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Consumers engage in online curation using branded items (e.g., product images) on social shopping websites (i.e., sites that combine commerce and social media) in ways that can have important implications for fashion brands. Beyond being passive recipients of a brand’s marketing message, consumers now actively participate in co-creating the brand by combining brands and presenting them to others, generating novel co-branding connections and revising brand categorization. We use behavioral data collected from two communities on a popular social shopping site (Polyvore.com) and employ a clustering technique to demonstrate that curating consumers are assembling different brands together, thus creating implicit brand associations. We additionally conduct an analysis of curated fashion displays to understand which features make a display more popular. Looking at consumer curation behavior on social shopping sites, fashion brand managers can better understand the ways in which their brands’ images are being co-created by consumers.

This research integrates marketing literature, design theory, interviews with world-renowned designers, and established scale development procedures to develop a reliable and valid instrument that measures the effectiveness of design communication (i.e., the information about product designs conveyed through the product, packaging, or advertisements) via consumer evaluations. The theoretical underpinnings and face validity engaged in the development of the Design Communication Assessment Scale (DCAS) progresses the field's understanding as to what constitutes the seven evaluative dimensions of design (form, function, solidity, usefulness, style, eco-consciousness, and uniqueness). Practically, DCAS's versatility provides managers with the ability to gauge consumer evaluations of design communications while enabling better communications with designers. In addition, the authors validate a shortened form of the DCAS for resource-constrained firms. Support for DCAS’s generalizability is provided across laboratory and field studies in which ecological validity is established. Together, these studies demonstrate that using DCAS leads to improved performance across a wide array of metrics, including click-through rates, email signups, and retail sales for a diverse set of products.

This study examines esports fans’ psychological processes and pertinent behaviors through the lens of the self-determination theory (SDT). The extent to which the esports fans’ basic psychological needs—that is, competence, autonomy, and relatedness—are satisfied were assessed by using a composite latent variable model. Findings derived from the data analyses confirmed the relevance of the SDT in explaining pertinent information on need satisfaction, motivation, and related consumption behaviors. In particular, relatedness was identified as the most salient basic psychological need dimension, suggesting that satisfying this need is critically important for esports consumption. Both the inquiry protocol and the findings of this investigation contribute to the existing literature on motivation by developing an SDT model in esports media studies. Further discussions were made on deciphering the opportunities and challenges associated with the burgeoning esports industry.

Conceptual review papers can theoretically enrich the field of marketing by reviewing extant knowledge, noting tensions and inconsistencies, identifying important gaps as well as key insights, and proposing agendas for future research. The result of this process is a theoretical contribution that refines, reconceptualizes, or even replaces existing ways of viewing a phenomenon. This paper spells out the primary aims of conceptual reviews and clarifies how they differ from other theory development efforts. It also describes elements essential to a strong conceptual review paper and offers a specific set of best practices that can be used to distinguish a strong conceptual review from a weak one.

PurposeDrawing on the brand alliance, cause marketing and corporate social responsibility literatures, the authors introduce the notion of international cause alliances. The authors conceptualize international cause alliances as strategic partnerships between international causes and for-profit companies with the stated purpose of raising funds for the cause. Beyond signaling that companies are socially responsible, international cause alliances may also help companies increase brand awareness or expand into new markets. Because international cause alliances take many forms and differ in the extent to which the brands are integrated, they have very different strategic implications. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these implications in a framework as well as providing managerial direction for both for-profit companies and causes when forming such alliances.Design/methodology/approachUsing literature on brand alliances, cause marketing, and corporate social responsibility as a foundation, the authors introduce the notion of international cause alliances. The authors review literature to understand the many forms of alliances and investigate the extent to which brands are integrated. The authors then use these implications to develop a framework that can guide managerial decision-making for both for-profit companies and causes when forming such alliances.FindingsThe research suggests that to effectively develop international cause alliances, the organization involved must be aware of the challenges and potential benefits that these partnerships produce. For instance, while highly integrated alliances involve large resource commitments they also facilitate brand image spillover. As such, these alliances are a great way for companies to alter customers’ perceptions of their brands. Alternatively, low integration alliances require fewer resources and facilitate market expansion.Research limitations/implicationsThis research identifies strategies that companies and causes can use to either expand their markets or alter customers’ perceptions of their brands.Originality/valueThis paper presents a framework that companies and causes can use when forming international cause alliances.

