Fluent Essays

Please read and respond to the attachment(s) Overview A target audience is determined by understanding who your product or service appeals to and who is most likely to use those products or services. There are various forms of research that can assist in this determination, including Google Analytics, Facebook Audience, and multiple forms of consumer research including surveys, focus groups, and, importantly, learnings from your current customer base and profile. You have already been provided with the target audience for the theme park. Now it is time to move onto aligning your marketing research efforts to further connect with the target audience. You have already worked on the strategic marketing plan template, which contains a plan to address the park reopening needs. The CMO now requires you to determine the needed marketing research effort and additional clear marketing strategies to connect with the target audience and their alignment with the vision, mission, and values of the global park organization. It will be critical to keep the organizational parameters of vision, mission, and values in mind as the strategies are determined and ultimately executed. Assignment Details: Draft a memo to the CMO outlining the marketing research efforts and their alignment with the vision, mission, and values of the organization in the course scenario. You must share two marketing strategies as well. Specifically, you must address the following criteria: 1. Describe the marketing research efforts that should be conducted before establishing a strategic direction. Consider the following: · What market demographics should be chosen? · What marketing channels are most suitable for the purpose? 2. Refer to the  Theme Park Vision, Mission, and Values  of the organization and address the key factors of vision, mission, and values in relation to strategic direction. · How would the values of the organization influence the marketing strategy? 3. Determine two marketing strategies that can help ensure successful reopening of all the parks. · Explain how these strategies support the decision to reopen the parks. Submission: Submit a 1- to 2-page Word document using double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, and one-inch margins. Theme Park Vision, Mission, and Values Our Vision To become the theme park destination of choice in the world Our Mission To be the leading global theme park company by providing our guests with the world’s best entertainment experience Our Core Values Treat every customer and employee with respect and dignity Value diversity and inclusion Be accountable Be transparent Act with integrity Care for our planet Empower our employees to do what is right Support innovation Make it unique Make it better Make it fun Make it last 8 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH March 2018 doi: 10.2501/Jar-2018-008 INTRoDUCTIoN The emergence of increasingly quantifiable forms of interactive digital advertising has resulted in advertising becoming much more of a quan- titative practice. While the so-called “perfectly quantifiable” click emerged as a readily used key performance indicator for digital-advertising effectiveness, a new movement has been brew- ing. Its adherents favor tracking every dollar and every resulting action down to the pixel, only to then optimize, analyze, and further optimize that information to squeeze every last bit of advertising return on investment from the dollars allocated to a campaign. In search-engine marketing, where clicks mean a great deal to the ultimate effectiveness of digital advertisements, this makes sense. In the display- advertising ecosystem, however, the tendency to optimize toward clicks makes little sense, given that clicks have been shown to bear little correlation to performance metrics such as conversion. Because “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted,” opti- mization can be a driving force behind both good and bad marketing performance. 1 As digital technology became more sophisticated over the past decade, a new addiction emerged— audience-based buying. The advent of program- matic buying platforms made it easier and more efficient than ever to buy digital inventory across a website, on the basis of the associated attributes of the Internet users exposed to a particular adver- tisement slot. Rather than putting together a media plan of sites that indexed high on consumers with certain demographic characteristics, for example, marketers now could target with laser-like pre- cision to select audiences of consumers with a 1  J. del Rey. “Click-Through Rates May Matter Even Less than We Thought.” AdAge, April 24, 2012. Retrieved December 12, 2017, from http://adage.com/article/digital/click-rates-matter-thought/234330/. particular behavior (e.g., buyers of the brand). One reasonably could expect that concentrating adver- tising frequency on these consumers could help increase repeat purchases. The move toward hypertargeted advertisements deployed for maximum efficiency might seem too good to be true. Like many quick fixes that achieve a short-term stimulus, however, the long-term downside not only can be detrimental to a brand— it can be fatal. DIgITAl TARgETINg: CoSTS vERSUS BENEFITS The largest brands in the world recognize the perils of overtargeting audiences at the expense of tried and true mass-reach strategies. Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer of Procter & Gamble, admitted as much in a 2016 interview with The Wall Street Journal: “We targeted too much, and we went too narrow… and now we’re looking at: What is the best way to get the most reach but also the right precision?”2 Pritchard’s observations support an argument in favor of a balanced approach—one that acknowledges the benefits of quantitatively data-driven targeting approaches without losing sight of that mass-reach approach that brands have relied on for decades. Many brands, nevertheless, increasingly are being drawn to the immediate benefits of tar- geted advertising. The question becomes: At what long-term cost? Ultimately, there are better ways to use targeting data today, whereby brands can drive both short-term performance and long-term outcomes. These objectives need not be mutually exclusive, and brands must get smarter at how they deploy available targeting data if they expect to drive both results simultaneously. 