Marketing management capability:the construct and its dimensions: an examination of managers’ and entrepreneurs’ perceptions in a retail setting

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the relationship between corporate cultural/intangible assets and marketing capabilities by examining managers’ and entrepreneurs’ perceptions in a retail setting.Design/methodology/approach: Nineteen face-to-face interviews were conducted with UK small and medium sized enterprise (SMEs) managers and entrepreneurs to identify six sub-capabilities that form marketing capability. The authors further validated the relationship between marketing sub-capabilities and its antecedent tangible and intangible assets. The qualitative approach used provided a deeper insight into the motivations, perceptions and associations of the stakeholders behind these intangible concepts, and their relationships with their customers.Findings: The research identified that there is a strong relationship between tangible and intangible assets, their components and the following capabilities: corporate/brand identity management, market sensing, customer relationship, social media/communication, design/innovation management and performance management. In addition, companies need to understand clearly what tangible and intangible assets comprise these capabilities. Where performance management is one of the key internal capabilities, companies must highlight the importance of strong cultural assets that substantially contribute to a company’s performance.Originality/value: Previous work on dynamic capability analysis is too generic, predominantly relating to the manufacturing sector, and/or focussing on using a single case study example. This study extends the concept of marketing capability in a retail setting by identifying six sub-capabilities and describing the relationship of each with tangible and intangible assets. Through extensive qualitative analysis, the authors provide evidence that by fully exploiting their embedded culture and other intangible components, companies can more favourably engage with their customers to attain a sustainable competitive advantage.</p

An integrated core competence evaluation framework for portfolio management in the oil industry

Drawing upon resource-based theory, this paper presents a core competence evaluation framework for managing the competence portfolio of an oil company. It introduces a network typology to illustrate how to form different types of strategic alliance relations with partnering firms to manage and grow the competence portfolio. A framework is tested using a case study approach involving face-to-face structured interviews. We identified purchasing, refining and sales and marketing as strong candidates to be the core competencies. However, despite the company's core business of refining oil, the core competencies were identified to be their research and development and performance management (PM) capabilities. We further provide a procedure to determine different kinds of physical, intellectual and cultural resources making a dominant impact on company's competence portfolio. In addition, we provide a comprehensive set of guidelines on how to develop core competence further by forging a partnership alliance choosing an appropriate network topology

Evaluating the impact of corporate logos towards corporate reputation: a case of Persia and Mexico

Purpose - This paper examines the impact of corporate logos on corporate image and reputation in creating competitive advantage in the context of Persia and Mexico as emerging markets. This paper provides an extensive links between corporate logo and its dimension and internal stakeholders’ attitudes towards advertisement, familiarity, and recognisability as intermediaries to corporate image and reputation. Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative exploratory approach was taken, comprising 12 face-to-face interviews 14 skype in-depth interviews were conducted with graphic designers, design, communication and marketing consultant in Mexico and Persia based on attribution theory. Findings - The study posits that the more favorable the name, color, typeface and design of the company and color, the more favorable the attitude Mexican consumers have towards the corporate logo, corporate image and reputation. However, in comparison for Persia these factors have less effect on customers’ judgment and behavior, towards the corporate logo, corporate image and reputation. The research findings suggest that the selection of color in a corporate logo is related to its marketing objectives, cultural values, desired customer relationship levels with the organisation, and organisation’s corporate communications. Practical implications - Corporate logo should be considered a constructive tool that can be effectively applied to managing the image and reputation of any organization. Moreover we suggest that regional or cultural variants can play an important role while selecting the logos in different cultures. The results are helpful for communication professionals who deal with organization’s corporate identity, branding, and communication, and aim to enhance the consistency of messages both visual and written within their organization Originality/value - Corporate logo has received little attention in marketing literature and barely been researched in emerging market. This is the first research of its kind to find the effect of the compound logo in emerging markets of Persia and Mexico. It thereby adds to the corporate visual identity literature by developing of the sphere of influence of the corporate logo and its antecedents and consequences (corporate image and corporate reputation)

Corporate e-communication: its relationship with the corporate logo in the construction of digital interaction platforms

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine the influence of the corporate logo on the consumer’s attitude within corporate e-communication. Design/methodology/approach – This research designed a model and a number of hypotheses, based on previous studies on corporate logo, its antecedents on e-communication, corporate image and corporate reputation. Online survey was conducted consumers and followers of the shopping social networking platforms (Facebook and Twitter) in from Colombia. Findings – Taking into account previous corporate constructs theories, the author proposes a new conceptual framework to explain how corporate e-communication interacts within an organisation’s structure, and also to show that the consumer’s interaction in corporate e-communication platforms is based on the corporate logo perception held by consumers; as a consequence, the corporate reputation is affected. Originality/value – This study contributes on the understanding and expansion of the organisation’s structure by introducing a new corporate construct, named ‘corporate e-communication’, defined as the digital interaction than an organisation has with its stakeholders, it involves everything it says, shows and does. However, there are a few other areas of concern with regard to consequences related to corporate image and corporate reputation, particularly in Colombian retail setting

