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This paper aims to explore how chief executive officers (CEOs) and C-suite marketing executives (chief marketing officers [CMOs], chief customer officers [CCOs], chief branding officers [CBOs], etc.) talk about marketing concepts to better understand how marketers can more effectively articulate their value and increase their strategic influence within the firm.

Artificial intelligence-enabled computerized text analysis was used to identify and weight keywords from 266 CEO and C-suite marketing executive interviews. Custom marketing concept dictionaries were used to gauge overall marketing focus.

The analysis revealed opportunities for C-suite marketers to align specific marketing concepts with that of CEOs for increased strategic influence. Comparisons between C-suite marketing roles showed that CMOs are more focused on marketing strategy than specialized C-suite marketing positions, such as CCO and CBO. This points to a potential decrease in strategic impact for marketing executives dependent on the specialization of their position.

Using IBM Watson’s black-box artificial intelligence may limit the ability to replicate results from the content analysis; however, the results identify important ways that marketing executives can use to increase their ability to articulate their value within the firm.

C-suite marketing executives who want to increase the strategic alignment of their role with their firm must pay close attention to the marketing concepts they talk about, and how those align with their CEO’s marketing knowledge. The creation of specialized C-suite marketing roles may unintentionally limit the strategic thinking and firm-level impact of marketers.

This paper represents the first use of artificial intelligence-enabled computerized text analysis to explore and compare executive speech acts to help increase marketing’s influence in the firm. It is also the first to explore differences in marketing concept use between C-suite marketing roles.

This study aims to examine whether the selection of a new outsider chief marketing officer from a developed-country incumbent firm with an established brand can serve as an alternative strategy to the acquisition of developed-country firms in benefiting the internationalization of a postselection emerging-market brand marketer that suffers from late-mover disadvantages.

A pretest (survey) and two main studies (experiments) were conducted to examine the proposed mediation model of “Chief Marketing Officer background—enhancement of capabilities—brand competitiveness”.

An emerging-market brand marketer gains enhanced resources and capabilities when a new chief marketing officer is recruited from a developed-country incumbent with a superior reputation, leading to improved brand competitiveness. This positive effect accrues from the new chief marketing officer's background (i.e. prior work organization) spilling over to his/her new emerging-market employer.

This research integrates the research streams of emerging-market firm internationalization, chief marketing officer and executive succession to provide an alternative strategy for emerging-market firms to overcome late-mover disadvantages in global markets.

This paper aims to examine the presence of an executive with customer experience (ECE) in a supplier firm’s top management team (TMT). The role of ECE presence remains understudied in the marketing literature. This study attempts to examine the relationship between ECE presence and firm performance.

This paper draws on the resource-based view of the firm and adopts a panel firm fixed effects estimator to test the proposed hypotheses. The empirical analysis uses a sample of 1,974 firm-year observations with 489 unique supplier firms. Selection-induced endogeneity is mitigated through the Heckman procedure.

ECE presence improves firm performance. Additionally, firms benefit less from ECE presence if a board member with customer experience (BCE) is also present, if a chief executive officer commands a higher pay slice (compared to other executives), and if a TMT is more functionally diversified. However, ECE presence is particularly beneficial if the overall economy is in contraction. Comparing the functional positions held by ECEs reveals that ECE in the marketing function (as a chief marketing officer) offers the largest benefit to an average supplier firm. ECE presence is also associated with other firm outcomes (e.g. bankruptcy odds, innovation and customer orientation).

This study makes four contributions to the literature. First, this research contributes to existing studies that investigate marketing expertise in the upper corporate pyramid. Second, the study contributes to the burgeoning body of work across business disciplines that attempt to understand the impact of CxOs on firm performance. Third, the study contributes to the vast literature on customer orientation indirectly. Finally, this paper contributes to the broader literature studying the influence of board and TMT characteristics.