2  S. Terlep and D. Seetharaman. “P&G to Scale Back Tar- geted Facebook Ads.” The Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2016. Retrieved December 12, 2017, from https://www.wsj.com/ articles/p-g-to-scale-back-targeted-facebook-ads-1470760949. Are You Targeting Too Much? Effective Marketing Strategies for Brands gIAN M. FUlgoNI comscore, inc. [email protected] Numbers, Please March 2018 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 9 arE You tarGEtiNG too MucH? EFFEctivE MarkEtiNG stratEGiEs For BraNds tHEarF.orG The Perils of Targeting Too Narrowly Brands that rely too heavily on targeting may meet short-term sales objectives while the long-term health of the brand suffers. Les Binet and Peter Field, in The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies (Binet and Field, 2013), found that “the way in which long-term effects are generated is fundamentally dif- ferent from how most short-term effects are produced. Although long-term effects always produce some short-term effects, the reverse is not true and long-term effects are not simply an accumulation of short- term effects.” Sales-volume effects can be stimulated with targeted, rational appeals, but pricing effects that correlate with long- term brand performance are achieved better through “fame” campaigns that have mass appeal and emotional resonance. Byron Sharp, marketing professor at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, University of Southern Australia, also is well-known for his critique of brands that focus their message on the same consumers. “Sales growth won’t come from relentlessly tar- geting a particular segment of a brand’s buyers,” Sharp said. “This fantasy is harm- ing marketing effectiveness.”3 In his book How Brands Grow (Sharp, 2010), Sharp argues that consumers are not as loyal to individual brands as many market- ers might think and that for mass-market brands to continually drive sales, they must reach new buyers and lighter buyers with their marketing message. Narrow tar- geting does the opposite. Brands may find that when they target too narrowly, whatever gains might be achieved with loyal or heavy brand buyers easily can be outweighed by the erosion experienced when a brand is not top of mind among enough consumers. Unilever 3  J. Neff. “Losing Loyalty: The World according to Sharp.” Retrieved December 12, 2017, from AdAge website: http:// adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/the-world-according-to- byron-sharp-customer-loyalty-cheating/309532/. Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed put it succinctly: “If you get too targeted, you reinforce people who love your brands to use more…[but] there are only so many cups of tea you can drink in a day.”4 It is important to note that the effects of overtargeting might be lasting. Brands focused only on stimulating short-term sales might do so at the expense of long- term brand equity and cultural awareness. In his experience of working with some of the world’s largest brands, Mediacom Executive Chris Binns said, “We see that the more precise you are with your target- ing, the more you run the risk of optimiz- ing yourself into a sub-optimal position. This is not to say that precision doesn’t work, but that there are some ‘red flags’— the most significant of which is that invari- ably the individually precise is culturally invisible.”5 Mass-market brands must pay heed to metrics of brand equity, such as awareness and favorability. Absent availability and affinity in the mind of enough consumers, brands will struggle to grow and maximize profits. Narrow targeting can walk a brand right into this trap. Rethinking Reach Brands tossing all their eggs in the tar- geting basket either may be seduced by the siren song of precision data to power their media buys or may take the path of least resistance in the fragmented modern media environment. Buying media that reach a high percentage of the population relatively quickly was much easier in the predigital era of limited commun ication alternatives. Although television remains the king of reach vehicles, marketers’ television 4  J. Neff. “Losing Loyalty: The World according to Sharp.” 5  C. Binns. (2016, September 19). “Precision Targeting Has Gone Too Far.” Retrieved December 12, 2017, from Campaign website: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ precision-targeting-gone-far/1408723. dollars must work harder and harder to reach the same audience. Certain audi- ences cannot be reached quickly with television, and some audiences cannot be reached at all—particularly the elusive millennial audience, who have shifted so much of their collective screen time toward digital platforms. A 2017 study by Omnicom agency Hearts & Science found that a staggering 47 percent of adults ages 22 to 45 years do not watch television content in the tradi- tional manner, instead opting for digital video or over-the-top (OTT) viewing.6 Not only are these viewing options less likely to be advertisement supported—more than one-third of total OTT household viewing time is on Netflix7—but those that are advertisement supported tend not to carry full-length advertisement spots, as happens in linear television. Further compounding this problem is that these “unreachable” audiences are adept at tuning out advertising to which they actually might be exposed. When they do watch television, they often reach for their mobile devices during commer- cial breaks.8 When they are online, many use advertisement-blocking technologies.9 Brands increasingly must confront the reality that some of their most sought-after audience segments might offer but brief slivers of media availability in which they can be reached. 