Marketing practitioners have access to a rapidly increasing quantity and variety of data from customers and other stakeholders. Managers use the term “Big Data” to describe this avalanche of information, which many view as critical to providing a better understanding of customers and markets. This research uses interviews with managers to examine the marketing function’s perspective on data-driven decision making within the firm. Based on informant responses, we develop a hierarchy of data-oriented decision making, describe the drivers that influence where a firm falls within this hierarchy, and detail several transition capabilities for marketing managers interested in becoming more data-driven. The key factors that influence the level of data driven decision making are: 1) firm environment; 2), competition, 3) executive commitment, 4) interdepartmental dynamics, and 5) organizational structure. This framework guides marketing managers both in evaluating the firm’s data capabilities and facilitating change.

This study explored and evaluated the dimensions and consequences of esports online spectator demand. In doing so, we identified preliminary dimensions of esports online spectator demand based on semistructured interviews and online open-ended surveys. Findings resulted from the qualitative study were adopted as the foundation to develop the Scale for Esports Spectator Demand (SESD). To validate the SESD and assess the impact of the SESD factors on consumers’ cognitive and behavioral outcomes, a sample of esports online spectators ( N = 1,309) responded to a survey containing the SESD, which was randomly split into two halves, with one half for an exploratory factor analysis and the other half for a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling analyses. A total of 32 items under eight SESD factors were confirmed. While demand factors including commentary features, player characteristics, event attractiveness, and schedule convenience have been found in traditional sport contexts, chat room, streamer traits, stream quality, and virtual rewards appeared to be unique in esports. All eight SESD factors, excluding schedule convenience, were significantly predictive of one or more of the outcomes associated with esports consumption.

Firms often promote integration between sales and marketing functions. However, research has mostly focused on improving the level of realized integration and ignored the integration gap, defined a...

The chief marketing officer (CMO) and chief information officer (CIO) often fight for recognition and impact on strategic decision-making within the top management team – if they are includ...

Survey research methodology is widely used in marketing, and it is important for both the field and individual researchers to follow stringent guidelines to ensure that meaningful insights are attained. To assess the extent to which marketing researchers are utilizing best practices in designing, administering, and analyzing surveys, we review the prevalence of published empirical survey work during the 2006–2015 period in three top marketing journals—Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), Journal of Marketing (JM), and Journal of Marketing Research (JMR)—and then conduct an in-depth analysis of 202 survey-based studies published in JAMS. We focus on key issues in two broad areas of survey research (issues related to the choice of the object of measurement and selection of raters, and issues related to the measurement of the constructs of interest), and we describe conceptual considerations related to each specific issue, review how marketing researchers have attended to these issues in their published work, and identify appropriate best practices.

Past work has found that salespeople make very different attributions when describing successful versus unsuccessful sales. In this article, we explore the influence of elaboration on potential outcomes (EPO), a relatively new individual-specific personality construct that has not been previously examined in the sales context. We show that salespeople's predisposition to engage in predecision elaboration on the potential outcomes of their sales activities across the sales cycle has an important impact on their selling attributions and on their performance, even after accounting for the effects of self-efficacy and trait competitiveness, two other person-specific variables that have been heavily examined in past research. Juxtaposing survey responses with objective sales performance data from 301 salespeople drawn from two sales organizations, the results show that EPO and the more heavily examined variables help to systematically explain salespeople's attributions for success but are only weakly linked to...

Technology is rapidly changing the nature of service, customers’ service frontline experiences, and customers’ relationships with service providers. Based on the prediction that in the marketplace of 2025, technology (e.g., service-providing humanoid robots) will be melded into numerous service experiences, this article spotlights technology’s ability to engage customers on a social level as a critical advancement of technology infusions. Specifically, it introduces the novel concept of automated social presence (ASP; i.e., the extent to which technology makes customers feel the presence of another social entity) to the services literature. The authors develop a typology that highlights different combinations of automated and human social presence in organizational frontlines and indicates literature gaps, thereby emphasizing avenues for future research. Moreover, the article presents a conceptual framework that focuses on (a) how the relationship between ASP and several key service and customer outcomes is mediated by social cognition and perceptions of psychological ownership as well as (b) three customer-related factors that moderate the relationship between ASP and social cognition and psychological ownership (i.e., a customer’s relationship orientation, tendency to anthropomorphize, and technology readiness). Finally, propositions are presented that can be a catalyst for future work to enhance the understanding of how technology infusion, particularly service robots, influences customers’ frontline experiences in the future.

