Marketing Textbooks Research Articles

The market-based assets theory of brand competition

Kotler popularised the Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning (STP) theory of brand competition. This theory still dominates marketing textbooks. In this article we show how the discovery of scientific laws concerning how brands compete, grow, and decline clash with the STP theory. The contradiction between these empirical regularities and STP theory has led to the recent emergence of a new market-based asset view of brand competition. We show how this theory fits the now well-established empirical laws, and we discuss some promising areas for future research.

Between persuasion and courtesy: Polish press advertising, ca. 1850–1939

PurposeEarly Polish press advertising (between 1850s and 1939) was characterized by a distinctive and today’s extinct combination of elements of persuasion and exceptional courtesy toward potential customers. The purpose of this paper is to show the place of customer psychology in the earliest Polish advertising textbooks in the context of the actions of Polish press advertisers at that time, convinced of the susceptibility of their recipients to courtesy, appreciation and flattery.Design/methodology/approachHistorical method based on archival research in Polish digital libraries was used with the aim of identifying and analyzing primary sources, enriched by examples of advertisements from pre-1939 newspapers and historical periodicals illustrating the phenomenon in question and by the findings of more recent Polish-language research papers.FindingsThe issue of courtesy was, in fact, discussed by many authors of Polish advertising textbooks in the period under study. They viewed excessive courtesy in print advertising as an unmodern approach. However, empirical research from 1936 has been preserved which proves that a combination of persuasion and courtesy in advertising was perceived as most effective by its target groups.Originality/valueThis study introduces hitherto unknown Polish marketing thought and practice, drawing on the earliest, mostly forgotten Polish marketing textbooks and other primary sources from the years 1896 to 1939. Thus, this study contributes to the body of research on the history of advertising.

Teaching What Society Needs: “Hacking” an Introductory Marketing Course With Sustainability and Macromarketing

Marketing classes are often focused on the micro level, failing to account for wider societal issues. In this article, we argue for the inclusion of a wider macro-sustainability focus, one that “hacks” marketing education. With that objective in mind, we developed and delivered an introductory marketing course that integrated both the micro and the macro, thus infusing the course with macro-sustainability. This was done through an “expanded voice” perspective that included alternate complementary micro and macro class sessions while using a traditional managerial marketing textbook supplemented by macro-sustainability materials. We also integrated a controversies approach to support discussion and learning. We taught this course to 150 undergraduate students and conducted both quantitative and qualitative assessments of the course, including comparing results with an “unhacked” marketing course. Findings indicated increased awareness of macro-sustainability topics and movement on appreciation of sustainability and the role marketing can have in achieving this awareness. Finally, we offer a model of how marketing classes at all levels can be “hacked” with a macro-sustainability approach.

Competing in Customer Driven Markets: A Holistic Approach by Amila Jayarathne

In order to become market-driven, companies need to identify the right market signals, build sensing capabilities, define demand-shaping products, and successfully translate the demand signal to create an effective response. In turn, firms expect to develop and maintain a competitive advantage for a longer period of time, the so-called sustainable competitive advantages. This discussion of competition and gaining sustainable competitive advantage has been evolved with a long history. However, in the discipline of marketing, the discussion of competition is mostly developed around the three generic approaches for developing competitive position according to Michael Porter, even though recent marketing textbooks have slightly discussed some marketing implications beyond the company perspective. It is worth noting that supply chain books mainly discuss the beyond firm operation, though their concern on competition is marginal. However, this book, titled Competing in Customer Driven Markets: A Holistic Approach, discusses a different perspective of competition, challenging the traditional perspective that limits mostly to the firm level. The new perspective of competition discussed in this book has a broader outlook extending the scope of competition to the supply network level.