6  J. Poggi. “Nearly Half of Millennials and Gen Xers don’t Watch any Traditional TV: Study.” AdAge, September 22, 2017. Retrieved December 12, 2017, from http://adage.com/ article/media/half-young-consumers-watching-content- traditional-tv-study/310564/. 7  comScore. (2017, August). “Share of Total Viewing Min- utes, U.S.” [OTT intelligence]. 8  G. Abramovich. (2017, October 3). “Most Millennials Second-Screen during TV Commercials.” Retrieved Decem- ber 12, 2017, from the CMO by Adobe website: http://www. cmo.com/adobe-digital-insights/articles/2017/9/28/adobe- media-habits-survey.html#gs.pgXzxYE. 9  eMarketer (2017, February 15). “eMarketer scales Back Estimates of Ad Blocking in the US.” Retrieved December 12, 2017, from https://www.emarketer.com/Article/eMar- keter-Scales-Back-Estimates-of-Ad-Blocking-US/1015243. 10 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH March 2018 arE You tarGEtiNG too MucH? EFFEctivE MarkEtiNG stratEGiEs For BraNds Mass Reach, Digitally Driven How, then, should brands execute against their marketing objectives in this cross- platform environment? Is achieving mass reach even realistic, and are brands smart to continue turning their efforts in the direction of more finely targeted audi- ences? It is actually possible to do both. There is an optimal mix that can be tuned through trial and error, experimen- tation, and iteration to land on advertising that works to maximal effect. Measure- ment is critical to finding the right mix and should be done on a postcampaign basis at a minimum and in flight whenever pos- sible. The following measurement tech- niques can be used to align and optimize cross-media campaigns to help brands grow over the near and long term: • Plan media that overlap broad and narrow targets. Media-planning tools that combine broad demographics and advanced audience targets allow plan- ners to build a media plan on the front end that can meet both audience objec- tives. Planners can find efficiencies in the types of media that overindex on reach- ing both audience targets and “heavy up” on those media to increase efficiency of campaign delivery. More efficient front-end planning increases the likeli- hood that campaigns will be delivered against the right audiences and that reach and frequency objectives can be met for multiple targets. • Activate unexposed audiences on television via digital. Television- commercial ratings data can determine which audiences were reached by a cam- paign and which audiences were not. Recent innovations in advanced audi- ence segmentation and data activation make it practical to identify unexposed segments on one media channel and find those audiences and their looka- likes on digital media channels. Where reach curves max out on television, digital-media plans now can be quickly activated to maximize target reach and ensure more optimal media allocations. Even in cases where brands opt not to cast the widest net of consumers, this same activation strategy can be used to increase frequency among already- reached audience segments, but in a more cost-effective manner. • Measure unduplicated reach across platforms for broad and narrow audi- ence targets. Once cross-platform campaigns are delivered, brands must evaluate their delivery holistically across channels. Siloed measurement of each channel might show satisfactory reach within each individual channel, but, because of high overlap within a par- ticular audience, brands often are not maximizing overall target reach. Holistic cross-platform campaign measurement helps brands improve the way they man- age their media investments for boosting incremental reach, to increase “cultural awareness” of the brand among as many consumers as possible. Delivery can be evaluated against multiple targets, so that a women’s athletic-apparel brand could quantify, for example, that it reached 60 percent of its broadly defined target of women ages 25–49 years while reaching 75 percent of its more specific “yoga moms” target. • Measure brand lift and sales lift for the same campaigns. Brands rarely perform multiple effectiveness studies for a sin- gle campaign. If it is a branding cam- paign, they tend to opt for branding-lift studies, and if it is a short-term pro- motion, they prefer to opt for sales-lift measurement. Although doubling up a research expenditure is not always real- istic for small or medium-sized cam- paigns, large cross-media campaigns should prioritize measurement for both. Brands get the benefit of understanding how to develop creative content that drives both brand and sales lift, on which dimensions these factors corre- late, and where they differ. Research- ers have suggested that brands should “pursue a balanced scorecard” (Binet and Field, 2013) in measuring their campaigns and that the optimal mix of brand and activation (i.e., short-term) expenditure is typically around 60:40. New bodies of research have demon- strated the synergistic effects of cross- platform advertising campaigns. The Advertising Research Foundation’s 2016 “How Advertising Works Today” research proved that combining multiple platforms in a campaign drove synergistic effects in return on media investment (Snyder and Garcia-Garcia, 2016). Research and met- rics such as this help brands understand the relationship and interplay of exposure on different media platforms, offering the insights needed to optimize their invest- ments. Similarly, better measurement can illuminate the synergies among different —both broad and narrowly targeted— segments to help brands plan their media more effectively. CoNClUSIoN The tried-and-true marketing principles of reach and frequency are just as impor- tant as they have ever been. The media environment has changed, however, and delivering against these objectives is no longer as easy as it was in the days when a prime-time network-television buy would suffice. Brands understandably want to make use of more targeted data, though, to reach the specific audience targets that can spur sales at the cash register. The smart- est brands realize both objectives can be achieved simultaneously through more sophisticated