Continuance interaction intention in retailing: relations between customer values, satisfaction, loyalty, and identification

Purpose - Social media as a competitive marketing tool deliver online platforms for retailers to get closer to their consumers/visitors/shoppers through continued interaction. This study scrutinizes how customer values (functional, social, and experimental) enhance satisfaction, loyalty, identification and how such relationships, in turn, impact on user-continuance interaction intention. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed method approach was designed to identify the consumers perception towards high-end retailers of worldwide brands. 12 interviews were conducted with experts in retailing and a survey with 390 respondents. Structural equation modeling/AMOS was employed to gain insight into the various relationships and influences. Findings - To augment user-continuance interaction intention, results indicate that retail managers should focus more on customer-based values when they design marketing strategies for brand pages on social media. The findings also provide guidelines for retail marketing and social media managers to generate consumer value in the retail environment via information quality, product-related learning, and economic benefits (functional value), interaction, collaboration, and social presence (social value), and experiential value (intellectual and effective value). Originality/value - The paper offers critical managerial contributions by presenting a comprehensive picture of the condition in which a favorable brand social media page could be constructed within a brand to satisfy consumers value and achieve satisfaction, loyalty, identification, and continuance interaction intention; all of which are critical objectives for every company. In other words, a clear knowledge of the dimensions of consumer value concepts can assist retail communication managers to improve consumers/visitors/shoppers intention to continue their interaction in a competitive market. The current study is one of the very few emerging research studies to have examined the relationships between consumers/visitors/shoppers functional, values, social values, and experimental values empirically, to have further explored the relationships between the research constructs

Enhancing University Brand Image and Reputation through Customer Value Co-Creation Behaviour

This study examines the causality between university website, customer value co-creation behaviour, university brand image and reputation. Drawing upon a sample of 285 students from a London-based university and using partial least squares structural equation modelling, the findings argue that a university website is critical to generate students’ co-creation behaviour. The research findings confirm the positive impact from website features on customer participation behaviour and customer citizenship behaviour; however, website applications and features have different impacts on the dimensions of customer value cocreation behaviour, i.e. customer participation and citizenship behaviour. This study asserts the pivotal role of students’ value co-creation behaviour in creating and sustaining university brand image and reputation. This research is particularly useful for higher education (HE) institutions, by investigating and investing in their website design they can enhance students’ co-creation behaviour in the context of the increasingly competitive UK HE market. Based upon the findings, this paper offers managerial implementations for decision-makers, brand managers, graphic and web designers who wish to understand the relationship between a website and its outcomes, especially relating to corporate image and reputation

How do entrepreneurs learn and engage in an online community-of-practice? A case study approach

This paper investigates the ways in which entrepreneurs use communities of practice (CoPs) to express themselves, using narrative theory and rhetorical analysis, to gain insight into an electronic social network medium, namely, YoungEntrepreneur.com. In particular, the study focuses on CoPs themes, including why entrepreneurs engage in CoPs, what role the moderators and resident entrepreneurs can play in managing online CoPs, on communication rituals of the knowledge sharing through interactivity, and on ‘how to develop an intervention’ to maintain and stimulate entrepreneurs for engaging in an online community. Findings reveal that the topic title plays a major role in attracting people. Successful topics with successful conclusions (in terms of the original query that was answered) will not necessarily get high responses and vice versa. It is observed that the domain expert does not play a big role in keeping the discussion going. Finally, the study also discovered that entrepreneurs like to communicate in a story telling genre. A comprehensive set of engagement measurement tools are introduced to effectively measure the engagement in a virtual CoP, along with a classification to define and categorise discourse of messages in terms of content and context, which allow practitioners to understand the effectiveness of a social networking site

Heritage destination love

Purpose – Although love has received considerable attention in marketing literature, there is limited past research on love in a tourism context. This research attempts to overcome past research negligence by proposing the concept of heritage destination love. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative approach was undertaken, face-to-face in-depth interviews with 35 respondents respondents in London to discuss about the concept of heritage destination love antecedents and its consequences, tourists’ behavior and tourists’ feeling, passion and love about the destinations as playing a magnificent role in tourism development. Findings – The outcome reveals that heritage destination love has three elements - passion, emotional attachment, and identification. Originality/value – Despite its limitations, the current research offers a theoretical insights of the psychological theory of the love triangle in relation to heritage destination love