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The purpose of the paper is to present an empirical study that examines the impact of digitalization on informative, strategic and operational marketing activities in manufacturing companies from the entrepreneurial perspective.

A research project was carried out in 205 Italian manufacturing companies by using the questionnaire method. An exploratory research study was conducted with hierarchical cluster analysis.

The analysis shows the existence of seven clusters of manufacturing companies that differ by the impact of digitalization on marketing activities from the entrepreneurial perspective. Two clusters have a high positive impact of digitalization, primarily on informative and strategic marketing activities. Two clusters are characterized by a low positive impact of digitalization and three clusters perform an intermediate level of digitalization. Furthermore, these groups of clusters differ in terms of the influence of digitalization on customer value.

The small size of the sample and the geographic origin of the companies imply limited generalizability; further research on the topic is thus recommended.

The study suggests that companies should digitalize many key marketing activities to increase marketing effectiveness and customer value. To achieve high levels of digitalization and thus increase their competitiveness, manufacturing companies should consider the importance of relevant technologies and skills.

By focussing on the impact of digitalization on informative, strategic and operational marketing, which has not yet been empirically investigated, the present study reveals many new elements concerning the marketing process in the digital era from the entrepreneur's point of view.

This paper aims at understanding how automotive firms integrate customer relationship management (CRM) tools and big data analytics (BDA) into their marketing strategies to enhance total quality management (TQM) after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

A qualitative methodology based on a multiple-case study was adopted, involving the collection of 18 interviews with eight leading automotive firms and other companies responsible for their marketing and CRM activities.

Results highlight that, through the adoption of CRM technology, automotive firms have developed best practices that positively impact business performance and TQM, thereby strengthening their digital culture. The challenges in the implementation of CRM and BDA are also discussed.

The study suffers from limitations related to the findings' generalizability due to the restricted number of firms operating in a single industry involved in the sample.

Findings suggest new relational approaches and opportunities for automotive companies deriving from the use of CRM and BDA under an overall customer-oriented approach.

This research analyzes how CRM and BDA improve the marketing and TQM processes in the automotive industry, which is undergoing deep transformation in the current context of digital transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate pharmaceutical market access (MA) and the interaction between the pharmaceutical company and other business and non-business actors (NBAs) involved in the MA of ethical drugs, to identify the main categories of actors, their role for MA and the content of the interaction, adopting an industrial marketing approach.

A qualitative interpretivist approach is adopted, with interviews as the primary data collection method: 36 interviews have been conducted with 16 key informants from the pharmaceutical industry.

The findings of this study reveal that (i) MA can be seen as a relational-driven activity with specific features owing to the highly regulated nature of the pharmaceutical industry, (ii) there is a multiplicity of business, and NBAs involved in the MA activities with whom pharmaceutical companies interact to acquire knowledge, legitimacy and make MA timely and effective, and (iii) the interaction with each category of actors has specific content.

This paper advances the debate on the marketing and management of pharmaceutical companies by emphasizing the importance of MA and the need to conceptualize it according to an industrial marketing perspective, revealing the interdependencies among actors for MA and the content of the interaction. It also contributes to the industrial marketing literature that has recently stressed the importance of NBAs as part of the extended business network of a company by identifying different categories of actors, their role in terms of knowledge and legitimization and the features and the trade-off of the extended business network in highly regulated markets.

This study adopts the multi-step model developed by Avraham and Ketter (2008), for altering place images, based on past academic literature on destination marketing. The purpose of this study is to determine the state of Fukushima’s sake breweries before and after 2011, and its strategies for overcoming negative images and strengthening regional branding. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven sake breweries in Fukushima.

Fukushima Prefecture, located in northern Japan, is renowned for its hot springs, lakes, historical architecture, gastronomy, and particularly its sake (or Japanese rice wine). However, pre-existing problems such as the prefecture’s changing demographics and economic development, the effects of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) and fears of radioactive contamination have made consumers reluctant to consume products from the region or to visit the prefecture. This study illustrates how various sake brewery stakeholders have sought to reverse and alter negative images associated with the prefecture. To examine these initiatives, this study uses the multi-step destination marketing and counter-branding model to identify the strategies and techniques used by the stakeholders, with the aim of altering the way the prefecture is perceived and reversing the negative image people may have of the prefecture. To acquire data for this model, this study uses semi-structured interviews conducted in 2018 and 2020 with local sake breweries, tourism associations and the local government on how they sought to retore a positive image of the prefecture and rebrand it into a new type of tourism destination that focuses on the strengths of its breweries.