approaches to the planning, activation, and measurement of cross- platform campaigns. March 2018 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 11 arE You tarGEtiNG too MucH? EFFEctivE MarkEtiNG stratEGiEs For BraNds tHEarF.orG Nate Silver, noted statistician, prognosti- cator, and founder of the website FiveThir- tyEight.com, in an October 2017 Tweet, said, “Figuring out *how* to optimize something is mostly a math problem. But figuring out *what* to optimize is mostly not.”10 Because digital advertising came of age amidst a vast ocean of measurable data, there has been a temptation to use “math” to optimize for specific outcomes. The problem is that few ever stopped to ask whether these were the right outcomes to optimize, and in many cases they were 10  Nate Silver (@natesilver538). (2017, October 20). Tweet. Retrieved January 8, 2018, from Twitter: https://twitter. com/natesilver538/status/921385309157363712?lang=en. not. They biased toward short-term results, often at the expense of the determinants of long-term brand success, such as aware- ness, cultural relevance, favorability, and loyalty. Such misguided thinking can be reversed. Although data partially may be to blame for the problem of brands target- ing too narrowly, with better data-driven measurement practices, data also can be part of the solution. aBout tHE autHor Gian M. Fulgoni is cofounder and chairman emeritus of comscore, inc. Before his career at comscore, he was president and chief executive officer of Information resources, inc., amid more than 40 years at the c-level of corporate management. Fulgoni over the years has overseen the development of many innovative technological methods of measuring consumer behavior and advertising effectiveness. He is a regular contributor to the Journal of Advertising Research. rEFErENcE Binet, L., and P. Field. The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies. London: Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, 2013. Sharp, B. How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Copyright of Journal of Advertising is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Copyright of Journal of Advertising Research is the property of Warc LTD and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. European Management Journal (2010) 28, 139– 152 j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / e m j Marketing strategy and marketing performance measurement system: Exploring the relationship Lucio Lamberti *, Giuliano Noci Politecnico di Milano – Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Piazza L. Da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy 02 do * 40 gi KEYWORDS Marketing performance measurement; Marketing strategy; Performance measure- ment system design; Qualitative study 63-2373/$ - see front matte i:10.1016/j.emj.2009.04.00 Corresponding author. Tel 83. E-mail addresses: lucio [email protected] (G. No r ª 200 7 .: +39 02 .lambert ci). Summary Though marketing performance measurement has long been a concern for lit- erature and companies, the relationship between marketing strategy and marketing per- formance measurement system (MPMS) design is a substantially uncovered topic. This paper endorses Coviello et al. [Coviello, N. E., Brodie, R. J. and Munro, H. J. (1997) Under- standing contemporary marketing: Development of a classification scheme. Journal of Marketing Management, 13, 501–522.] classification scheme for marketing strategies and draws from literature a conceptual framework about the managerial levers for MPMS design (marketing performances, measures and control system), aiming to explore the possible existence and the nature of the marketing strategy–MPMS relationship. The study is carried out with a multiple case study approach in seven Italian organizations. The out- comes show that companies pursuing different marketing strategies adopt different MPMS, and the authors explore the impact of some contextual elements possibly impact- ing on the relationship, discussing their role in the glance of existing literature. The results have suggested some managerial implications. ª 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Marketing performance measurement has long been a main concern in marketing literature and a core, troubled issue in companies. Nonetheless, since the seminal works on marketing productivity analysis, the academician and managerial domains have seldom generated essential new 9 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 2399 4076; fax: +39 02 2399 [email protected] (L. Lamberti), knowledge on the topic (e.g. O�Sullivan and Abela, 2007). Though a strong effort has been devoted to the develop- ment of punctual measures better suited to assess the evolving relevant performances in response to the emerging marketing paradigms, marketing performance measurement system (MPMS) design still remains a widely uncovered topic (Clark, 1999). In particular, and quite surprisingly, substan- tially no studies have analyzed whether and how MPMS de- sign should be adapted to the specificities of company�s (marketing) strategy, so that the current knowledge about the marketing strategy–MPMS relationship is extremely mailto:[email protected] mailto:��[email protected] 140 L. Lamberti, G. Noci scarce. In this paper, we aim at contributing to the con- struction of a theory on the topic by exploring the possible relationship between marketing strategy and some of the main MPMS design variables (performances assessed, mea- sures adopted and control system implemented). In this re- spect, we introduce the results of seven in-depth case studies from companies adopting different marketing strategies. In the following, we will briefly summarize the state-of-the-art literature on marketing performance measurement in order to introduce the research framework. Then, we will illustrate the empirical exercise by presenting the methodology adopted. Next, after having briefly intro- duced the companies involved in the study and summarized the findings, we will discuss the outcomes in the light of the state-of-the-art