A Comparative Analysis of JOURNEY Metaphors in Marketing English

Metaphor is a powerful cognitive tool that can help to transmit marketing concept, and form effective marketing strategies. The conceptual metaphor of MARKETING IS JOURNEY has been viewed as a significant deep metaphor in the field of marketing all along. Based on five authoritative marketing textbooks and research articles of three high influencing factor journals in 2016, this paper builds a corpus of three million words. By virtue of previous studies, the author makes a check-list, and intends to explore the usage of JOURNEY metaphors in marketing English with the help of “Metaphor Identification Process (MIP)” (Steen at al. 2010) from the perspective of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The results show that: (1) the productivity of CMTB is 64,209, which is much higher than that of CMJA, 32,184; (2) Themes of obstacles & facilitators, directions of journey, uphill & downhill, as well as fast & slow progress of journey are widely employed in marketing English, with marketing research articles laying more focus on the theme of directions of journey than textbooks; (3) similarities and differences between them can be explained by the contextual factors of field, tenor, and mode. Further implications includes that it can help to appeal to further revision of established marketing textbooks, for that the most cutting-edge metaphorical expressions, e.g., “memory block”, should be included in textbooks for better catching up with the latest development in the field of marketing.

Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing on Customer Purchase Intention

Social media marketing has become an inseparable part of human life. It allows customers and prospects to communicate directly about various products/services with their friends. This is just a replacement of word of mouth, which place a vital role and cheapest way of promoting product in traditional marketing. The other important and unique feature of social media marketing is immediacy, which allows the customers to approach directly with the business people. Indeed it is helpful to both business people and customers as they can get the solutions with in no time unless it is a big damage. With the process, business people can maintain a sound relationship with the customers very easily as they are responding to their queries instantly. It is nothing but customer relationship management. It is another pivotal element in marketing. All these features will influence the customers a lot in making their purchase or buying decisions. Customer behavior is the study of when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy product. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. The customer purchase intention is an evergreen marketing concept despite ample research has been done on the topic over last few decades. It would be an exaggeration, if we say without covering this concept no marketing text book will complete, that’s the significance of this particular concept. One cannot imagine a marketing book without finding a concept of customer purchase intention. Usually a customer purchase intention will be influenced by a set of internal and external factors like social, economical or financial, cultural, demographic, psychological and of course personal factors. In this day and age, online marketing, social media marketing, digital marketing are buzz words and strongly influencing the customer behavior and in making purchase decisions subsequently.

Role of Social Media in Customer Buying Behavior

Social media has become an inseparable part of human life. It allows customers and prospects to communicate directly about various products/services with their friends. This is just a replacement of word of mouth, which place a vital role and cheapest way of promoting product in traditional marketing. The other important and unique feature of social media is immediacy, which allows the customers to approach directly with the business people. Indeed it is helpful to both business people and customers as they can get the solutions with in no time unless it is a big damage. With the process, business people can maintain a sound relationship with the customers very easily as they are responding to their queries instantly. It is nothing but customer relationship management. It is another pivotal element in marketing. All these features will influence the customers a lot in making their purchase or buying decisions. Consumer behavior is the study of when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy product. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. The customer buying or purchasing behavior is an evergreen marketing concept despite ample research has been done on the topic over last few decades. It would be an exaggeration, if we say without covering this concept no marketing text book will complete, that’s the significance of this particular concept. One cannot imagine a marketing book without finding a concept of customer buying behavior. Usually a customer buying behavior will be influenced by a set of internal and external factors like social, economical or financial, cultural, demographic, psychological and of course personal factors. In this day and age, online marketing, social media marketing, digital marketing are buzz words and strongly influencing the customer behavior and in making purchase decisions subsequently.

