Summary
Samenvatting artikelen Strategic Marketing Management
- Course
- Institution
Beknopte samenvatting van alle 10 de artikelen van Strategic Marketing Management
[Show more]
1 review
By: jeroennouse • 4 year ago
Seller
Follow
ehm
Reviews received
Content preview
Articles - Strategic Marketing ManagementLecture 2 – Dekimpe & Deleersnyder, 2018
Abstract. Business cycles (BCs) may affect entire markets, and significantly alter many firms’ marketing activities and performance.
Even though managers cannot prevent BCs from occurring, marketing research over the last 15 years has provided growing
evidence that their impact on consumers, and hence on firm and brand performance, depends to a large extent on how firms adjust
their marketing mix in response to these macroeconomic swings. In this study, we review the growing marketing literature on how to
attenuate or amplify the impact of BC fluctuations. Our discussion focuses on three key aspects: (1) the scope of, and insights from,
existing BC research in marketing, (2) advancements in the methods to study various BC phenomena in marketing, and (3) some
emerging trends that offer new challenges and opportunities for future BC research in marketing.
Business cycle (BC) fluctuations disrupt business activities, and are visible across multiple aggregate economic series (GDP,
income, employment). When faced with an economic contraction or expansion, not all firms are affected to the same extent, nor react
similarly. This paper combines different articles:
A majority of firms cuts back significantly on advertising in a contraction, while advertising spending rebounds in the subsequent
expansion period. Despite the dominant practice of cutting back on advertising, research has repeatedly shown that maintained, or
even increased, advertising spending during economic contractions often results in long-term managerial and social benefits, which
can be in the form of better firm performance
Innovation development and new-product launches exhibit pro-cyclical adjustment patterns, i.e., they move in the same direction as
the general economy. This is also related to difficult spending justification.
Opposing arguments on the direction of the recommended price changes during economic contractions have been made. On the one
hand, it has been argued that prices should decrease when demand is unexpectedly low. Firms then switch from collusive higher
prices to lower competitive prices, because they attribute their lower demand to cheating on the part of their rivals.. On the other
hand, it has also been argued that especially during high-demand periods (or booms), it is more beneficial to undercut the higher
collusive prices.
Managers are often recommended to shift their spending from periods with lower marketing effectiveness to periods characterized by
a higher effectiveness. For the majority of products and brands, both R&D investments and pricing are more effective in economic
downturns, and hence, it is recommended to increase the spending on R&D and to focus more on price reductions during an
economic downturn. The results for spending on advertising are less equivocal. The impact of/on customer satisfaction seem to
change when the economy deteriorates.
Clearly, many marketers do not have extra money available when times turn sour, and may therefore find this advice to invest more
in marketing impractical. However, research on this issue not just argues that managers should spend more on marketing, they also
make a case for spending existing budgets more smartly by shifting some of the marketing expenses on e.g., advertising,
innovations, and promotions over time towards contraction periods to be able to weather tough economic times. Alternatively, one
could reallocate marketing budgets across instruments or across countries to better ride the economic tides without increasing the
total marketing budget.
Type of industry. The impact of BCs has been found to differ between durable and non-durable industries, between B2B and B2C
markets, and between purchases of goods and services. Consumer spending on durable goods is hit particularly hard by
contractions, because there is no pressing need to make the purchase at a particular time. In contrast, non-durable consumer goods
are still bought, because these are seen as necessities and are more habitual. Business-to-business (B2B) markets may be more
rational, but may suffer from a ‘bullwhip’ effect: small BC-induced changes in demand by the end consumer get amplified as one
moves further up the supply chain. Services are more vulnerable to BC swings than goods, because of the inseparability of
production and consumption and perishability.
Geographic coverage. Important international interdependencies exist across economic markets worldwide, and even though certain
shocks can hit the economic activity globally, there is increasing evidence that BCs are not always synchronized, neither with the
U.S. economy, nor with the economy of neighbouring countries.
Asymmetries in the cyclical patterns suggest that changes in the contraction are not always mirrored by opposite changes in the
subsequent expansion. For example, in case of steepness asymmetry, it may take more time for performance to rebound than it took
to drop in the contraction.