literature. Finally, we will draw managerial implications of the study and the conclusions. Literature review The first theories about MPMS considered marketing activ- ities mainly as a discretional cost centre and, as such, ac- counted for its incidence on corporate costs (e.g. Sevin, 1965). This approach, born and developed in a era of prod- uct centricity, has shown its weaknesses with the affirma- tion of more and more customer- and relationship-oriented marketing strategies (Sheth et al., 2002): such paradigms modified the role of the customer in the firm, from passive target of the marketing action to proactive partner in- volved in value generation, and, as such, as an asset the company must manage in time and continuously assess (e.g. Gummesson, 2004). This explains the growing atten- tion paid to marketing intangibles and customer account- ability, for instance through the theories on brand equity and customer equity (e.g. Rust et al., 2004). The underly- ing assumption of these streams is the need to enlarge the relevant marketing performances for the company, in re- sponse to the evolving marketing goals of the emerging paradigms, from pure internal efficiency and turnover gen- eration to cost-effectiveness and customer profitability (Shah et al., 2006; Sheth et al., 2002). This element sug- gests that MPMS design should depend (also) on marketing strategy, and that a suited marketing accountability is a key-issue in pursuing the marketing strategic objectives. Nonetheless, the existing wisdom about marketing accountability is widely considered insufficient by litera- ture: in a recent paper published on EMJ, for instance, Bonnemaizon et al. (2007) indicate the poor attention paid to the definition of a consistent marketing accountability as one of the causes of the lack of a dominant relationship marketing practice; Morgan and colleagues notice that ‘‘both academics and managers currently lack a compre- hensive understanding of the marketing performance pro- cess and the factors that affect the design and use of marketing performance assessment systems within corpo- rations’’ (Morgan et al., 2002, p. 363). It is not surprising, thus, that MSI has ranked marketing accountability, ROI, and MPMS among the top 10 marketing research priorities since 2002, and as the top-priority for 2008–2010 (MSI, 2008). Also in response to these calls, marketing literature has tried to analyze MPMS; in detail, three main literature streams on MPM have emerged: i. the definition of the domain of marketing perfor- mances, i.e. the plethora of business performances marketing is accountable for (e.g. Bellis-Jones, 1989; Bhargava et al., 1994; Bolton, 2004; Blattberg and Deighton, 1996); ii. the definition of the metrics suitable to assess such performances and their adoption in practice (e.g. Bar- wise and Farley, 2003, 2004; Shah et al., 2006; Rust et al., 2004; Berger and Nasr, 1998; Winer, 2000); iii. the definition of the design variables and of the con- tingent and environmental variables possibly influenc- ing MPMS (e.g. Jaworski, 1988; Jaworski et al., 1993; Clark, 1999; Morgan et al., 2002). The first two points, though not exhaustively debated, have been explored much more deeply than the third one. Indeed, since Jaworski�s MPM system conceptual framework definition (Jaworski, 1988), research on the MPMS design has generated some inferences about the role of the distribu- tion channel configuration on marketing performance mea- surement and management (Loning and Besson, 2002) and some pre-eminently theoretical works aimed at defining conceptual frameworks for detecting the design variables for MPMS (Jaworski et al., 1993; Clark, 1999; Morgan et al., 2002; Gummesson, 2004). Nonetheless, many issues are still to be addressed, and evidence-based works are strongly requested by academy and business community. In particular, quite surprisingly, the relationship between marketing strategy and MPMS design is a mainly uncovered issue in marketing literature, and this work aims at provid- ing first evidences on the topic. Conceptual framework The literature review aimed at formalizing a research framework that, grounded in the extant knowledge, could support an empirical investigation on the relationship be- tween marketing strategy and MPM system. In order to carry out the analysis, it was necessary to define two components in the reference framework: firstly, the authors looked for taxonomies defining the basic marketing strategies compa- nies may adopt; secondly, they detected a framework for describing the key elements of a MPM system. Basic marketing strategies The crisis of the mass market paradigm has generated a fragmentation in marketing practice by companies (Brodie and Coviello, 2008). The increasing attention paid to cus- tomer retention and to the relationships between the firm and its stakeholders led to the affirmation of more relation- ship-oriented marketing paradigms (e.g. Grönroos, 1990) and, more recently, of more radical approaches, such as: service dominant logic (SDL), (Vargo and Lusch, 2004), cus- tomer-centric marketing (Sheth et al., 2002, pp. 56–57) and Balanced Centricity (Gummesson, 2008). Nonetheless, a study by Coviello and Brodie (1998) has shown that many companies succeed mashing up elements of relationship and transactional marketing. This result called into question the dichotomy between transaction-oriented and relation- Marketing strategy and marketing performance measurement system: Exploring the relationship 141 ship-oriented marketing strategies (e.g. Grönroos, 1994; Webster, 1992). In order to systematize the diversity in marketing strate- gies and practices adopted by companies, a decennial inter- national research program, called contemporary marketing practices (CMP), was undertaken by Auckland University. Such program led to a widely accepted classification scheme for marketing strategies, which represents one of the con- ceptual fundaments of the present study. Coviello et al. (1997) postulated the existence of two archetypal extremes on the continuum of marketing