This study aims to examine the relevance of strategic marketing planning in this agile era and its effect on firms’ international performance and explores conditions under which…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the relevance of strategic marketing planning in this agile era and its effect on firms’ international performance and explores conditions under which the influence of planning changes.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on contingency theory, a conceptual model is tested based on survey data from internationalizing firms. Data were analyzed using partial least squares -structural equation modeling.
Findings
Marketing strategy planning is (still) associated with enhanced performance, and depends on external and internal contingencies. While the planning−performance relationship is amplified by market sensing (external contingency), surprisingly, it is decreased in presence of high tolerance for failure (internal contingency).
Practical implications
Findings seek to transform marketing planning in international business practice by requiring that its implementation receives the attention of senior management.
Originality/value
Marketing strategy planning should not be deemphasized. While planning appears to be undergoing an identity crisis, practitioners’ attention to marketing planning is warranted.
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One of the major trends in today’s businesses is big data (BD). While research on various aspects of BD is flourishing, little is empirically known about its impact on firms’…
Abstract
Purpose
One of the major trends in today’s businesses is big data (BD). While research on various aspects of BD is flourishing, little is empirically known about its impact on firms’ strategies. Furthermore, research on the use of BD and its effects in international firms is in its embryonic stage. The purpose of this paper is to explore the BD and international intelligence use relatedness and examine the impact of BD usage on firms’ strategic orientations en route its implications on business performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The study proposes BD usage as a key driver of strategic orientations and accounts for a mediated relationship of BD usage with international performance through orientations. Based on data from international firms, a conceptual framework is tested using regressions, path analyses, and additional robustness checks.
Findings
BD appears as having a decidedly strategic focus, and its usage enhances international performance through strategic orientations. The influence of BD is stronger than the influence of any subset of studied orientations. Notably, this influence is strongest when the orientations are treated individually.
Research limitations/implications
This study furthers contemporary understanding of the international intelligence use system. Notably, it challenges traditional management perceptions that suggest a chosen strategy determines the selection of data, and instead provides evidence that modern firms have altered this approach by embracing opportunities for new strategic value creation presented by BD. Managers should emphasize BD usage throughout strategic orientations.
Originality/value
The study is the first to provide theoretical and practical reflections on the use of BD in firms’ strategies. Its contributions face up established literature of the causal direction of strategy choices and data applicability in international settings.
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While big data (BD), a transformative emerging phenomenon on its youth, plays a growing role in organizations in improving marketing decision-making, few academic works examine…
Abstract
Purpose
While big data (BD), a transformative emerging phenomenon on its youth, plays a growing role in organizations in improving marketing decision-making, few academic works examine the mechanism through which BD can be applied to guide future competitive advantage strategies. The purpose of this paper is to examine if BD’s predictive power helps business to business (B2B) firms selecting their intended generic (differentiation, focus, and cost leadership) strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on the learning theory, the study proposes the use of BD as a key driver of intended strategies. Based on data from a cross-industry sample of executives, a conceptual model is tested using path and robustness analyses.
Findings
The use of BD plays a prominent role in the selection of intended future strategies in industrial markets. Additional tests demonstrate conditions of competitive intensity and strategic flexibility where BD is more and less beneficial.
Research limitations/implications
The study furthers the understanding of traditional learning and intelligence use frameworks and of contemporary future strategies drivers.
Practical implications
BD availability enables managers leveraging knowledge embedded in data-rich systems to gain predictive insights that help in guiding new strategic directions to maintain competitive advantage.
Originality/value
The study reinforces the continued applicability of Porter’s generic positioning strategies in the digital era. It addresses the paucity of research on BD in B2B context and is the first to provide theoretical and practical reflections on how BD utilization influences industrial intended strategies. The study strengthens contemporary managerial views defending that data drive strategies rather than the opposite.
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Yoel Asseraf, Itzhak Gnizy and Aviv Shoham
Marketing doctrine (MD) refers to a “firm's unique principles, distilled from its experiences, which provide firm-wide guidance on market-facing choices” (Challagalla et al., 2014…
Abstract
Purpose
Marketing doctrine (MD) refers to a “firm's unique principles, distilled from its experiences, which provide firm-wide guidance on market-facing choices” (Challagalla et al., 2014, p. 4). Drawing on the knowledge-based view, the purpose of this paper is to develop a model of how MD is used and provide the first quantitative test of its relationship with business success.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors advance the understanding of MD by providing a mixed-methods paper. In Study 1, a survey-based quantitative study was used. The final sample comprised 349 internationally active strategic business units (SBUs) of Israeli firms. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling. Study 2 provides insights into the use of MD based on 20 in-depth interviews.
Findings
The cross-sectional evidence shows that there tends to be more MD Use in higher-performing firms. The important roles of MD Clarity and MD Knowledgeability as mobilising processes of MD Use are demonstrated. Learning by doing impacts MD Use only through MD Clarity and MD Knowledgeability.
Practical implications
MD is a new strategic tool that can be applied practically. MD may provide a straightforward way of communication between international ventures. MD Use may allow global consistency and flexibility within local markets, simultaneously. Therefore, marketing managers are advised to supplement MD to their portfolio of management tools.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to investigate empirically, through newly developed scales, whether and how MD's core processes (learning by doing, MD Clarity, MD Knowledgeability and MD Use) are related to the success of international ventures.
