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The service marketing literature has traditionally argued that the marketing practices of service firms that operate in diverse cultures should also differ. This paper aims to investigate this argument by examining the marketing practices of service firms in two highly diverse countries “Canada and Qatar” in the context of a contemporary conceptual framework.

Survey data were collected in both countries using a self-administered questionnaire that was used in previous contemporary marketing practice (CMP) studies. The data analysis was conducted in two stages. First, descriptive statistics were used to determine cross-national differences in the intensity of use of various CMP activities in Qatar compared to Canada. Second, cross-national differences in various combinations of marketing practices were identified using a cluster analysis.

The results indicate that service firms in both countries have more similarities than differences and that the overall patterns of marketing practices are similar. In addition, the firms’ marketing practices reflect aspects of all four marketing approaches rather than just one.

The study was conducted in only two countries, thus generalisability of its findings and conclusions may not be possible.

The results of this study can help marketers to better understand the changing marketing environment and identify new marketing solutions when operating in different environments.

This study enhances the literature on service marketing and expands the application of the CMP framework to a new context that has not been addressed in previous studies.

This study aims to investigates the possible gap between the logic of these information technology (IT) systems and industrial firms’ marketing practices. Industrial firms rely extensively on IT systems for their business.

Based on the contemporary marketing practice (CMP) model, which depicts firms’ marketing practice as ranging from transactional to more relational and networked-based, the logic of IT systems and how users in industrial firms adopt them are amended to create an extended model. The extended model is used to analyze an in-depth case based on 63 interviews regarding one industrial firm’s business with customers and suppliers and how IT is utilized in this setting.

Results show that industrial firms’ relationship-oriented business is poorly supported by currently used IT systems. This gap between the IT systems, which are transaction-focused, and industrial firms’ marketing practice, which is relationship-based, has severe effects on adoption and efficiency of IT systems. The marketers prefer local, non-integrated, IT with limited usefulness on an overall firm level while resisting the firms’ comprehensive IT systems. This forms an IT–marketing gap given that current IT does not match the marketing practice of relationship-oriented industrial firms.

This study applies an extended CMP model in a novel way focusing one industrial firm, its customers and suppliers and the IT used in this setting. The study shows that all marketing practices of the CMP model can be found in one firm’s business, albeit one category, i.e. interaction marketing (a relationship approach), is dominating. The use of the CMP framework offers new and valuable insights into the fundamental cause to the industrial marketers’ limited use of integrated IT.

To investigate the practice of market orientation, with a specific focus on the extent to which Nigerian marketers place emphasis on the different dimensions of market orientation, customer satisfaction, competitiveness, market intelligence, and assessment of the effectiveness of the strategies adopted.

The study uses a contextualized and literature‐based research instrument to measure the applications of market orientation “constructs” by 697 small and large manufacturing and service companies operating in Lagos State of Nigeria. The research instrument showed encouraging evidence of reliability and validity. Data were interpreted by factor analysis.

It was found that market orientation is practised to a reasonable extent among the surveyed companies, and tentatively concluded that market orientation practices were related to the category of business (service versus manufacturing) and its size. The principal focus was on the gathering, interpretation and implementation of market intelligence, and on measuring the effectiveness of the outcomes.

The findings are limited to some extent by the confounding effect of variation within and between types of firm and industry sectors, and the use of respondents' own assessments of performance (i.e. respondents' evaluations of organizational effectiveness with regard to market orientation practices). The Nigerian setting and cross‐sectional design limit the generalizability of the findings to other contexts/environments. Continuing research is under way to address these limitations.

Expands the body of knowledge about market orientation in practice by extending an established research formula beyond the usual context of developed western economies, and thereby potentially contains lessons for practitioners and researchers in other developing countries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between research and practice within the context of Islamic marketing (IM), an issue which is controversial in the literature. It offers reasonable answers that bridge the gap between research and practice, as well as the way to mitigate it.

This study uses a critical approach to analytically review the literature on IM, and relates it to research and practice.

The study finds that the advancement of knowledge on IM necessitates research and practice. There is a gap between research and practice which evolved from decades of objectivity between researchers and practitioners in the field of IM. It is necessary to search for some practicable solutions that can narrow the gap between theory and practice.

The basic limitation of this study is that IM has not yet emerged as a distinct discipline. Hence, there is limited study on IM issues in the context of research and practice.

This study makes essential contributions to the chastisement by research and practice, a theoretically new field of IM subject.

Under-examination of the notion of competition between schools has created a considerable asymmetry between the reality and the literature of schooling. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the validity of school competition and verify the propositions regarding the effects of school marketing practices in literature, particularly Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) and aided schools in Hong Kong.

It tests the relationships between student intake and school academic performance and school marketing practices. It also compares the pattern of the relationships between the DSS and aided secondary schools. Secondary data from 441 secondary schools were retrieved from a popular secondary school admission magazine in Hong Kong and from the schools’ websites.

Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the school’s academic performance was positively related to discretionary student intake. In addition, marketing school academic performance, but not marketing school features, was positively related to student intake. At last, it was found that marketing school academic performance intensified the relationship between the school’s academic performance and student intake in aided schools but not in DSS schools. The results were interpreted as demonstrating that school competition in Hong Kong is a battle of lifting academic performance.

This study is potential and worthwhile in at least two ways. First, testing the relationships of student intake with academic performance and school marketing practices helps to verify the notion of school competition in the education sector, which, in turn, can bridge the gap between the practice and literature of schooling. Second, examining school competition in Hong Kong can help to identify an important contextual reality for future scholars whose research site is located in Hong Kong.

The purpose of this editorial is to bring together thoughts and opinions from the Editors and Senior Advisory Board of EJM regarding the nature of the long‐debated “theory‐practice divide” in marketing scholarship.

The authors synthesise diverse opinions from senior academics in order both to inspire further debate in marketing scholarship, and to draw some important conclusions for marketing academia as a whole.

The authors propose that, for marketing scholarship to mature and progress, room must be found for those who wish to focus both on practical and on pure marketing scholarship. Career advancement from both routes is vital.

The topic of the theory‐practice gap is complex. Many diverse opinions are cited and, due to space constraints, the coverage of many issues is necessarily brief.

Scholars should find the thoughts contained in the paper of significant interest.

The paper appears to be the first to bring together such a set of diverse opinions on the subject, and to try to draw some overall pragmatic conclusions, while still recognising the multiplicity of valid thought in the area.

This paper examines the marketing practices of Argentine business‐to‐business firms and compares them with the marketing practices of US and New Zealand firms. While the results show marked similarities in the practices for a certain proportion of Argentine firms, there are also some differences. Overall, Argentine firms tend to have lower use of information technology in marketing and a greater emphasis on face‐to‐face interaction. There is also a group of Argentine firms that operates in the traditional business environment where less emphasis is placed on marketing activity. Implications of these results for managers and academics are discussed.

Service employees are reported to influence negatively the development of a market orientation hindering thus the service company's effort to become more customer centric. A way to overcome this barrier is the implementation of internal marketing (IM) programs. However, the extant literature reports that the number of companies practicing marketing internally is disproportionate small compared to the number of companies trying to adopt the market orientation concept. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to offer a preliminary insight regarding the antecedents of practicing marketing internally.

To do this, data were collected from 583 first‐line personnel from 29 five and four stars hotels in Greece through personal interviews in order to investigate the impact of company culture and internal‐market orientation (IMO) as antecedents of IM and investigate the effect that the company's culture, IMO and IM have on employee's job satisfaction at the individual's level.

The analysis involved multilevel SEM and demonstrates that the company's culture influences the adoption of the IMO concept, which in turn is an important antecedent to the implementation of IM programs. Moreover, employee's job satisfaction level is directly conditioned by the degree to which the company has adopted the IMO concept and practices IM, although the effect of the former is significantly stronger than the latter.

Various directions for future research open from this study, which address the limitations of this study while facilitating further understanding of how the adoption of the IMO concept can complement the company's espousal of marketing philosophy. For instance, although assessing the impact of the IMO concept adoption and IM practice on the adoption of a market orientation and on customer satisfaction is beyond the scope of the present study, future research towards this direction through an integrated conceptual framework would be particularly helpful and welcome.

The practical implication from this paper is that IM programs, in order to be effective, require that the company is willing to invest in adjusting its culture and also in adopting the IMO concept, which translates to investing in understanding what the employee's value, developing bidirectional communication channels and becoming responsive to the needs of its employees.

This is the first study addressing the role of company culture and IMO adoption as antecedents of IM programs. Hence, it makes a contribution for both scholars and practitioners alike since the former derive a more comprehensive framework of studying further the practice of marketing internally while the latter obtain a more pragmatic picture of the actions required prior to launching an IM program.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how different types of firms relate to their markets in terms of contemporary marketing practices (CMP) in an emerging country, Bangladesh. Additionally, the paper also examines the various marketing performance measures used by Bangladeshi firms.

The CMP survey was used on 165 marketing managers chosen from a range of industrial sectors as a basis for data collection. Data were analyzed using cluster analysis and other descriptive statistics.

The study found that a pluralistic marketing approach is predominant among the majority of the Bangladeshi firms, while few other firms also practise transactional marketing. Results also reveal that Bangladeshi firms apply a blend of performance indicators rather than relying on specific financial‐ or client‐based measures to evaluate business success.

The present study provides a benchmark for future studies on CMP in emerging/developing countries and inspires further research designed to deepen understanding about how marketing is practised in emerging markets and how they may differ from developed markets.

Since very few studies have been conducted regarding CMP by incorporating both business‐to‐business and consumer goods/services firms for a specific country into an emerging market, this study adds a new dimension to the horizon of CMPs.