The results indicate that through a combination of collaboration between the breweries, local government and the local communities, the sake breweries were able to reverse many of the negative effects of the 2011 GEJE. The success of the sake industry has prompted the local government to focus more strongly on tourism marketing that places sake products and breweries at the center of its campaign to promote the region.

While this paper focuses on the recovery of breweries, it does not include the recovery of wineries in Fukushima, which have made similar progress in their recovery. In addition, the interviews focused primarily on the perspectives of the suppliers and not the consumers.

The results of this research can help guide other destinations undergoing prolonged association with negative images on the path toward image recovery. In particular, this paper highlights the importance of a coordinated strategy by all stakeholders, the local government, businesses and communities, to create a united image and response for addressing the causes of these image problems and to create new opportunities for all stakeholders.

This research contributes to the field of image restoration, which combines theories regarding destination marketing and crisis management. Also, the research highlights the importance of collective stakeholder mobilization when attempting to help communities that are facing economic and tourism crises.

The purpose of this study is to investigate benefits tourist seek when visiting a nature-based tourism destination to develop a benefit segmentation framework.

The study used quantitative research methods, with 400 self-administered survey administered to a sample of 400 tourists visiting the Kruger, Panorama, and Lowveld areas in Mpumalanga.

Cluster analysis produced two benefit segments. Binary logistic regression benefits that emerged from the cluster analysis were statistically significant predictors of the attractions tourists visited and the activities in which they participated during their stays in Mpumalanga. Factor-cluster analysis and binary logistic regression results were used to develop a benefit segmentation framework as a marketing planning tool.

The study was only based on Mpumalanga Province and therefore, the results cannot be generalised. The study was conducted over one season, the Easter period

The proposed benefit segmentation framework provides a tool that destination management organisations can use to plan effectively for marketing.

Effective marketing may lead to increased tourism growth which can have a multiplier effect on the destination.

This article is based on a master’s study conducted in Mpumalanga and results are presented on this paper.

The present study aims to contribute to the growing stream of literature about the network perspective of value co-creation via key account management (KAM) by exploring how firms, in complex industrial markets, use key account strategies to create value, not only for buyers and sellers of industrial products/services but also, more widely, for larger ecosystems of stakeholders. The research question this paper seeks to address is how the KAM approach promotes value co-creation in multi-stakeholder ecosystem.

To answer this research question, this study uses a qualitative research approach based on data triangulation. This study focuses on the market access (MA) strategies implemented by a multinational UK-based pharmaceutical company within the Italian multi-stakeholder health-care ecosystem over several years.

The results show that KAM in complex networks acts as a catalyst for value creation, through multiple interactions with different actors and an ad hoc configuration of five strategic levers: product performance, economic impact, institutional relationships, commercial organization and communication. These levers are able to unlock the appropriate value drivers and form a specific “market access mix” implemented by the firm to both promote the adoption of the firm’s products and generate value for all market stakeholders.

The study offers an innovative and comprehensive evidence-based model for designing specific MA strategies aimed at co-creating value within multi-stakeholder ecosystems. The proposed MA mix outlines the fact that knowledge, relationships and innovation are not unique factors that can be leveraged by stakeholders to co-create value.

In a modern world increasingly perceived as uncertain, the mere purchase of a household cleaning product, or a seemingly harmless bottle of milk, conveys interrogations about potential hazards, from environmental to health impacts. The main purpose of this paper is to suggest that risk could be considered as one of the major dimensions of choice for a wide range of concerns and markets, alongside aspiration/satisfaction, and tackled efficiently by mobilizing the recent findings of cognitive sciences, neurosciences and evolutionary psychology. It is felt that consumer research could benefit more widely from psychological and evolutionary-grounded risk theories.

In this study, some 50 years of marketing management literature, as well as risk-specialized literature, was examined in an attempt to get a grasp of how risk is handled by consumer sciences and of whether they make some use of the most recent academic works on mental biases, non-mainstream decision-making processes or evolutionary roots of behavior. We then tested and formulated several hypotheses regarding risk profiles and preferences in the sector of insurance, by participating in an Axa Research Fund–Paris School of Economics research project.

