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Develops a definition of action research that is particularly suitable for marketing and based on the articles in this issue of European Journal of Marketing, emphasising the breadth of action research in marketing and its distinctive interest in analytic generalisation, that is, in building a theory that extends beyond the particular situation that is being action researched to other situations.. The three sections of this commentary include: definition of traditional action research, action learning and case research. Second, drawing of four implications from the articles within this special issue about how action research can be done in marketing. Finally, presents a broad definition of action research in marketing.

The aim of this paper is to describe and explain how organizations develop and implement marketing action within their surrounding business networks.

The paper is an empirical case study research that covered periods 1993 to 1998 and 2002 to 2003 in manufacturer‐retailer networks in Germany. A conceptual model is developed and its applicability is illustrated.

The paper finds that marketing action is seen as an inventive stream of finding and doing what is possible for each organization in its respective network. Whilst organizations react to events as they unfold, marketing action in networks takes the form of creating and exercising a number of options that best reflect organizations' strengths and their capacities derived from network membership.

Although based on marketing episodes related to the development and introduction of new products in a manufacturer‐retailer network, the proposed model has far wider managerial implications. The efficiency of the model is achieved through the reduction into three generative stages of the complexity of marketing action in networks.

The model is explained in some depth, and its practical implications explained via the case study.

The development of a model of marketing action in networks based upon a network/option view of business‐to‐business marketing.

The extant literature provides much-needed support to understand marketing accountability and how marketing actions are related to financial performance (FP). However, we have limited understanding of the relationships between marketing actions and firms' social performance (SP) and environmental performance (EP). Understanding these links is critical to enhancing sustainable FP, SP, and EP. Moreover, the literature provides limited understanding of the measures by which SP and EP may be operationalized, or the data necessary to reach a conclusion. This study bridges these gaps by extensively reviewing the extant literature to offer a set of measures and data sources to operationalize SP and EP, and empirically show their relationships with marketing actions. We find that greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, environmental disclosure score, waste reduction, energy consumption, and recycling are prominent measures of EP, and that social disclosure score, philanthropy or community spending, and diversity of gender and race are prominent measures of SP. The KLD, ASSET4, and Bloomberg are prominent sources of data that can be used to operationalize SP, to which CDP may be added for EP. We also show that marketing actions positively affect EP and SP. This study contributes to the extant literature on SP and EP by identifying measures and data sources and linking marketing actions to both performance types. It contributes to policy development by identifying the importance of EP and SP and how marketing actions can help achieve such performance.

This article reviews the quantitative marketing literature on artificial intelligence (AI) through an economics lens. We apply the framework in Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence to systematically categorize 96 research papers on AI in marketing academia into five levels of impact, which are prediction, decision, tool, strategy, and society. For each paper, we further identify each individual component of a task, the research question, the AI model used, and the broad decision type. Overall, we find there are fewer marketing papers focusing on strategy and society, and accordingly, we discuss future research opportunities in those areas.

The purpose of this paper is to present an example of action learning in marketing – the unique postgraduate programme in marketing called the marketing development programme (MDP). This uniqueness arises in three main ways. First, the MDP is open only to those students with no work experience. Second, it employs action learning as the central pedagogy rather than an add‐on. Finally, it is a rolling programme with overlapping intakes and as such appears to have no beginning and no end. There are two important streams of learning to be harvested from such a programme. First, the MDP has for more than 20 years educated young marketers through affording them the opportunity to learn from marketing action within a supportive learning environment. The second is that there can be no action without learning, that is, the MDP has learned from its experience and created new learning for participants as a result. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the MDP for marketing education, theory and practice.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived exposure of fashion consumers to different types of fashion brands’ social media marketing (SMM) actions in social media, and its relationship with the intention to engage in electronic word-of-mouth (eWoM) behaviors.

The empirical study uses a survey conducted on a stratified random sample of 241 Indonesian members of fashion social media brand communities (SMBCs). The research design includes 19 types of SMM actions and 3 types of eWoM engagement behaviors, and investigates their relationship using point-biserial correlation.

