The impact of crises on marketing: an exploratory study of an emerging market.

Marketing performance in times of crises is an important research issue in contemporary marketing. The main idea in papers dealing with crisis marketing behavior is highlighting the crucial role of marketing in a crisis context. Our study shows that this is not always the case. There are different types of situations where a simplification of marketing is evident, the system of marketing in a company deteriorates, and marketing is downgraded to a function of mainly sales, and these situations are obviously not exceptions. The present study is aimed at understanding the reasons for the evident contradiction between crisis marketing theory and some empirical cases. The other objective is to understand the mechanisms of marketing simplification in times of crisis. The paper focuses on marketing behavior of companies operating in Russia during the current (2014-2017) crisis, and takes into account the specifics of the marketing environment and the influences from the system of management on marketing, one of its subsystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]