practices, namely: • Transactional marketing (TM), a marketing practice char- acterized by the use of the Marketing Mix to attract and satisfy the market. • Relational marketing (RM), defined as the marketing prac- tice aimed to establish, maintain, and enhance relation- ships with customers and other partners in order to meet the objectives of the partners involved (Gummesson, 1990). RM practices can be further subdivided into database marketing (DM, characterized by the use of ICTs in order to target and retain customers), interaction marketing (IM, characterized by the establishment of relationships aimed at creating cooperative interactions) and network marketing (NM, characterized by a many-to-many approach with con- nected relationships between firms), though the first and the third approaches have demonstrated to be far less adopted by contemporary companies (Coviello et al., 1997). A third archetypal marketing strategy derives from the observation of a significant group of companies contem- porarily adopting TM and RM. This led to the postulation of the hybrid transactional/relational approach (transac- tional/relational marketing – TRM) (Coviello et al., 2002; Brodie and Coviello, 2008). As a result, in this work we di- vided the companies into three strategic clusters: • Transactional marketing companies (TMCs), character- ized by marketing activities mainly aimed at attracting customers, standardizing customer interactions more than at establishing long-term relationships and custom- izing customer retention practices. • Relational marketing companies (RMCs), characterized by a relationship-oriented approach to customer interac- tions, with a strong orientation towards the establishment of long-term relationships with the customers and the sup- ply-chain, with a strong attitude towards cooperation. • Transactional/relational marketing companies (TRCs) companies, characterized by a coexistence of relation- ship-oriented and transaction-oriented approaches to customer and supply-chain interactions; the coexistence is mainly determined by customer and supply-chain diversity, that leads these companies to act differently according to the specificities of their target market. Marketing performance measurement system characteristics A performance measurement system (PMS) can be defined as the system managers use in order to (i) check whether the intended strategy is being implemented; (ii) communi- cate to their employees what are the goals they are ex- pected to achieve and whether they are achieving those expected goals; (iii) validate whether the intended strategy is still valid; and (iv) facilitate individual and organizational learning and improvement. MPMS is the part of corporate PMS aiming at assessing the performance influenced by mar- keting (Morgan et al., 2002). The literature review high- lighted three main variables characterizing a MPM system: (1) Typology of performances assessed (which are the corporate performances under the responsibility of the marketing units?). (2) Typology of measures adopted (which kinds of mea- sures are adopted?). (3) Control system (how do managers assess perfor- mances and manage the information coming from the MPM system?). In the following, the three issues will be detailed. Typologies of performance assessed Marketing literature suggests several different typologies of marketing performances (Table 1). Since traditionally, mar- keting department activities have mainly been considered a discretionary cost (Lau, 1999), the main performances attributable to marketing are the marketing efficiency per- formances, related to intra-functional processes, such as the results in terms of costs and turnover immediately caused by promotional, selling, pricing and distributional activities (Morgan et al., 2002). The diffusion of marketing paradigms stressing the need to engage customers into the company�s marketing processes (e.g. co-creation) and to track the relationship between the firm and its customers led to the affirmation of an enlarge- ment in the scope of marketing activities, with a gradual enclosure of customer integration performances, i.e. the ability to acquire and retain profitable customers (Srivastava et al., 1998), measured through customer lifetime value, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and the other met- rics suggested by relationship marketing authors (Rust et al., 2004; Peppers and Rogers, 2000; Hogan et al., 2002). Another significant stream of literature has analyzed the relationship between marketing and supply-chain manage- ment (Gentile et al., 2006; Webster, 1992; Lambert and Cooper, 2000), affirming that marketing can also be respon- sible for Supply-chain integration performances, i.e. the capability to efficiently and effectively interface with sup- pliers and marketing channel: co-design in NPD (‘‘creating value’’), strategic alignment in supply-chain competition (‘‘communicating value’’) and in retail management (‘‘delivering value’’) are just examples of the increasing role of supply-chain management in marketing activities. This kind of marketing performances and the related met- rics (e.g. lead time, service level, percentage of turnover generated by products co-created with supply-chain part- ners etc.) have been analyzed both in marketing literature (e.g. Srivastava et al., 1999; Webster, 1992) and in sup- ply-chain literature (e.g. Duclos et al., 2003). The need for interfunctional coordination affirmed by the market- Table 1 Dimensions of marketing performances detected by literature. Performance Definition Main references Marketing efficiency Ability to efficiently transform marketing inputs into marketing outputs Kotler (2002), Clark (1999), Ambler (2003), O�Sullivan and Abela (2007), Morgan et al. (2002); Bonoma and Clark (1988), Sevin (1965), Clark (2000) Customer relationship management Ability to attract and retain profitable customers Kotler (2002), Peppers and Rogers (1993), Peppers and Rogers (2000), Kumar et al. (2004), Rust et al. (2004), Rust et al. (2004), O�Sullivan and Abela (2007), Kim