The Web is a constantly evolving, complex system, with important implications for both marketers and consumers. In this paper, we contend that over the next five to ten years society will see a shift in the nature of the Web, as consumers, firms and regulators become increasingly concerned about privacy. In particular, we predict that, as a result of this privacy-focus, various information sharing and protection practices currently found on the Dark Web will be increasingly adapted in the overall Web, and in the process, firms will lose much of their ability to fuel a modern marketing machinery that relies on abundant, rich, and timely consumer data. In this type of controlled information-sharing environment, we foresee the emersion of two distinct types of consumers: (1) those generally willing to share their information with marketers (Buffs), and (2) those who generally deny access to their personal information (Ghosts). We argue that one way marketers can navigate this new environment is by effectively designing and deploying conversational agents (CAs), often referred to as “chatbots.” In particular, we propose that CAs may be used to understand and engage both types of consumers, while providing personalization, and serving both as a form of differentiation and as an important strategic asset for the firm—one capable of eliciting self-disclosure of otherwise private consumer information.

Many retailers invest in ancillary services to provide shoppers with additional reasons to come to their stores. However, it is unclear whether these services insulate incumbents from new entrants. We address this question by examining how the size and uniqueness of an incumbent's service portfolio protects its sales after a new competitor enters. We study uniqueness by introducing the notion of “competitive service overlap” (CSO) that operationalizes service similarity, and show both that retailers are best served by offering many services and that particularly successful retailers have more unique service portfolios. Furthermore, the impact of uniqueness is most prominent when a grocery incumbent faces a discounter entrant (e.g., Kroger facing a Wal-Mart entry).

This research examines the influence of a firm’s focus on either products or brands in an acquisition announcement on investor reactions and value creation for the acquiring firm. We conduct an event study of product and brand acquisitions in multiple business-to-consumer industries over a 30-year period (1980–2012). We find that value creation from such acquisitions depends on target resource strength and resource fit (relatedness between the acquirer’s and target’s product offerings). Further, the acquirer’s marketing management capability and product line diversification affect the ability of the firm to engage in resource transfer following the acquisition.

Drawing on the retail literature, archival records, and managerial interviews, we identify twelve capabilities associated with retail success. These capabilities are hierarchically grouped as foundational or supportive. Foundational capabilities are the basis upon which retail advantages are built, while supportive capabilities principally enhance the value of foundational capabilities. Drawing on systems theory, the loosely coupled systems perspective, and the Resource Based View, we propose that unique combinations of a foundational capability and an interdependent subset of supportive capabilities form four capability systems: brand management, merchandising, service, and market information management. The capability systems are socially complex and causally ambiguous making imitation by rivals particularly difficult. A retailer’s strategy determines the emphasis and focus placed on each of the four capability systems. We use the Miles and Snow (1978) strategy typology and the strategic fit literature to develop propositions linking our four capability systems to Defender, Analyzer, and Prospector strategies. We further propose that maintaining status-quo investments in all capabilities is necessary to achieve competitive parity. Ultimately, our capability systems perspective adds to the retail literature by enhancing our understanding of firm heterogeneity and performance.

The CMO and CIO often struggle for influence on strategic decision making within the top management team, if they are included at all. Technological improvements have increased the ability of firms to gather customer data which elevates the role of the CMO and CIO and requires them to work together more closely. There has been limited research on the relationship between senior executives outside of that with the CEO, and this study fills that gap by exploring CMO/CIO cooperation. To analyze the dynamics of the CMO/CIO relationship, this research introduces a conceptual framework that captures three antecedents of cooperation: interdependence, CMO/CIO structure, and CMO/CIO diversity. Additionally, the study identifies four cooperation mechanisms that can mediate the relationship between these antecedents and CMO/CIO cooperation. A positive relationship between the CMO and CIO can lead to a greater impact on strategic decision making, improved strategy implementation, and a superior competitive position.