The findings are of particular importance to business-to-business firms. This paper shows that suppliers can benefit significantly from managers with customer experience. Four contingency factors moderate the relationship between ECE presence and firm performance. Among the various functional positions held by an ECE, the findings suggest that hiring an ECE for the marketing functional area is the most beneficial. ECE stands out as a better option for a company than BCE to improve firm performance. ECE presence is also associated with bankruptcy odds, innovation and customer orientation.

This paper provides the first empirical evidence regarding how ECE affects firm performance and also extends prior research on the value of human capital in TMT.

This study aims to examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) integrity on organizations’ strategic orientation. The authors propose that CEOs who have high degrees of integrity tend to negatively influence each of the three core dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) – innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. They also argue that this impact of CEO integrity is likely to be stronger for overconfident CEOs and the CEOs with high power. Furthermore, this negative relationship is expected to attenuate when the firm has high customer orientation and when the CEO is compensated with high equity-pay ratio.

Seemingly unrelated regression analysis was conducted on panel of 741 firm-year observations of 213 firms across 2014–2017. CEO integrity and each of the three dimensions of EO were measured using content analysis of CEOs’ letters to shareholders. CEO power was measured using CEO stock ownership and CEO duality. CEO overconfidence was measured by using options-based measure. Customer orientation was measured by using content analyses on annual reports. CEO equity-pay based ratio was measured as sum of value of stock and option awards divided by CEO’s total compensation. This study considered alternative measures and performed treatments for potential endogeneity, sample selection bias and outliers.

The research findings conclude that organizations with CEOs who have high integrity tend to have lower levels of all sub-dimensions of EO – innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking. Further, the results indicate that the negative effect that CEO integrity has, affects one of its dimensions – proactiveness, such that the relation is strengthened when the CEO has high power and is highly overconfident. This negative effect weakens when the CEO is compensated with high equity-pay ratio. The results also indicate that the negative effect of integrity and innovativeness and risk-taking weakens when the firm has high customer orientation.

The research contributes to upper echelon theory literature by adding to the discussion of how business executives’ psychological traits map onto firm behavior. This research also finds common ground between literature on innovation and upper echelons, contributing to awareness about the drivers of firms’ EO.

This research addresses the question of firm relation to EO by highlighting that firms’ EO is also shaped by the psychological traits of their CEOs and the interaction of these traits with CEOs’ cognitive biases. Thus, board members of firms led by CEOs with high integrity can limit CEO’s risk-averse behavior by focusing on their training and by creating incentive systems. It is also advantageous for CEOs to understand that integrity is a double-edged sword, thus leveraging the strengths of their integrity, while simultaneously using tools such as training to diminish its negative aspects.

This paper fulfils a twofold identified need to: study the antecedents of each of the three dimensions of EO, not limited to corporate governance; and unearth the counterproductive behaviors associated with bright traits that make up their dark side

This paper aims to investigate the economic determinants and the effects on firm value of the Chief Marketing Officer’s (CMO’s) equity incentives.

The empirical analysis uses 586 firm-year observations corresponding to 227 unique firms collected from Execucomp dataset over the period 2000-2009.

The paper documents that when a firm’s marketing intensity increases, the CMO’s equity incentives significantly increase; CMO’s equity incentives are positively related to shareholder value, and this positive relationship is incremental to that between the Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO)’s equity incentives and firm value; the positive impact of the CMO’s equity incentives on the firm value is partially mediated by marketing investments.

The paper helps understand under which circumstances firms provide the CMO with high-equity incentives and what the performance implications are of providing the CMO with long-term incentives.

Results indicate that companies should try to incent the CMO with equity-based incentives because the CMO can boost shareholder value on a way that is incremental to how the CEO does so. As a consequence, if the board of directors decides not to provide the CMO with sufficient equity incentives, it is likely that this decision will be suboptimal for shareholders.

This paper is the first to analyze the structure and effect on firm value of the CMO’s compensation in answer to calls for research on compensation of executives other than CEOs.