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Promotional Discounts on Store Performance

The received wisdom, reflected in popular marketing textbooks, is that featuring deeply discounted items will generate additional store traffic for retailers that in turn will lead to increased sales and profits. However, there is surprisingly little systematic evidence about the impact of these deep discounts on aggregate store traffic, sales, and profits. In this paper, we study the effects of promotional discounts and their characteristics on various store performance metrics employing a store level dataset pooled over 55 weeks and 24 stores. Many findings of our study lend credence to the continued popularity of such promotions by retailers. We find that feature promotions build store traffic, especially when the categories being featured are high penetration, high frequency. Also, promotions of branded items are found to be more effective than promotions of unbranded items. Discounting on more items in a category leads to lower store margins suggesting that the cost of discounting a large proportion of items in a category may not be justified by the profits generated by the sale. Using the coefficients from our model estimates, various counterfactuals provide insights into strategic change in level of discounts across categories. We discuss several implications of our findings for retailers.

Educational lessons from the past – marketing textbooks during the Age of Enlightenment (16th to 18th Centuries)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to critique four marketing textbooks written during the Age of Enlightenment (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries) to understand the educational lessons they taught students of marketing at the time and the lessons they might hold for the present day. Design/methodology/approach – The method entails critically examining several marketing textbooks within the context of the great social, religious, intellectual, political and economic changes taking place at the time. Findings – Over the period, paralleling developments in the Enlightenment, the two earlier textbooks of the age have a heavier emphasis on religious and ethical concerns along with their discussions of business issues. The two later textbooks de-emphasize spiritual themes in favor of almost completely focusing on business matters. In addition to discussing themes relevant to their times, the books anticipate concepts found in marketing textbooks of today. Generally, there is also more stress placed on immediate facts rather than enduring business principles. Yet many principles are discussed, including the most fundamental and durable principle of merchandising: “buy cheape, sell deare”. Originality/value – There is no other review of a collection of marketing textbooks during the Age of Enlightenment in the published literature.

The Marketing Institution by Ralph F. Breyer (1934)

Purpose – The purpose of this review is to examine an early marketing textbook for its insights into concepts and theory that may have relevance today. Design/methodology/approach – To examine the book in light of the commentary provided by numerous scholars over the decades since its publication. Findings – The latter half of the book, about the marketing implications of the “New Deal” response to the “Great Recession” of the 1930s, is out of date; however, the first half offers an insightful analysis of the marketing system and the rudiments of a general theory of marketing. Research limitations/implications – Providing a rationale for marketing systems and core concepts for building a general theory of marketing, the book therefore has much to recommend it to students of marketing thought and theory. Originality/value – This book was first reviewed some 80 years ago. With a longer time horizon, and the additional comments by numerous scholars in the historical literature, a more meaningful appraisal of the influence of this work can now be made.