Whether performance advantage accrues more to firms that balance exploitation (i.e., serving existing markets) and exploration (i.e., developing new products for future markets) or to those that focus on only one of these objectives is open to debate. To gain a better understanding of this dilemma, we employ longitudinal data from the pharmaceutical industry to examine how efficient firms are at utilizing resource investments to build exploitation and exploration capabilities. These capabilities are obtained using stochastic frontier estimation, which measures how efficiently firms use resource inputs to generate an output in a competitive landscape. We then link these capabilities to performance. We find that firms with superior exploitation capabilities have higher operating cash flow but lower firm value. In contrast, firms with superior exploration capabilities find the opposite effect. Importantly, firms that are superior in both capabilities enhance cash flow but not firm value.

Firms raise a significant amount of funds and gain competitive advantage over their rivals through equity financing, namely through initial public offerings and seasoned equity offerings. The authors find that both initial public offering firms and seasoned equity offering firms adopt a more aggressive marketing strategy during the two years following their offering. However, not all equity issuers benefit equally from increased marketing spending, which can help signal companies' growth prospects to investors. A key moderator of the link between marketing investment and firm value is the strategic flexibility of rivals with respect to issuers. In particular, the stock market reacts favorably to an aggressive marketing strategy initiated by issuers competing against rivals with relatively less flexibility, whereas increased marketing expenditures do not translate into higher firm value when rivals have greater flexibility. Furthermore, the authors show that marketing expenditures create value within context: the role of marketing in enhancing shareholder value and the moderating effect of rivals' strategic flexibility are more pronounced in the two-year window immediately following an equity offering than at any other time. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for theory and practice.

Marketing and sales have distinct thought-world differences that often inhibit their ability to work together. As a result, firms promote integration between the two groups with the ultimate aim of improving relationship effectiveness and customer performance. This study introduces the concepts of realized integration and desired, or future, integration and the difference between the two (the integration gap). Through the lens of self-categorization theory, this study examines how both functional and firm behaviors interact with several internal and external environment factors to impact both types of integration. The study shows how these factors impact both realized and desired integration in several ways, providing a more complete view of the relationship between the two. Finally, the study finds that desired integration can negatively impact relationship outcomes reducing the positive benefits of the realized level of integration. As a result, managers need to not only promote integration but also manage the integration gap by increasing levels of realized integration or decreasing levels of desired integration.

Firms increasingly have access to a variety of data from sources such as customers, transactions, social media, and other stakeholders. Marketers use the term Big Data to describe this avalanche of information which they view as critical to providing a better understanding of customers and markets. This research uses a qualitative approach, through interviews with marketing managers, to evaluate the scope of Big Data, develop a hierarchy of how firms use data to make marketing decisions, describe the external and internal factors that influence where a firm falls within the hierarchy, and identify four specific transition factors that allow firms to develop Big Data capabilities. We find that the key factors that determine the level of Big Data decision making are the firm environment, competition, organizational structure, interdepartmental dynamics, and executive commitment. To transition to a higher level of data driven decision making, firms must consider their current and future capabilities in terms of data, analytics, people, and organization.

There is a compelling need to improve the relationship between managers in marketing and sales departments. This paper argues that one critical way of enhancing individual managers’ perceptions of relationship effectiveness between these departments is to view the issue as a matter of justice and suggests that perceived marketing–sales relationship effectiveness is positively influenced by managers’ perceptions of organizational justice. Furthermore, it proposes that interfunctional communication has the potential to enhance the proposed positive effects of justice and hence needs to be considered and effectively managed when looking at marketing–sales relationship effectiveness. Data drawn from a survey of 203 marketing and sales managers in 38 consumer packaged goods companies are used to empirically test these predictions. The authors find that perceived sales–marketing relationship effectiveness is influenced by perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional justice. Greater interfunctional communication is found to further enhance the positive effects of distributive and procedural justice on perceived relationship effectiveness, but it does not contribute to the already strong positive effects of interactional justice. Furthermore, results reveal important differences in the effects of justice on perceived relationship effectiveness across the marketing and sales departments.

Managers continue to struggle with implementing a firm's approach to its market. Many potential pitfalls exist, particularly at the functional level. For firms that pursue an ambidextrous approach, simultaneously exploiting existing markets while exploring new opportunities, implementation is perhaps even more critical. Interestingly, the implications of functional implementation on multiple dimensions of financial and non-financial performance in the context of an ambidextrous approach are unknown. In light of these challenges, we examine the mediating effect of the implementation of the marketing function strategy in the ambidextrous organization–performance relationship. We find that the implementation of marketing strategy fully mediates the ambidextrous organization–performance relationship on important dimensions of firm performance, including key outcomes such as profits and customer satisfaction. Our results demonstrate that the benefits of developing an ambidextrous organization that can balance ...

