Search results

The term ‘strategy’ is one of the most frequently used terms in business, and its application in marketing is particularly common. Company strategy, market strategy, marketing strategy, sales strategy, promotion strategy, distribution strategy, low pricing strategy – it would take a long time to list all of them. Although this term is so commonly in use, its definition is not as straightforward and it can be interpreted in different ways. In comparison with tactical decisions, strategy is much more significant for an organisation as it brings long-lasting consequences. It is implemented by higher level managers on a regular basis, and it is based on external, often subjective information, so decisions – especially at the time they are made – are difficult to evaluate.

Taking into consideration the fact that strategy refers to a long-term rather than a short-term period, strategic decisions serve as the basis for undertaking operational activities. However, marketing refers to the market and the competition. It is possible to claim that marketing strategy is trying to find an answer to the question to which path an organisation should follow in order to achieve its goals and objectives. If, for example, a company has a goal to generate a profit of PLN 1 million by selling 100,000 pieces of a product, the market strategy should answer at least the following two questions:

1. Who will be our target group, for example, who will purchase the 100,000 pieces of the product?

2. Why is it us from whom a potential buyer should purchase the product?

Who will be our target group, for example, who will purchase the 100,000 pieces of the product?

Why is it us from whom a potential buyer should purchase the product?

The target market will be defined if a reply to the first question is provided. The second question identifies the foundations of competitive advantage. These two issues, that is, target market and competitive advantage are the strategic marketing issues. You cannot change your target group unexpectedly while competitive advantage is the basis for changing decisions regarding prices, promotions and sales.

This chapter describes the measures of marketing activities which refer to strategic aspects and testify a company’s market position – the measures of the performance of target groups and competitive advantage. Readers’ attention should be also focused on the indices that are less popular in Poland and, therefore, may be underestimated. It seems that some of them, for example, the index of marketing resources allocation and the marketing risk index, provide a lot of valuable information and, at the same time, make it possible to show the value of marketing investments. Their wider use in the near future is only a matter of time.

This chapter provides an overview of the marketing strategy development process in the commercialization of breakthrough technologies. Important concepts and elements that are considered critical when developing market applications are presented with emphasis on three key decisions: target market selection, segmentation, and positioning. These strategic decisions will guide the more tactical considerations relating to the specific elements, or marketing mix, of the product’s marketing strategy. Marketing strategy development is a dynamic process that is impacted by many factors. This chapter highlights the dynamic nature of this process as well as providing insight as to the fundamental considerations in strategy formulation.

This chapter provides an overview of the marketing strategy development process in the commercialization of breakthrough technologies. Important concepts and elements that are considered critical when developing market applications are presented with emphasis on three key decisions: target market selection, segmentation, and positioning. These strategic decisions will guide the more tactical considerations relating to the specific elements, or marketing mix, of the product's marketing strategy. Marketing strategy development is a dynamic process impacted by many factors. This chapter highlights the dynamic nature of this process as well as provides insight into the fundamental considerations in strategy formulation.

The purposes of this chapter are to propose definitions of innovation, product innovation, business model innovation, marketing innovation, innovation strategy, and strategic innovation, elaborate on their literature and conceptual underpinnings, and provide an overview of the conceptual domains of innovation, innovation strategy, and strategic innovation.

First, certain definitions of innovation, drawn from literature, are presented. Next, certain definitions that incorporate logically incremental refinements in them are presented. Building on these, definitions of innovation, product innovation, business model innovation, and marketing innovation are proposed.

Innovation is the creation of value by using relevant knowledge and resources for conversion of an idea into a new product, process, or practice, or improvements in an existing product, process, or practice. Innovation strategy is an organization’s relative emphasis on different types of innovations and the associated pattern of resource allocation, in alignment with its strategy at the corporate and business unit levels. Strategic innovation is the creation of value by using relevant knowledge and resources for conversion of an idea into a new product, process, or practice with the potential to have a major transformational effect on the evolution of markets and industries.

Over the past several decades, there has been a sustained and high level of interest in issues relating to innovation among academics in a number of disciplines, business and social entrepreneurs, business practitioners, and policy makers. Books, journal articles, and business magazine articles provide a number of definitions of innovation and specific types of innovation. Multiple definitions of a construct can be problematic in certain respects and beneficial in other respects. A potential upside of multiple definitions of innovation is the prospect of each being a source of ideas for one or more innovations that benefit society, and an impetus for research focusing on specific questions.

Implementation of an idea, value creation, and use of relevant knowledge and resources are used as constituent elements in the proposed definitions of innovation, product innovation, business model innovation, marketing innovation, and strategic innovation.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

This paper examines how the management control practices of organization members enable the alignment of product development projects with potentially conflicting corporate strategies during the product development process.

Using an ethnomethodology informed research approach, we carry out a case study of an innovative New Zealand food company. Case study data included an internal company document, interviews with organization members, and an external market analysis document.

Our case study company had both sales growth and profit growth corporate strategies which have been argued to cause tensions. We found that four management control practices enabled the alignment of product development projects to these strategies. The first management control practice was having the NPD and marketing functions responsible for different corporate strategies. Other management control practices included the involvement of organization members from across multiple functions, the activities they carried out, and the measures used to evaluate project performance during the product development process.

These findings add new insights to the management accounting literature by showing how a combination of management control practices can be used by organization members to align projects with potentially conflicting corporate strategies during the product development process.

While the alignment of product development projects to corporate strategy is not easy this study shows how it can be enabled through a number of management control practices.

We contribute to the management accounting research in this area by extending our understanding of the management control practices used during the product development process.

Contemporary businesses face rapidly evolving changes and complexities that challenge their respective managerial responses and capabilities. The natures of information and communication systems, ways of doing business, knowledge-transfer methods, diffusion channels of innovation, and industrial habitus are shifting. Additionally, methods, concepts, and frameworks to study these challenges need to be in accordance.

Many of these features characterizing the new business environment influence not only the consumer business, but also the business-to-business (B2B) sectors and their ways of functioning. Interestingly, the influence also connects domestic with international business through the global connectedness. This is particularly visible in marketing communication, as the difference between domestic and international business communication has further diminished due to digital and virtual dimensions and applications. In this new age, it is assumed that new ventures and small- and medium-sized enterprises can turn their vulnerabilities and size constraints into competitive advantages by addressing these challenges with efficient social media usage. To address this technology-enabled dimension of B2B relations, the authors present a case study illustrating how a firm advances its relationship management and communication by introducing social media instruments. The study contributes to relationship management and international marketing communication and provides new insights into the workings of social media within the B2B context.

The chapter briefly reviews the eight volumes in my Legend series – organizational buying behavior, consumer behavior, product and new product management, marketing strategy, market segmentation, global marketing, marketing research and modeling, and the future of marketing. In addition, the chapter highlights the three driving forces of much of my research: (a) the real world challenges facing corporations and organizations, (b) the search for new methodological developments, and (c) the continuous challenge of the prevailing marketing concepts and approaches. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the evolution of marketing in the past five decades and my wish list for the discipline and my future activities.