Handbook of Service Marketing Research

Handbook of Service Marketing Research Roland T. Rust and Ming-Hui Huang, eds. Edward Elgar (Cheltenham, UK/Northampton, MA, USA), 2014 Hardcover, 615 pp., USD 266.00Pile cliche atop hyperbole as high as you like, and you will still find it difficult to overestimate the importance of services to the success of today's firm. Rust and Huang have assembled a collection of the leading scholars and business leaders in services marketing to provide the current state of the art as well as a path forward that will be of value to scholars, students, teachers, and practitioners alike. The editors make a convincing case for the idea that the service revolution is transforming theory and practice in marketing, from considerations of where the source of value lies to the ways in which firms measure success. The Handbook of Service Marketing Research's seven sections (in addition to the editors' introductory chapter) include three focused on elements of customer centricity, three on the ways in which traditional areas and functions of marketing are being reshaped by the service revolution, and a final section on service for societal well-being.Part II consists of five chapters devoted to consideration of customer relationships and loyalty, beginning with the end in mind (as the late Stephen Covey might have put it) by considering customer relationships and loyalty. In Building relationships between service organizations and customers Bolton and Christopher lay out basic concepts and a research agenda for understanding and measuring customer lifetime duration, discussing both antecedents to customer lifetime duration and the relationship between CLD and financial outcomes. Two additional chapters, one by Oliver and one by Aksoy, Keiningham, and Oliver investigate loyalty, its sources, and its variations. Oliver investigates the historical views and the biological, psychological, and social origins of loyalty, while Aksoy et al. delve into several forms or manifestations of loyalty, not limited to consumer loyalty. Meanwhile, Dagger and Danaher compare five relationship each incorporating six widely-studied constructs: trust, commitment, satisfaction, attitudinal loyalty, behavioral loyalty, and word-of-mouth. The authors find that the model that performs best has attitudinal loyalty and WOM driving behavioral loyalty; attitudinal loyalty and WOM are driven in turn by commitment, trust, and satisfaction.Perhaps the most thought-provoking section of the handbook is Part III, Customer-Centered Metrics, where scholars, executives, and teachers who advocate the measurement of firm value by the customer (an idea just making its way into marketing textbooks, as well as into practice) will find considerable ammunition and useful additions to the toolbox. Skiera and Schulze, in Customer-based valuation: similarities and differences to traditional discounted cash flow models, present a lucid and easy-to-follow framework for the use of customer lifetime value (CLV) metrics that could find a home in the undergraduate classroom as well as the boardroom. A more elaborate CLV metric perhaps of more interest to advanced scholars, students, and practitioners is found in the subsequent chapter, CRM metrics and strategies to enhance performance in service industries, by Kumar, Umashankar, and Choi. However, the authors' contribution goes well beyond the CLV tool to discuss customer referral value, customer influence value, customer knowledge value, and customer brand value.Continuing the section, Keiningham, Aksoy, De Keyser, Lariviere, Buoye, and Williams discuss the weak relationships found between measures such as customer satisfaction (among others) and share of wallet (SOW). The authors show that a managerial focus on customer retention combined with increasing customer SOW contributes much more to firm growth than focus on customer retention alone in industries such as banking, grocery, discount retail, and credit cards. …

Selling Services IS Different from Selling Soup – A Thought Leader Interview with Professor Leonard Berry

In this our fourth special issue based on service management papers presented at QUIS we changed the format of having an interview with a prominent service executive to interviewing a service thought leader. This change allows us to introduce leading contributors to service management from the academic world to readers of JAME. Thus we use this interview feature to introduce readers to Len Berry, not only a leading contributor to the theory and research on services marketing and management, but also an individual who helped develop the field of services marketing. Len has not only created some important tools for measuring service quality but has also expanded his early work in marketing to include the study of how management practices and systems influence service excellence. He has published three major books assessing the characteristics of service exemplars and written numerous articles in both marketing and management journals reporting the findings of his extensive field studies of these organizations. We are delighted to share his thoughts with you in this special issue and hope you are as intrigued with his ideas as we are.Authors: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. You have had a remarkable career and certainly can be considered one of the key pioneers responsible for developing the relatively new discipline of services marketing and management. Let us begin with an obvious question. What sparked your initial curiosity into the largely unexplored academic area that we now call 'services marketing?'LB: When I was a brand new assistant professor, 2 or 3 years after earning my PhD in marketing at Arizona State University in 1968, the phone rang one day and it was the American Bankers Association in Washington D.C. calling. Why they called me, I'll never know. They wanted to know if I would be interested in collaborating on a textbook on bank marketing. They had identified another marketing professor at the University of Kentucky, Jim Donnelly, who was interested and they wondered if I would also be interested in collaborating with Jim on this. field of banking did not have a marketing textbook at that time. American Bankers Association has an educational arm called The American Institute of Banking (AIB) which puts on various banking related courses in schools. And they needed a textbook for a new marketing course that they were going to offer through the AIB. So I said yes even though I didn't know Jim! We met, talked about it, and wrote our book. And the book was successful. That launched a mini career for Jim and me in that period of time in the 1970s. We spent considerable time traversing the country and giving seminars to state banking associations and other groups about bank marketing based on the research and marketing ideas from our book. I spent most of the 70s studying financial services marketing and interacting with bankers and then teaching bank marketing to big groups of bankers, which was totally unexpected when I had finished my doctorate and started my career. I was going along happily not really thinking what else I was going to do. I was not a strategic career planner at the time - I was a rookie professor. I was getting paid. I was getting published. It occurred to me in that period that what I was teaching in bank marketing, what was in our book, was quite different from what I learned as a PhD student in marketing. What I really learned in my classwork was manufactured goods marketing - services marketing is different. That time with the bankers and doing bank marketing, which extended into the early 80s, is what sparked my interest in services marketing.Authors: In your own career, was there a watershed moment/research project/consulting job/influential person that changed the direction of your thinking on service management?LB: One watershed moment was reading a book in 1975 by Stanley Marcus called Minding the Store (Neiman Marcus Stores). It was a beautifully crafted, compelling book about the service philosophy that separated Neiman Marcus from other retailers of its era. …