It is suggested that consumer profiles could be enriched by risk-taking attitudes, that risk could be part of the “reason why” of brand positioning, and that brand, as well as public policy communication, could benefit from a targeted use of risk perception biases.

This paper proposes to apply evolutionary-based psychological concepts to build perceptual maps describing people and consumers on both aspiration and risk attitude axis, and to design communication tools according to psychological research on message framing and biases. Such an approach mobilizes not only the recent findings of cognitive sciences and neurosciences but also the understanding of the roots of risk attitudes and perception. Those maps and framing could probably be applied to many sectors, markets and public issues, from commodities to personal products and services (food, luxury goods, electronics, financial products, tourism, design or insurance).

This study aims to offer novel insights on how industrial marketing might contribute to bringing innovations to market in the peculiar case of health care. This study aims at shedding first light on how the alignment between dissemination and exploitation activities might contribute to bringing to market innovations developed by public–private partnerships funded by the European Commission (EC).

The theoretical development comes from an inductive research design based on the 42-month pan-European H2020 research project NESTORE aimed at developing an integrated portfolio of innovations for the healthy aging of European citizens.

This study advances the theory and practice of industrial marketing in health care by conceptualizing an actionable method to align dissemination and exploitation activities within EC-funded projects, facilitating that innovations will go to market. The method is composed of five phases. First, an external analysis to define market opportunities and users’/stakeholders’ needs. Second, an internal analysis to identify the most promising exploitable outputs. Third, scenarios crystallization to define the most suitable scenarios (business models) to bring the selected exploitable outputs to market. Fourth, exploitation and dissemination alignment through the identification and involvement of the most relevant stakeholders. Fifth, scenario refinement and business plan.

This study is relevant because many EC-funded projects still fail to move innovations from labs to market, thus limiting the benefits for the European citizens and the competitiveness of Europe with respect to the USA and China. Although this relevance, past studies overlooked the peculiar context of EC-funded innovation projects, privileging pharmaceutical and biomedical companies. This study advance theory and practice of industrial marketing in health care.

The purpose of this paper is to review state-of-the-art literature on product/brand positioning to re-examine the positioning concept and developing a more comprehensive definition from a theoretical viewpoint.

A systematic review of positioning was conducted. The review conformed to a rigorous set of core principles: it was systematic (organized according to a method designed to address the review questions), transparent (explicitly stated), reproducible and updatable and synthesized (summarized the evidence relating to the review question).

The literature review reveals that there is lack of coherent definition for positioning, and there is no mutual agreement among marketing scholars and practitioners about the exact meaning of the concept. Therefore, comprehensive definition of positioning encompassing the five underlying positioning perspectives (competition; empty slot/mind; consumers’ perception, differentiation and competitive advantage) is suggested.

This paper will be useful for academicians to analyze the current nature of academic research in this area and will provide an added advantage to managers to design and implement positioning strategies for their product/brands that will allow their organizations to gain competitive advantage. This study acknowledges limitations with respect to its exclusive search criteria, which might affect its generalizability.

Position and positioning is of relevance in society in broad terms, e.g. in sports, politics and culture. Positioning strategy is discussed and implemented in different industries (business-to-business and consumer), for all kinds of brands (including, for instance, corporate brands) and for “brands” in the very widest sense (such as places or people).

This is the first systematic review of positioning that provides a detailed understanding of the current state of positioning research on a single platform and also draws a comprehensive positioning conceptualization.

The economic shock posed by the current COVID-19 outbreak brought out a worldwide public health emergency with a close relationship between the industrial marketing practices, the health level of society and its economic development. The purpose of this study is to analyse the industrial dynamics in health care and their impact on economic growth and health status.

To empirically investigate the relationship between growth and health, the authors use a data set drawn from 29 selected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over the period 2000 and 2019. Using panel regressions, the authors investigate the impact of the health-care industry measured in terms of health status, health expenditure, sales on pharmaceutical products, the number of persons working in health care and the coverage by private health insurances. Fixed effect and random effect regressions are used to estimate this model.

Overall, the results are suggestive of a nexus between the industrial marketing dynamics of health-care context and economic growth – both interacting and improving each other. As the quality of the health-care market enhances, the economy grows richer and the health status of the population improves considerably.

To support health-care markets in OECD countries, health policymakers need to formulate a long-term industrial health policy that addresses all the social and individual determinants of health.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to provide a better understanding of the relationship between health-care industrial dynamics and economic growth in OECD countries along different dimensions.