Generation of intention to engage in “pass-on” and “endorsement” eWoM has different drivers and serves different purposes. The findings suggest that endorsement engagement is contingent on the consumer’s perceived exposure to marketing action stimuli, while pass-on engagement is driven by cognitive-inducing actions.

This study extends current theory on SMM strategy and its relationship with eWoM engagement with a theoretically grounded conceptualization of eWoM engagement behaviors through the use of one-click social plug-ins.

The study offers guidelines for fashion brands to effectively design their SMM strategies by identifying specific drivers of consumers’ intention to engage in eWoM.

This study identifies sources of generation of eWoM engagement behavioral intention from a fine-grained analysis of marketing actions across various fashion SMBCs. Besides, it extends the applicability of the “mere exposure” effect to the SMM context. The research pioneers the study on fashion consumers’ eWoM engagement behaviors in Indonesia, a country with one of the largest social media populations.

For any given customer, his/her profitability for a business enterprise can be estimated by the so-called customer lifetime value (CLV). One specific goal for many enterprises consists in maximizing the aggregated CLV associated with its set of customers. To achieve this goal, a company uses marketing resources (e.g. marketing campaigns), which are usually expensive.

This paper proposes a formal model of the Customer Life Value problem inspired by the uncapacitated facility location problem.

The computational experiments conducted by the authors illustrate the potential of the approach when compared with a standard (non-algorithm-supported) one.

The approach leads up to the economic trade-off between the volume of the employed resources and the aggregated CLV, i.e. the higher the number of resources utilized, but also the higher the cost of achieving this level of lifetime value. Hence, the number of resources to be “activated” has to be decided, and the effect of each of these resources on each CLV will depend upon how “close” the resource is from the corresponding customer (i.e. how large will the impact of the active resource on the customer).

The paper aims to describe the purpose and objectives of research being carried out by a Cranfield School of Management forum – the Return on Marketing Investment Best Practice Research Club (RoMI) – into measuring marketing's performance, during which a model has been developed – the RoMI framework.

The paper shows the model as a whole and then discusses each element individually, in terms of the nature and role of each of them.

The paper finds that in many companies market segmentation is non‐existent or only dimly recognised rather than utilised, or has no external validity. It contends that, if companies could develop an appropriate framework of relevant measurements and systematically collect and capture data within the framework, then business cases for marketing activity could be built and considered in a more objective and informed manner. It claims that the RoMi Club model presented her provides a framework of measurements tailored to fit the needs of each company.

The paper provides interested companies with an explanation of the research approach, so that they can give it some thought while the field research takes place.

A meta-evaluation is an assessment of evaluation practices. Meta-evaluations include assessments of validity and usefulness of two or more studies that focus on the same issues. Every performance audit is grounded explicitly or implicitly in one or more theories of program evaluation. A deep understanding of alternative theories of program evaluation is helpful to gain clarity about sound auditing practices. We present a review of several theories of program evaluation.

This study includes a meta-evaluation of seven government audits on the efficiency and effectiveness of tourism departments and programs. The seven tourism-marketing performance audits are program evaluations for: Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Australia, and two for Hawaii. The majority of these audits are negative performance assessments. Similarly, although these audits are more useful than none at all, the central conclusion of the meta-evaluation is that most of these audit reports are inadequate assessments. These audits are too limited in the issues examined; not sufficiently grounded in relevant evaluation theory and practice; and fail to include recommendations, that if implemented, would result in substantial increases in performance.

This chapter integrates research that highlights and demonstrates the importance of the marketing mix and customer attitudinal metrics in influencing the customer’s path to purchase. A key objective of this chapter is the provision of an integrative conceptual framework that links marketing actions to customer mindset metrics along the consumer’s path to purchase and the identification of the mechanisms by which customer mindset metrics contribute to consumer purchase journey. Specifically, it delineates two routes for the effects to manifest on sales: the “mindset route” where marketing actions influence customer mindset metrics, which in turn influence brand performance, or the “transactions route” where marketing actions influence market performance directly without influencing the intermediate mindset metrics. A second objective is to identify empirical patterns on incorporating marketing mix and mindset metrics along the path to purchase by reviewing key papers in this domain. Finally, the chapter concludes with the formulation of a rich, forward-looking research agenda on the customer mindset metrics – path to purchase link.