Editorial

Citation

Wright, G. and Harker, M. (2009), "Editorial", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 27 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/mip.2009.02027aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Volume 27, Issue 1

Welcome to the first issue of volume 27. This collection of papers begins with a contribution from Adam Stewart, Andrea Vocino and David Bednall from Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. It explores the contribution to organizational performance of the world-wide-web. A tall order perhaps. This paper makes a very useful contribution to this debate, examining the use of the web in marketing activity and how this usage influences financial and marketing performance. The findings suggest that traditional and online elements of marketing effort both mediate the influence of a market orientation on organisational performance, but differently. An innovative culture is found to influence both marketing practice and marketing performance, directly, whilst customer churn negatively impacts on marketing performance, and ultimately on financial performance.

From Aalesund University College in Norway, Oyvind Helgeson, Erik Nesset and Terje Voldsund provide the next contribution which is concerned with what should be included in marketing education, taking into account views on the links between marketing and the business performance of organizations. They have found that organizations sharing a view of marketing dually focused on core marketing and sales, report better performance than firms that have a more narrow view of marketing. Notably, they conclude that marketing education should incorporate vocational skills such as sales management, financial accountability and customer profitability analysis.

Eleni Kevorki and Adam Vrechopoulos of Athens University of Economics, Greece had visited the literature on customer relationship management. From this paper emerges a contemporary description of nine distinct research areas in this domain and an analysis of their relative emphasis in the body of CRM research. They also identify newly emerging CRM research areas as an agenda for future inquiry.

Continuing the theme of relationships, the next paper concerns relationship quality and is offered by Maria Smirnova of St Petersburg State University, in the Russian Federation, Bahar Ashnai and Peter Naudé of Manchester Business School, UK, Qionglei Yuand Bradley Barnes from Kent Business School in the UK and Sergey Kouchtch, St Petersburg State University, in the Russian Federation. Their paper develops understanding of what constitutes relationship quality in four different countries, demonstrating attributes that are important in assessing business-to-business relationship quality and how they vary in importance between countries. The paper includes an analysis of how managers trade-off different attributes of relationship quality (levels of trust, understanding of needs, systems integration and the use/abuse of power, and profit resulting from the relationships). Two key issues arise in this paper – firstly that the routes to develop relationships vary between different countries, and secondly that the attributes which make up relationships are also likely to be valued differently in various places around the world.

Michel Rod, Jinyi Shao and Janet Carruthers of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand with Nicholas Ashill of the American University of Sharjah provide a paper which examines the relationship between the dimensions of service quality and customer satisfaction in internet banking in New Zealand. Surprisingly, little attention has been paid by researchers to understanding how dimensions of service quality impact on overall internet banking service quality and more specifically on customer satisfaction. This paper indicates significant relationships among online customer service quality, online information system quality, product quality, overall internet banking quality and customer satisfaction. The authors conclude that their findings provide a basis from which banking service providers can manage and improve customer satisfaction.

Finally, in this issue, Mario Miranda of Victoria University discusses a very specific way to form a relationship with shoppers – to charm them through understanding and categorising their purchase motivations, arguing that targeting consumers’ preferred urges is an effective means to stimulate purchase.

This paper gives researchers and retailers insight into consumers’ capacity for feeling pleasure associated with purchases in different product categories. The paper recognises that consumers’ hedonic values will vary for different product categories. Whilst convenience items allow little scope for self-congruence, others offer significant scope for pleasurable emotive appeals to boost consumers’ status and social image. This study identifies opportunities to create good feelings for the purchase of a range of products by engaging shoppers in themes relating to social referents and values. This paper concludes that products used in public or whose consumption outcome is manifest in public, have purchase motivations that are susceptible to hedonic appeals. On the other hand, only a few purchase motivations for products with limited public face, have some hedonic value. The results of this study will help retailers to target customers based on their purchase motivations and to direct appeals for product engagement to generate emotional excitement.

Future editions of Marketing Intelligence and Planning will include a special issue on Current Issues in Arts Marketing edited by Noel Dennis and Michael Macaulay of Teeside Business School and Gretchen Larsen of Bradford University School of Management, and one on Marketing Case Studies edited by Michael Harker from the University of Strathclyde Business School. There are current calls for papers for special issues on Retail Challenges in Uncertain Times, Marketing Tourism Services and also for an issue on Women in Marketing. Details of these are readily available on the Marketing Intelligence and Planning web site, but please contact the guest editors or myself if you need any clarification. Also contact us please if you have ideas and enthusiasm for a special issue of your own.

Gill Wright EditorMichael HarkerAssociate Editor