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In this chapter, we connect our focus — the organizing of marketing — to one of the strongest drivers for its change — digitalization — and draw attention to various “dual forces” that affect marketing as a consequence. These dual forces are associated with the concept of ambidexterity. Given that companies today are affected by digitalization, both internally in their organizations and in their external business relations, and that they need to act as ambidextrous organizations handling both old (“analog”) and new (“digital”) situations, how does this affect marketing, in general, and the organizing of marketing, in particular?

The chapter will be founded on the assumptions that digitalization is a central driver of change in business and society today, and this digitalization requires organizations to explore new opportunities while still operating with mature technologies in mature markets. Marketing most often has a central role in this situation of digitalization. The connection between digitalization processes, ambidextrous organizations, and the processes of organizing marketing is the focus of this chapter.

The subject is wide, and the aim of the chapter is to generate ideas on some potential consequences for marketing management and organization. The chapter ends with a set of propositions serving as starting points for further studies of the links between digitalization, marketing management and organization, as well as the forces resulting from digitalization.

Lately, a number of authors have applied institutional theory when discussing global marketing and emerging market specificities. It has also been argued that the institutional forces influencing a firm will differ between markets and that firms can approach them in different ways. In this paper we conduct a qualitative analysis, based upon NVIVO, of three Swedish firms as they position themselves on the Chinese and Brazilian markets. We compare the institutional context as perceived by the firms in China and Brazil and we also analyse to what extent they have a proactive or a reactive approach when managing their institutional environment, and to what extent their actions are governed by local practices and corporate practices. As a result we present a country institutional profile including a set of issue-specific factors that concern firms’ positioning on emerging markets.

The tourism marketing environment consists of internal and external forces which could impact the organisations’ performance. To be successful, companies must adapt to ongoing trends and developments in their macro- and micro-environments. When organisations scan their marketing environment, they will be in a position to deal with any possible threats from the market and to capitalise on any available opportunities. Therefore, this chapter explains the external environmental factors of tourist destinations, including political, economic, social and technological influences. It also considers their internal environmental factors, including capital structures, resources, capabilities and marketing intermediaries, as it identifies competitive forces from differentiated or low-cost service providers.

Companies spend millions on training their sales representatives. Thousands of textbooks have been published; thousands of training videos have been recorded. Hundreds of good pieces of advice and tips for sales representatives have been presented along with hundreds of sales methods and techniques. Probably the largest number of indicators and measures are applied in sales and distribution. On the one hand, this is a result of the fact that sales provide revenue and profit to a company; on the other hand, the concept of management by objectives turns out to be most effective in regional sales teams with reference to sales representatives and methods of performance evaluation. As a result, a whole array of indices has been created which enable the evaluation of sales representatives’ work and make it possible to manage goods distribution in a better way.

The indices presented in this chapter are rooted in the consumer market and are applied most often to this type of market (particularly in relation to fast-moving consumer goods at the level of retail trade). Nevertheless, many of them can be used on other markets (services, means of production) and at other trade levels (wholesale).

Although the values of many indices presented herein are usually calculated by market research agencies and delivered to companies in the form of synthetic results, we have placed the emphasis on the ability to determine them independently, both in descriptive and exemplifying terms. We consider it important to understand the genesis of indices and build the ability to interpret them on that basis. What is significant is that the indices can be interpreted differently; the same index may provide a different assessment of a product’s, brand or company’s position in the market depending on the parameters taken into account. Therefore, we strive to show a certain way of thinking rather than give ready-made recipes and cite ‘proven’ principles. Sales and distribution are dynamic phenomena, and limiting them within the framework of ‘one proper’ interpretation would be an intellectual abuse.

The market is a complex organism that has rich implications and essential stipulations. From the property right perspective, the market is a series of property rights, rules, and system arrangements (an aggregation of rights), which are constructed, owned, operated, and managed by the state and from which the government can benefit. The market property right is owned by the government (state). The costs of market property right include tangible (explicit) cost, system cost, human cost, and other cost components. The study on the cost components of market property right is conducive to establishing the principle of matching investment with ownership, matching investment with income, and integrating (unifying) cost with efficiency.

This chapter is designed for use by commercialization teams evaluating the commercial relevance of a new invention. To be relevant commercially, an invention must create value in one or more markets, which involves solving a problem or satisfying customer needs currently unmet. Unmet needs create market opportunities, and the goal is to identify and evaluate the profitability of these opportunities. The chapter provides an overview of concepts and techniques commonly used in the process. Important distinctions between market and industry concepts are introduced along with common rubrics for categorizing inventions in terms of their technological and market implications. These concepts are then used to discuss the roles of prior experience, lead users, and brainstorming in identifying market opportunities for various types of inventions. Techniques covered include market analysis, Porter’s five forces of industry profitability, analysis of political, economic, social, and technical environments (PEST), and the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). The use of these techniques is illustrated for two startup commercialization teams.

This paper examines the transformation of Syrian political economy from 1970 until 2005. I argue that Syria has undergone two important phases of political and economic transformation, from building a centralized state and economy in the early 1970s to embarking on the path of market economy in the early 1990s. With the logic of competitiveness guiding the direction of economic development, the socio-economic changes of the mid-1980s and after have corresponded with an important process of class and state formation. After a brief discussion of the current transition in Syria, the following sections of the paper attempt to provide a critical study of the different strategies for economic development. Section two examines the process of state and economic centralization of the 1970s and 1980s and highlights the contradictions of this period. Section three assesses the impact of economic liberalization through a study of competitiveness in the economic policies of the 1990s and 2000. The final section examines the economic and political impasse that Syria has been faced with. In conclusion, I argue that the current path of market economy as the strategy for capital accumulation has not resolved the socio-economic problems that Syria has faced in the last two decades. This strategy will continue to face contestation by marginalized groups such as factions of the Baath Party, landless peasants, workers and small producers as Syria becomes even more integrated into the regional and global economy.

This paper poses the question of whether the mainstream feminist movement in the United States, in concentrating its efforts on achieving gender parity in the existing workplace, is selling women short. In it, I argue that contemporary U.S. feminism has not adequately theorized the problems with the relatively unregulated market system in the United States. That failure has contributed to a situation in which women’s participation in the labor market is mistakenly equated with liberation, and in which other far-ranging effects of the market system on women’s lives inside and outside of work – many of them negative – are overlooked. To theorize the effects of the market system on women’s lives in a more nuanced manner, I borrow from the insights of earlier Marxist and socialist feminists. I then use this more nuanced perspective to outline an agenda for feminism, which I call “market-cautious feminism,” that seeks to regulate the market to serve women’s interests.

We return to the problem that motivated the original behavioral theory of the firm, price adjustment, but from the standpoint of post-Carnegie School perspectives on cognition, attention, and routines. Whereas work in the Carnegie School tradition has tended to develop models of firms in opposition to economic theory, we seek to understand how economic ideas are used to shape decision processes. Using a combination of interview, observational, and archival data gathered at a large manufacturing firm that produced parts to maintain machinery, we develop a behaviorally plausible story of how organizations shape price adjustment. We follow three successive waves of managers seeking to improve the pricing routines through shifting attentional perspective, managing attentional engagement, and structuring attentional execution. We demonstrate how managers redesign routines to shape cognition and attention, thereby developing greater coherence in the market representations of the sales force. Our findings show how reshaping cognition and attention in pricing routines can improve organizational intelligence in pricing decisions. Economists treat markets as the ideal – the best that can be imagined – and organizations as second-best options – the best that can be achieved, but our findings invert the story, suggesting that in modern market economies, organizations and routines are essential to making the price system work.