et al. (2003), Bellis-Jones (1989), Berger and Nasr (1998), Blattberg and Deighton (1996), Blattberg et al. (2001), Hansotia (2004) Internal consistency Ability to spread and maintain a strategic alignment with all the non-marketing functions within the firm Kohli and Jaworski (1990), Narver and Slater (1990), Day (1994), Sheth et al. (2002), Shah et al. (2006), Srivastava et al. (1998, 1999) Supply-chain interface Ability to spread and maintain a strategic alignment with all the relevant supply- chain partners (channels, suppliers, outsourcers etc.) Gentile et al. (2006), Srivastava et al. (1998), Duclos et al. (2003), Webster (1992), Lambert and Cooper (2000) Intellectual capital and knowledge-based asset management Ability to generate market intelligence, to spread it all over the organization and to spread a customer oriented culture within the firm. Kohli and Jaworski (1990), Narver and Slater (1990), Day (1994), Shah et al. (2006), Boaretto et al. (2007), Srivastava et al. (1998), Deshpandé and Webster (1989), Andriessen (2004), Sveiby (1997, 2005) 142 L. Lamberti, G. Noci orientation theory (Narver and Slater, 1990), but also by customer-centricity (Sheth et al., 2002), SDL (Vargo and Lusch, 2004) and Balanced Centricity (Gummesson, 2008), has stressed on the relevance of the consistency between marketing and non-marketing activities within the firm. As a result, Internal consistency performances, i.e. the capa- bility of marketing to efficiently and effectively interface with non-marketing functions (e.g. behavioral controls for favouring the cross-functional team working, responsive- ness and precision in information provision etc.) have got momentum in marketing literature (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990; Srivastava et al., 1998). Finally, the emergence of the cultural role of marketing (Kumar, 2004; Deshpandé and Webster, 1989) led to intro- duce intellectual capital and knowledge-based assets per- formances as possible relevant performances in analyzing marketing outcomes. Indeed, many authors attribute to the marketing departments the responsibility to spread the market culture all over the organization (e.g. Sheth et al., 2002; Kohli and Jaworski, 1990). In this sense, being organizational culture and knowledge sharing positively cor- related to corporate spirits de corps, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of the employees (Rust et al., 2004; Deshpandé and Webster, 1989), literature outlines the potential utility for companies to measure this kind of performances in order to get a comprehensive understate- ment of the evolution of marketing strategy (Andriessen, 2004; Sveiby, 1997, 2005). Typology of measures adopted Similarly to the analysis of the typology of performances as- sessed, literature has provided a very heterogeneous set of contributions about the typologies of marketing measures adopted by companies. However, differently from the pre- vious issue, it was possible to detect a widely accepted uni- fying taxonomy in Clark�s theory (Clark, 1999). The author divides marketing measures into four main categories: - single financial output measures (e.g. profit, sales and cash flows), representing the first effort to assess mar- keting performances (e.g. Sevin, 1965) by comparing the outcomes of marketing actions with the costs affor- ded to implement them; - non-financial measures, i.e. the marketing output mea- sures assessed through non-financial or qualitative met- rics, such as market share, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and brand equity; - input measures, i.e. metrics aimed at assessing market- ing performances by analyzing their resource absorption (e.g. marketing assets, marketing budget) or the behav- ior of marketing units (e.g. marketing audits, behavioral control systems); - multiple measures, i.e. hybrid measures aimed at assessing either the macro-dimensions of efficiency, effectiveness and adaptiveness or the interdependency between the dif- ferent dimensions of MPM (e.g. multivariate analysis). The choice of Clark�s framework is motivated by two rea- sons. First, it is a widely accepted taxonomy (e.g. O�Sullivan and Abela, 2007; Barwise and Farley, 2004). Second, Clark�s theory also depicts some of the environmental and strategic changes explaining the attention paid by practitioners and academicians to the different typologies of measures. As such, it will be interesting to match the evidences gathered in the empirical test with Clark�s theoretical assumptions. Table 3 Key informants in the empirical exercise. Company name Key informants Foodfresh SBU CEO SBU CMO SBU CFO Key account managers (2) Foodcereal Marketing manager Finance manager Strategic planning manager Product manager Bank CEO Accountant Private customers marketing manager Envcons CEO Financial officer Metalpack SBU marketing manager R&D manager SBU CFO SBU strategic planning manager Electrap Marketing manager R&D manager HR manager CFO Airbook CEO CFO Chief marketing officer Table 2 Research sample of the study. Company name Country Employees Industry Typology of customer Airbook Italy 150 Flight booking B2C Bank Italy 450 Banking B2B/B2C Electrap Italy 1.200 Electric apparel B2B/B2C Envcons Italy 95 Consultancy B2B Foodcereal Italy 3.500 Food B2C Foodfresh France 15.000 Food B2C Metalpack USA 25.000 Metal working B2B Marketing strategy and marketing performance measurement system: Exploring the relationship 143 Control system Defining ‘‘control’’ as the attempt, within the SBU, to influ- ence employee behavior and activities, Jaworski et al. (1993) affirm that the control system is the combination of the level of reliance on two control types: formal con- trols (written and generally management-initiated controls aimed at fine tuning employee behavior to the marketing objectives) and informal controls (unwritten and generally employee initiated mechanisms aimed at influencing the behaviors). The mix between formal and informal controls represents the control combination or control system. According to the extent of reliance on the