Marketing Challenges and Advertising Partner Selection:Exploring Advertiser-Agency Relationships in the Danish Media Industry

Purpose: Agencies traditionally play the role of intermediaries between advertisers and media. Digital innovations and the rise of media platforms created multiple new channels to reach audiences and therefore provided opportunities and challenges for advertisers. In this research we map out advertisers’ marketing-related challenges and explore how these challenges influence agency partner selection. Methodology: Our study is based on a survey of 146 larger Danish advertisers, using a combination of open and closed questions. An inductive thematic analysis resulted in the identification of 13 different marketing challenges, that we linked to the use of different types of agencies. Closed questions were aimed at identifying for example whether advertisers aim for more in-sourcing, or out-sourcing of marketing activities to agencies. Findings/Contribution: This research firstly reveals the challenges of advertisers in today’s media market. Secondly, we discuss how agencies adopted new business models to answer different needs of their clients. Thirdly, the findings suggest that almost all surveyed advertisers use multiple agencies to solve their marketing challenges but prefer to maintain control over these agencies. The findings update what we know about marketing challenges for advertisers and suggest an altered academic perspective on the complexity around agency selection, and the role of the advertising agency

A study on attendance and academic achievement

In this study we attempt to answer Romer’s (1993) question: “Should attendance be mandatory?” Contrary to many existing studies, we conclude that in the case of business and management programs the answer is ‘no’. In a study of over 900 undergraduate strategy students, spanning four academic years, we examine the link between attendance and exam results. Unlike prior research on this topic, our findings show that attendance is not the best determinant of student performance. We find instead that the best determinant of student performance for third year bachelor students is their over-all degree classification, which we see as a proxy for academic ability. We suggest that attendance may simply be a reflection of student conscientiousness, engagement and motivation. We also challenge the assumptions about gender differences found in prior research on student attendance and student performance. We do not find such differences to be consistently significant in our study

Managing the Dual Business Model Trade-off in Multinational Corporations

When a multinational operates different business models in different markets, a trade-off typically exists between local-market adaptations and cross-market economies of scale and scope. How do country managers navigate these trade-offs and the tensions inherent in developing and operating such dual business models? In this short paper we explore how a local subsidiary can innovate its business model in a way that creates alignment with the local market while respecting the larger corporate structure. We study the Chinese subsidiary of Velux, a multinational window manufacturer, that has transformed its business model from simple production to engineering, and further to modular solutions. We show that by respecting both the corporate strategic mission and the corporate culture, in combination with avoiding any direct challenge to the core corporate business model, the subsidiary has bypassed the tensions commonly observed with dual business models