At present, for any product, smooth marketing has become a major challenge due to the novel market challenges as well as sudden and extended changes. Thus, the concerns for the marketers are essential to consider the choice of buyers and also to satisfy them. The purpose of this empirical research is to focus on the role of three organizational attributes (OA): job satisfaction (JS), organizational commitment (OC) and extrinsic motivation (EM) on the marketing performance (MP) mediated by the Chief Marketing Officers' (CMOs') political skill (CPS) in the telecommunication industries of China, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Sri Lanka.

In this paper, based on 132 survey responses collected from CMOs, the authors conducted descriptive statistics using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS-25) and tested the assumed hypotheses through covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) using AMOS software (version 25).

The authors found that JS has an insignificant role on MP while OC and EM have significant positive roles over the dependent variable. CPS has also a significant positive influence over MP. Further, the authors identified that CPS can fully mediate the relationship between JS and MP while it can partially mediate the relationship between OC and MP. On the other hand, CPS cannot mediate the relationship between EM and MP at all.

According to authors’ knowledge, this is one of the very limited initial attempts that have investigated the role of three important OA on the MP testing the mediating effect of CPS. The authors expect that the study outcomes will have an enormous impact on marketing academia as a torch-bearing research as well as for CMOs for formulating an effective marketing policy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the differences in organizations that choose to have a sales executive versus a marketing executive on the leadership team.

Our study examined 315 marketing and sales executives across 246 US firms taken from the S & P 1500.

Our findings suggest that the company choice of marketing or sales executive positions is driven by its customer base, branding strategy, investment in product development, and industry. The choice of executive is also associated with its firm valuation and cash flow performance.

Further research might want to examine companies that include both a sales and marketing executive as part of the leadership team and explore industry characteristics and customer base surrounding that decision.

Research has looked at the relationship between the marketing and sales functions but has rarely taken into account the performance of companies that emphasize sales and/or marketing leadership in its executive team. This paper analyzes the differences in organizations that choose among marketing versus sales executives or an executive overseeing the dual sales and marketing function.

This study examines a moderated moderation model in which the hardiness of chief marketing officers (CMOs) moderates the relationship between CMOs' future focus and firms' sustainability marketing commitment (SMC), and this moderating effect is moderated by CMOs' proactive personality.

A sample of 298 CMOs of firms in Vietnam was surveyed to collect data. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to validate the measures of the constructs used in the model and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the model and hypotheses.

The SEM results reveal that CMOs' future focus had a positive relationship with firms' SMC. Furthermore, both CMOs' hardiness and its interaction with CMOs' future focus had positive effects on firms' SMC. Finally, the three-way interaction between CMOs' future focus, hardiness and proactive personality had a positive effect on firms' SMC.

The study findings assist firms in emerging markets in understanding the roles of some key personality-based resources of CMOs in fostering firms' SMC.

This study is among the first to investigate the roles of CMOs' personality-based resources (i.e. future focus, hardiness and proactive personality) in firms' SMC, offering insight into the sustainability marketing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a reference model that will allow us to understand the factors that influence the omnichannel management of an organization in a business-to-business (B2B) context.

In building the model, a partial least squares structural equation modeling approach was followed. More than 1,000 executives with a C-level profile (chief executive officer, chief marketing officer or chief digital officer), from manufacturers and wholesalers, in various industries worldwide were contacted. The final sample consisted of 124 C-level executives in multinational B2B companies from 35 countries worldwide.

The principal finding is that optimal omnichannel management must involve a customer-centric proposition forming the basis for individualized marketing that tailors the company’s portfolio of solutions to suit each client. To ensure this, customer knowledge at each touchpoint is essential. The results show that the main predictor of B2B omnichannel management is sales and marketing, even above channels. The principal conclusions are that the model shows that good omnichannel performance is measured by the performance of the industrial buyer. Loyalty and experience are primary measures of this customer’s performance.

Research into omnichannel management in the B2B field is scarce, especially concerning the creation of models for decision-making.