The authors examine an important anomaly in investment behavior—namely, the tendency to fall prey to the effects of contextual and presentation biases, which emerge when people make different decisions as a function of how information is presented to them. They also identify an important factor that moderates these effects. The results from four studies show that investors with a stronger tendency to engage in predecision outcome elaboration are less susceptible to various contextual and presentation biases and are more likely to make consistent investment choices. Furthermore, the authors find that encouraging predecision elaboration on both the potential benefits and the potential risks of investing helps investors who tend not to engage in such elaboration become less influenced by peripheral cues, such as information framing and presentation mode. The findings offer implications for decision research and for the design, presentation, and communication of financial products.

Sales researchers have spent decades developing and empirically testing various scales that reflect distinct theoretical perspectives of salesperson behavior and job functioning. Despite extensive research in this area, little comparative work has been done to assess the relative effectiveness of these different scales in explaining salesperson performance or to explicate whether or not they are best considered in isolation or as working together—even potentially interacting—to influence sales success. We examine four established scales related to customer-directed salesperson job functioning, and look at how well they relate to both self-reported and objective job performance measures. Our analyses are based on responses from 524 salespeople drawn from three different firms. The results show that two scales (ADAPTS, Selling Skills) outperform the others. Furthermore, we find an important interaction between ADAPTS and Selling Skills that helps to predict superior objective performance.

A firm that simultaneously engages in a high degree of both innovation and efficiency follows an approach that is often referred to as an ambidextrous strategy. Surprisingly, relatively few firms are able to balance these two emphases. Internal battles for resources often tip the scales in favor of efficiency over innovation, or vice versa. Management gurus frequently warn that simultaneously pursuing both can set the firm up for mediocre performance, yet the turbulent nature of today’s markets and cut-throat competition create a renewed need for firms to reconsider this dual approach for longer-term success. Unfortunately, practical insights from empirical studies regarding performance benefits and implementation issues are still scant. Perhaps this is one reason why few firms are successful in both efficiency and innovation. In this article, we provide evidence—using a cross-industry survey of senior marketing managers in publicly-traded U.S. firms—that firms which successfully employ an ambidextrous strategy outperform those which overemphasize either efficiency or innovation. Furthermore, we highlight marketing’s role as an example of the often overlooked need for successful functional implementation. Finally, we provide useful methods for managers to answer three key questions: (1) Is my firm ambidextrous?; (2) Should my firm be ambidextrous?; and, if so (3) How can my firm become ambidextrous?

We examine a new construct dealing with individuals' tendency to elaborate on potential outcomes, that is, to generate and evaluate potential positive and negative consequences of their behaviors. We develop the elaboration on potential outcomes (EPO) scale and then investigate its relationships with conceptually related traits and its association with consumer behaviors such as exercise of self-control, procrastination, compulsive buying, credit card debt, retirement investing, and healthy lifestyle. Finally, we show that consumers with high EPO levels exhibit more effective self-regulation when faced with a choice and that EPO can be primed, temporarily improving self-regulation for consumers with low EPO levels.

The purpose of this article is to investigate how strategic emphases of merging firms (marketing or research and development) create value in a merger context. The authors suggest that strategic emphasis alignment—the extent to which the resource configurations of acquirer and target firms are similar to or distinct from one another—is a key construct that facilitates value creation. Using data on abnormal stock returns, the authors also suggest that when merging firms have low strategic emphasis alignment, value is enhanced when the merger motive is diversification. In contrast, when merging firms have high strategic emphasis alignment, value is enhanced when the merger motive is consolidation.

Using the resource-based view of the firm, we examine how four key resource attributes affect performance. The relationship between resource attributes and performance is studied in the context of international joint ventures (IJVs), using data from 96 IJVs in Malaysia. Executives were asked to assess the extent to which four resources (product reputation, technical expertise, local business network and marketing skills) exhibited the following attributes: (1) value; (2) rarity; (3) imperfect imitability; (4) non-substitutability. For each resource, the relationships between these attribute ratings and performance were analyzed. We found that each of the four attributes had an influence on performance. Value, rarity, and non-substitutability were found to be significant drivers of performance for IJV assets. In contrast, value, rarity, and non-imitability were critical attributes for organizational capabilities.