages to customers in the form of both differentiation and cost efficiency. These positional advantages help to better explain the effects of exploratory and exploitative capabilities on new product market performance.11 page(s

Do professional service firms benefit from customer and supplier collaborations in competitive, turbulent environments?

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Do professional service firms benefit from customer and supplier collaborations in competitive, turbulent environments? journaltitle: Industrial Marketing Management articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.02.011 content_type: article copyright: Crown Copyright © 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Do professional service firms benefit from customer and supplier collaborations in competitive, turbulent environments? journaltitle: Industrial Marketing Management articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.02.011 content_type: article copyright: Crown Copyright © 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Local political marketing in the context of the conservative party

Local political marketing can be defined as marketing related strategy, activities, and tactics implemented by a political party in a local geographic constituency, in order to attempt to maximise aggregate potential voter satisfaction, and therefore maximise total number of votes and electoral support in the constituency. Through 12 in-depth interviews with Local Constituency Party representatives from the Conservative Party, the study found that local political marketing was acknowledged by a majority of respondents although this was not unequivocal, and was frequently conflated with campaigning. Local political marketing was associated with: visual identity, language/messages, values, image, communication devices, awareness raising, data management and targeting, and simplification. The support from higher levels of the party in local political marketing was varied across constituencies. There was evidence of growing coordination /influence by higher levels of the party in local political marketing. However, this tended to be in seats judged as ‘winnable’

Exploring the role of individual level and firm level dynamic capabilities in SMEs’ internationalization

This paper presents a multi-level model that examines the impact of dynamic capabilities on the internationalization of SMEs while taking into account the interactions among them. The purpose of the research is to understand the applicability of dynamic capabilities at the individual and the firm level to the SME internationalization process in developing country context and to assess to what extent a firm’s asset position and individual level dynamic capabilities influence the generation of firm level dynamic capabilities in SMEs. First, the dynamic capabilities theory was theoretically linked to the internationalization phenomenon. The relationships among firm-level dynamic capabilities, individual-level dynamic capabilities (owner specific dynamic capabilities), and internationalization were identified. The research framework and hypotheses were developed and empirically tested with 197 SMEs. The findings established that owner-specific dynamic capabilities have a positive influence on both firm dynamic capabilities and internationalization, and firm dynamic capabilities positively influence internationalization. It was also found that the market assets position measured as perceptual environmental dynamism positively influenced firm dynamic capabilities but structural and reputational asset positions of SMEs did not influence generation of firm dynamic capabilities. Moreover, firm dynamic capabilities had a mediation effect in the relationship between owner-specific dynamic capabilities and internationalization. Theoretically, this confirms the relevance of dynamic capability theory to internationalization and the possibility of integrating existing internationalization theories. Entrepreneurs, SME managers, and policy-makers could gain valuable insights on how entrepreneur and firm capabilities lead to better international prospects from this outcome