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Ohad Ref and Itzhak Gnizy
The relationship between multinationality and firm performance is a central issue in the international marketing and business literatures. Predominantly, this body of research has…
Abstract
Purpose
The relationship between multinationality and firm performance is a central issue in the international marketing and business literatures. Predominantly, this body of research has tried to identify a single, generalized pattern for this relationship. However, despite the vast number of studies, results have been characterized as mixed or inconsistent. In this study, we take a fresh look at this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
We focus on a key inducement to expand firm multinationality – the search for a more efficient way to exploit firm resources, and also on a specific operationalization of multinationality – firm geographic scope. We use a formal analytical model analyzing the trade-off between benefits and costs arising from expanding firm geographic scope and emphasizing the role of lumpy costs emanating from resource indivisibility.
Findings
The relationship between geographic scope and performance cannot be confined to a single pattern, but instead, may have any one of a set of patterns: negatively monotonic shape, inverted U-shape, S-shape, M-shape or, multiple-wave inverted U-shape.
Practical implications
The current study offers managers some guidelines to identify which of the above patterns fits their firm's specific case, and to identify the optimal level of geographic scope for their firm.
Originality/value
We conclude that the search for a single, generalized pattern for multinationality-performance is largely futile, whereas the focus on specific inducements and operationalizations for multinationality allows us to explain when and why specific patterns are more likely to occur.
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Dario Miocevic, Itzhak Gnizy and John W. Cadogan
The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of the relationship between export customer responsiveness and export growth.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of the relationship between export customer responsiveness and export growth.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses primary data obtained by questioning over 200 exporting firms. The model constructed predicts the export growth of those firms with export customer responsiveness data, together with a variety of moderator and control variables. The model is assessed using multiple regression.
Findings
Exporters with higher levels of export customer responsiveness often have higher export sales growth rates than those with lower levels of export customer responsiveness, but not always. For some firms, the opposite is true, such that those with lower levels of export customer responsiveness outperform those with higher levels.
Originality/value
The study is the first to provide export decision-makers with empirically grounded recommendations regarding (1) when it is advisable to have high export customer responsiveness levels and (2) those situations when firms may benefit from having lower export customer responsiveness levels.
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Itzhak Gnizy, William E. Baker and Amir Grinstein
Although small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) account for a significant portion of international trade, little is known about the role of strategic orientation culture in…
Abstract
Purpose
Although small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) account for a significant portion of international trade, little is known about the role of strategic orientation culture in improving their foreign launch success. Three orientations – market, entrepreneurial, and learning are all related to organizational learning priorities and reflect a higher order dynamic capability (DC), proactive learning culture (PLC). The authors assert that PLC is particularly important to SMEs whose lack of market power and resources render them vulnerable in risky foreign market launch. Marketing program adaptation and local integration are examined as behavioral mediators of the impact of PLC on foreign market launch success. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The DC framework guides the study. The authors employ a model with a higher order PLC, two mediating behaviors, and firm foreign market launch success to report on an empirical study of US SMEs that operate in foreign markets. The authors used hierarchical regression analysis and extensive post hoc analyses/robustness checks.
Findings
Consistent with the DC framework, SMEs’ foreign launch success is driven by higher and lower order behaviors. The impact of the higher order PLC construct was mediated by two lower order behaviors, marketing program adaptation and local integration. Notably, PLC's influence is stronger than the influence of any subset of its one/two/three first order components.
Practical implications
SMEs need to pay attention to an array of organizational learning processes that combine to engender a PLC, which help optimize the deployment of more tangible, lower order behaviors required for foreign launch success.
Originality/value
Introducing PLC as a DC that enables firms to proactively develop market-oriented, innovative capabilities using a knowledge-based approach. The elements of PLC reflect a more complete view of the role of learning in driving the assembly of lower order behaviors in foreign market launch, which requires both a market-oriented approach and the ability to innovate under conditions of uncertainty. While each element of PLC is valuable, the higher level impact of all three facilitates a more effective culture for those firms, which choose to enter new markets.
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The role played by the marketing function (MF) has been subjected to considerable academic and public media attention. Recent research reflects an ongoing debate on MF's…
Abstract
Purpose
The role played by the marketing function (MF) has been subjected to considerable academic and public media attention. Recent research reflects an ongoing debate on MF's decreasing influence attributed by some to its poor performance. However, studies have analyzed the general marketing (GM) function and domestic operations and remained silent on international marketing's (IM) influence and its impact on firms’ international operations and performance as another aspect of marketing's influence. This lacuna is unfortunate, given that internationalization is crucial to many firms in today's globalizing world. The purpose of this paper is to examine the interactions between IM and GM functions as determinants of IM's influence.
Design/methodology/approach
The study extends previous models to the international context, utilizes an inclusive set of strategic international orientations as consequences and mediators of IM's influence, and assesses possible synergy between orientations.
Findings
IM functions are influential, valuable, and play an important role. IM-GM coordination enhances IMs’ influence while IM-GM conflicts and IM's influence are unrelated. IMs’ influence enhances performance directly and indirectly through orientations. Importantly, the combined orientations had a negative synergistic effect on performance.
Research limitations/implications
International marketers and top management should consider tactics to increase IMs’ influence and thus benefit their firms.
Originality/value
The study is the first to recognize and empirically focus on the relationships between IM and GM as distinct functions. The study accounts for a combined impact of international orientations on international performance.