How Effectively do Authors and Publishers Manage the Process of Creating Successful Marketing Textbooks for Undergraduate Students?

How Effectively do Authors and Publishers Manage the Process of Creating Successful Marketing Textbooks for Undergraduate Students?

Focus on Authors

Focus on Authors

CARACTERÍSTICAS DO SISTEMA DE INFORMAÇÕES DE MARKETING (SIM) E SUA CONTRIBUIÇÃO PARA A COMPETITIVIDADE DE UMA EMPRESA VAREJISTA DE MODA

Systems that allow you to obtain and process information are considered essential to support decisions and contribute to the development of competitiveness. With respect to marketing decisions, several authors point to the existence and use of a marketing information system (MIS) as essential to the success of its purpose. However, many of them address the issue in a very theoretical framework. The aim of this paper is to improve understanding of the features of SIM and their contribution to business competitiveness. For this purpose, besides the literature review of relevant issues, a field research was conducted in a fashion retail company, through a case study based on documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with decision makers - with a top management and a marketing executive. The results indicate that indeed the SIM contributes effectively to business competitiveness. Moreover, the study show that some of what is prescribed by the theory, such as unrestricted access to information, cannot be provided in practice. However, the adopted SIM in the studied organization is very similar to the theoretical model proposed by Kotler and others in their Marketing text books.

Entrepreneurial and SME marketing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider marketing and its relevance to entrepreneurs and small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), and how entrepreneurs and SMEs owner/managers adapt and use marketing for their specific requirements during the life of an enterprise. Initially, the paper will give some background to the subject, including how entrepreneurs and SMEs owner/managers are defined and their value to the economy.Design/methodology/approachThe discussion draws from the academic literature and from experience of working with entrepreneurs and SMEs over a number of years. The background characteristics and frameworks of entrepreneurial and SMEs marketing are considered, with emphasis on a pragmatic approach, to try to understand how entrepreneurs and SMEs actually “do” business.FindingsThe main body of the paper focuses on the nature of entrepreneurial marketing typically used by SMEs. The key themes of the discussion are how entrepreneurs and SME owner/managers adapt standard marketing frameworks to suit their own enterprises, how they use networks to improve their business activity, the use and development of marketing management competencies and how they try to use and develop innovative marketing.Research limitations/implicationsFinally, the paper comments on the inter‐relationships and relevance of entrepreneurship and marketing for each other.Originality/valueIn practice, entrepreneurial and SMEs marketing is quite different from the marketing frameworks described in the standard marketing textbooks used to teach most undergraduate students. This paper illustrates how entrepreneurs and SMEs adapt and use marketing according to the needs of their enterprises.

How well do UK Publishers of Marketing Textbooks Investigate and Understand the Market to which they are Selling?

How well do UK Publishers of Marketing Textbooks Investigate and Understand the Market to which they are Selling?