There are different methods to make BC inferences and different methods and metrics to describe these BC patterns in marketing.
, Lecture 2 – Slater & Narver, 1995
Organizational learning
Organizational learning is the development of new knowledge or insights that have the potential to influence behaviour. All
businesses competing in dynamic and turbulent environments must pursue the processes of learning, behaviour change, and
performance improvement. Adaptive learning occurs within a set of recognized and unrecognized constraints that reflect the
organization’s assumptions about its environment and itself. Generative learning occurs when the organization is willing to
question long-held assumptions about its mission, customers, capabilities or strategy. Generative learning is frame-breaking and
more likely to lead to competitive advantage than adaptive learning, but continuous improvement is needed to keep this advantage.
Organizational learnings is a three stage process:
1. Information acquisition can be by direct experience or experiences of others.
Organizational memory is needed prevent loss of learning due to personnel turnover
and passage of time. Sometimes it is needed to reject old procedures and capabilities.
2. Information dissemination/sharing increases information value when each piece of
information can be seen in its broader context by all involved organizational players.
3. Shared interpretation: there must be a consensus on the meaning of the information
and its implication for the business. There can be conflicts, which requires the use of
structured processes for surfacing disagreement. Also, group norms that encourage open sharing of information and remove
constraints on information and communication flows can further enhance conflict resolution.
Behaviour change is the link between organizational learning and its ultimate objective, performance improvement. Learning can
influence organizational behaviour by action-oriented use, knowledge-enhancing use and affective use.
Organizational learning and competitive advantage
All industries undergo substantial change, driven by customers, competitors or technology suppliers. This change creates
continuous pressure for businesses to augment their products and services to maintain or increase their value to customers. An
organization has a foundation for sustained competitive advantage when it possesses skills or resources that provide superior
value to customers, are difficult to imitate, and are capable of multiple applications. A learning culture can serve as a buffer,
because it is forward-looking, there is cooperative attitude with customers and suppliers, and there is inherent flexibility.
Culture and climate in the learning organization
Culture is the deeply rooted set of values and beliefs that provide norms for
behaviour in the organization. Climate describes how the organization
operationalizes its culture, the structures and processes that facilitate the
achievement of the desired behaviours. These two must be complementary
and should have a synergistic relationship to maximize learnings and its
benefits. Culture and climate consist of five components:
Market orientation is the culture that places the highest priority on the
profitable creation and maintenance of superior customer value while
considering the interests of other key stakeholders, and provides
norms for behaviour regarding the organizational development of and responsiveness to market information. Market
orientation can also be seen as a learning orientation. Make sure the market orientation encourages a sufficient willingness to
take risks: don’t ignore emerging markets and/or competitors. Also, make sure you also include all other stakeholders and
look at competitive advantage.
Entrepreneurial cultures are characterized as valuing traits, such as high tolerance for risk, proactiveness, receptivity to
innovation and active resistance to bureaucracy. These traits are strongly associated with knowledge acquisition through
exploration, challenging assumptions to create generative learning, and the rapid development of new behaviours to leverage
learning. Coupling a market orientation with entrepreneurial values provides the necessary focus for the organization’s
information processing efforts, while it also encourage frame breaking action, thus enhancing generative learning
Facilitative leadership. A complex environment calls for a complex style of leadership and a transformational or facultative
leader. Facultative leaders focus on developing the people around them: they encourage individual learning and sharing of
experiences. Also, they are frequent and effective communicators within and outside of the organization. They constantly
articulate and reinforce the organization’s vision through their speech and actions, e.g. competitive focus, overall
performance. Lastly, they must take a key role in ‘unlearning’ traditional but detrimental practices.
Organic structure is an organizational architecture that is decentralized, with fluid and ambiguous job responsibilities and
extensive lateral communication processes. Internal and external members of these organizations recognize their
interdependence and are willing to cooperate and share information to sustain the effectiveness of the organization. As
standardization and bureaucratic routines are precluded, coordination becomes the responsibility of experts rather than
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller ehm. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $3.77. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
67474 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now