Exploring proactive market strategies

Harald Brege,Daniel Kindström

doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2019.05.005

Abstract

Proactivity is an important driver of firm performance and for the creation of customer value on business-to-business markets. It is however not entirely clear what it is proactive firms actually do to achieve success. By investigating proactive firms' market strategies, i.e. the sets of activities they perform in order to create superior customer value, a holistic overview of the activities involved in proactive market strategies is provided. Through a case study of five proactive firms, proactive activities are identified. Using three strategic orientations—customer, competition, and innovation orientation—unique proactivity profiles are created, reflecting the patterns in the identified proactive activities. Through these profiles, three overarching proactive market strategies are forwarded: market shaping, customer engagement, and innovation leadership. These are proposed to act as generic proactive market strategies, representing coordinated proactive activities driven by multiple strategic orientations and aimed at creating customer value. These generic strategies help us understand of the role of proactivity in crafting high-performing market strategies by representing different routes to success.

Highlights

Being proactive in managing markets and when engaging with customers is becoming an important driver for the creation of customer value, enabling more proactive firms to achieve superior business performance (e.g. Blocker, Flint, Myers, & Slater, 2011; Narver, Slater, & MacLachlan, 2004)
We identify proactivity profiles describing the proactive activities of successful proactive B2B firms, and from this propose three generic proactive market strategies
Since proactivity has a great potential to improve the performance of B2B firms (e.g. Kindström et al, 2018; Narver et al, 2004), it is important to understand how firms can be proactive

Summary

Introduction

Being proactive in managing markets and when engaging with customers is becoming an important driver for the creation of customer value, enabling more proactive firms to achieve superior business performance (e.g. Blocker, Flint, Myers, & Slater, 2011; Narver, Slater, & MacLachlan, 2004). Blocker, Flint, Myers, & Slater, 2011; Narver, Slater, & MacLachlan, 2004) Proactive firms gain this competitive advantage by having a superior understanding of their customers and such an understanding allows them to satisfy customers' latent needs, anticipate future needs, and create superior customer value (Narver et al, 2004). Researchers have provided relatively few insights into the effective implementation of market strategies within B2B firms (e.g., Beverland & Lindgreen, 2007; Kennedy, Goolsby, & Arnould, 2003; Taghian, 2010; van Raaij & Stoelhorst, 2008), there is a broader interest in how market strategies may manifest themselves in these firms

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