Frank-Martin Belz and Ken Peattie: Sustainability Marketing. A Global Perspective

This sustainability marketing textbook fills a gap that has been empty since the publishing of Ken Peattie’s Environmental Marketing Management in 1995. It embodies marketing-as-part-of-the-solution to the immense social and ecological challenges of this planet. In this textbook, students and practitioners alike are not only presented with heavy evidence of the link between marketing theory and practice and the present unsustainable condition of the world but also possible marketing-based ways to restore the planet. It may be the latter part, where concrete tools for marketing sustainable solutions to consumer needs are discussed, that makes this book unique. The volume is dived into five sections. The unorthodox way of ordering these sections is a necessary pedagogical requirement in a textbook that aspires to fundamentally change the perspective of mainstream marketing. In order to promote such a paradigmatic shift, Belz and Peattie put considerable effort into explaining the roots and flaws of conventional marketing thought. The contours of sustainability marketing unfold in parallel to assumptions of conventional marketing in the first three sections. Section 1 contains an excellent and condensed overview of the role of marketing in relation to sustainable development as well as a positioning of sustainability marketing vis-a-vis societal, social, and green marketing. In Section 2, the basic assumptions of sustainability marketing and strategic implications following from these assumptions are discussed. This is done by problematizing the axioms of conventional marketing as consumer sovereignty, externalized environmental costs, etc. The fourth section, “Developing the Sustainability Marketing Mix,” is a most welcome hands-on toolbox that will help many sustainability marketing practitioners when undertaking the difficult task of trying to change the nature and scope of market exchange in a more sustainable direction. Here, we find definitions of sustainable products and services with emphasis on consumer needs for the use of functions. One chapter is devoted to communication, one to consumer cost, and one to convenience. Thus, concrete information on how sustainable products and services can be communicated and priced in relation to conventional communication and pricing models are presented. The J Consum Policy (2010) 33:425–426 DOI 10.1007/s10603-010-9132-7

Experiencing the Product Life Cycle Management Highs and Lows Through Dramatic Simulation

Product life cycle (PLC) stages and diagrams are briefly and dispassionately covered in the standard marketing textbook format with little attention to the social-psychological experiences of those actually participating. This qualitative study used process drama as a teaching tool and a research instrument to probe the PLC phenomenon in a different way. A useable sample of 27 students used the educational drama convention called Space Mission to Mars, a form of process drama, to bring first-hand contact with, and relevance to, this marketing concept and practice. Student journals were analysed through content analysis, and this was combined with lecturer observations and some semistructured probe interviewing. The study found that students clearly expressed a new, more involved, and more insightful appreciation of the actual conceptual marketing processes and emotional experiences that marketers have when directly involved in PLC activities.

A case of mistaken identity: theory, practice and the marketing textbook

PurposeOne field in business where there is a purported gap between theory and practice is in marketing. This paper aims to examine one area of the debate, the degree of congruence between the established textbook theories of marketing and the practical activity of marketing managers.Design/methodology/approachPhenomenological interviews were carried out with senior marketing managers from a diverse range of organisations. The aim was to establish what types of factors inform manager's approaches to practice. Meaningful comparisons were made possible, as a range of marketing texts were also examined.FindingsTextbook theories represent a flawed view of the practitioner's world. Many texts are very similar, based on an implicitly systems based paradigm. Universal truths are seen as indispensable modes of representational language. In contrast, the interviews with managers show that marketing is a locally contingent activity, occupying a discursive space separate from that of textbook theory.Research limitations/implicationsScholars desire to reduce real world activity to over arching explanations has led to the simplification of theory. Textbooks should embrace an approach based on interpretative insights into the realities of marketing practice. Moves away from the “one size fits all” theory need to occur, to a situation where marketing is recognised as being about a socially mediated, multifaceted approach to business activity.Originality/valueSubstantial attention has been paid to what many commentators regard as an academic practitioner divide in marketing. Most of this concerns the status of research into marketing. Considerably less attention is devoted to the position of the marketing textbook. This paper helps to remedy the situation. Ideas are offered up for the development of marketing knowledge and ways are suggested to help close the theory practice gap in the discipline, through the medium of the textbook.