Search results

The objective of the Contemporary Marketing Practices (CMP) research program is to develop an understanding of how firms relate to their markets in a manner that integrates both traditional and more modern views of marketing, and incorporates an understanding of both the antecedents and consequences of different practices. This paper aims to review its first decade.

The paper adopts a theoretical approach. It reviews the history of CMP research and its outcomes. The assessment concludes with a discussion of the program's contribution to marketing knowledge and some issues and challenges for future research.

Now a decade old, the CMP research program has undertaken research in over 15 countries. The study finds that it has made a unique contribution to marketing knowledge by bridging the gap between theory and practice.

By adopting a multi‐paradigm philosophy and a multi‐method approach, a broad perspective has been achieved that integrates the traditional managerial view of marketing with relational and process arguments.

The purpose of this paper is to explore enhancing theory development in service research and provide an overview of the five essays on theorizing initiated by the International Network for Service Research workshop, held at Karlstad, Sweden in September 2014.

A collaborative theorizing process which was initiated at the Karlstad, Sweden workshop.

Six (five from the event and the introduction) original and provocative essays that explore different aspects of theorizing in service research.

Exploring how a collaborative approach to research can be used.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not transaction marketing is being employed together with various types of relationship marketing. A classification scheme of contemporary marketing practices (Coviello, Brodie and Munro, 1997) is reviewed, and the need to enrich earlier research findings is discussed. A case study methodology for conducting research into the New Zealand wine sector is then considered. The preliminary findings suggest that vineyards increasingly employ a pluralistic approach to marketing combining transaction marketing with relational types of marketing, and that the softer sides of marketing are becoming important, such as social bonding, networks and interactions. The findings also give insights into whether or not vineyards are driven by their product or market.

Increasingly, firms are recognizing the value of establishing close relationships with their customers as a means of retaining existing customers. Also, firms are realizing that the intangible aspects of a relationship are not easily duplicated by competition, thus providing a sustainable competitive advantage to the firm. In this paper, we provide firms with a scale for measuring the quality of these intangible relationships between service firms and their customers. We then test this scale against the related, yet dissimilar scale for service quality to determine whether the relationship quality (RQ) scale adds any further explanation of behavioral intentions. Our results indicate that relationship quality is a distinct construct from service quality and that RQ is a better predictor of behavioral intentions than service quality.

The purpose of this paper is to record the author’s personal reflections on his career as a marketing scholar.

Personal reflections in an autobiographical approach.

The author’s career as student, teacher and scholar is described in some detail.

The paper records events and memories that might otherwise be forgotten. No other such account has been published of Christian Grönroos’s career.

In a time when relationships have been recognized as an integral part of contemporary marketing theory and practice, what role can the sub-discipline of relationship marketing play? The aim with this special issue is to critically assess the state of relationship marketing and call for new ideas to take the field forward.

The editors had an open call for papers with an original perspective and advanced thinking on relationship marketing, resulting in 50 originally submitted manuscripts that were subjected to double-blind review. Of these, this issue presents five articles. In addition, the editors invited well-renowned thought leaders who have contributed to theory development within relationship marketing. This issue starts with their four thoughtful, forward-orientated contributions.

Several thought-provoking reflections and research findings are presented that urge relationship marketing researchers to explore novel avenues for the future of this area. A prominent way forward may be looking for a common ground in relationship marketing thinking, assessing the extent to which the different literature streams add to marketing research and when they do not and testing/deploying the learnings in new settings.

The special issue does not address all areas of relationship marketing research. Potential areas for future relationship marketing research are identified.

To assess existent knowledge of relationship marketing is needed to take the field forward.

Despite Schau et al.’s (2009) pioneering research addressing consumers’ community engagement practices, scholarly understanding of the nature and dynamics characterizing consumers’ engagement practices in virtual (online) brand communities, and their inter-relationships, is limited to date. Building on these authors’ study, this paper aims to develop a refined typology and process model of virtual brand community engagement practices (VBCEPs).

Using the netnographic methodology, the authors analyze 20 luxury handbag community members’ entries posted on the brand’s particular section of The Purse Forum.

The authors develop an eight-component VBCEP typology that refines Schau et al.’s (2009) four-component model of brand community engagement practices. The model comprises “greeting”, “regulating”, “assisting”, “celebrating”, “appreciating”, “empathizing”, “mingling” and “ranking”. These practices contribute to and maintain the community’s vision and identity, and strengthen shared community consciousness.

A key limitation of this research lies in its findings being generated from a single, luxury virtual brand community. Future research may thus wish to validate the VBCEP typology and model across different contexts.

The authors provide strategic managerial recommendations designed to leverage virtual brand community performance, which center predominantly on the social (altruistic) and achievement-based VBCEP sub-processes.

The eight-component VBCEP typology refines Schau et al.’s four-component model of brand community engagement practices with particular applicability to virtual brand communities.