control types, four main control systems have been detected (Jaworski et al., 1993): (1) high control systems (high reliance both on formal and informal control), (2) low control systems (low reliance both on formal and informal controls), (3) bureaucratic systems (high reliance on formal control and low reliance on informal controls), and (4) clan systems (low reliance on formal control and high reliance on informal control). Though Jaworski et al. (1993) outlined the existence of antecedents in the adoption of a specific control system (namely, SBU size, task routineness, learn-job time and completeness), none of them directly refers to marketing strategy. Research design Data collection Due to the lack of similar studies in literature, an inductive and exploratory approach was necessary and better suited to support theory building. As a result, case study method- ology was adopted: we conducted studies in seven Italian companies operating in different industries and with differ- ent characteristics. We looked for similarities and diversi- ties in MPMS design among companies adopting similar and different marketing strategies. More precisely, the selec- tion of cases was intended to include companies operating in Italy able to respond to the diversity in terms of market- ing strategies adopted, possibly getting diversity also in terms of environmental and contingent variables: SMEs and large companies, product and service suppliers, indus- trial and consumer companies, and direct marketing and trade marketing companies. The choice was also based on the possibility to gain access to the company and their avail- ability to show confidential information. For confidentiality reasons, the cases presented in the following will be re- ferred to with pseudonyms instead of the companies� real names (Table 2). The central empirical basis was derived from interviews. Since emerging theories on marketing strategy stress on the cross-functional nature of marketing processes (e.g. Srivast- ava et al., 1999; Shah et al., 2006), multiple interviews were necessary to achieve a global overview for each com- pany. Accordingly, marketing officers, executive officers and accountants have been privileged interlocutors and, Table 4 Main topics addressed in the interviews. Functional area of the key informant Main topics addressed CEO/Board/Strategic planning • History of the company, ownership structure and corporate governance • Strategic overview of the company • Roles, responsibilities and power of the marketing units • Description of the marketing strategy • Key marketing performances assessed at a strategic level CMO/Marketing manager • Description of the marketing process • Interaction with the non-marketing functions • Interaction with the customer • Interaction with the supply-chain • Nature and structure of the MPMS adopted • Internal control and incentive system for marketing units CFO • Corporate performance measurement system • Characteristics and criticalities of the MPMS • Integration of the MPMS in the corporate performance measurement system • Strategic relevance of the marketing performance, expectances by the board and budgeting Other managers • Punctual discussion of problematic issues emerged during the other interviews 144 L. Lamberti, G. Noci as a result, 25 key informants in the seven companies were detected (Table 3). Interviews dealt with the analysis of the marketing strategy and with the structure and the charac- teristics of the MPM system. In detail, Table 4 reports the roles of the interviewees and the key-information gathered during the interviews. The study adopted a cross-case explanation-building and pattern-matching approach aimed at ensuring an internal validity and particularly suitable to semi-exploratory re- search (Yin, 1994). All the interviews were conducted be- tween May 2007 and December 2007; the analysis was carried out as follows: • At the beginning, a relationship was established with the CEO/Managing Director. He was briefed about the research project and the authors asked to be intro- duced to the Marketing Manager and the financial director; • The managers were asked to compile the marketing strategy questionnaire developed by Coviello et al. (2002), and the results compared with the outcomes of the interviews in order to assess the belonging of the companies to one of the three clusters taken as a refer- ence in this study (transactional marketing companies, relational marketing companies and transactional-rela- tional marketing companies). The aim of the survey was to confirm the exact interpretation of the marketing strategy, and in all the cases the results confirmed the researchers� perception; • The authors personally interviewed the selected manag- ers; they undertook a semi-structured interview (each of them lasting on average 2 h) for each respondent in order to gather the information required; • All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed; a telephone follow-up with the respondents was conducted whether a few data were missing; • At the end of the interviews with the CEO, CMO and CFO, if relevant aspects regarding certain issues emerged, the authors asked to be introduced to the managers respon- sible for such issues; • All available secondary information regarding marketing strategies and MPM was collected and triangulated with data drawn from the direct interviews in order to enhance research reliability; • External sources of information were identified to gather other points of view regarding company�s marketing strategy. In particular, internal reports and budgets were analyzed to understand the role and the relevance of the information generated by the MPM system; moreover, presentations, bonus allocation schemes and internal documents were gathered in order to understand the marketing measures adopted; • A first hand summary of the findings has been discussed with the managers who were interviewed in order to identify any misunderstanding. Findings The sample covered all the three marketing strategy clusters excerpted by Coviello et al. (2002) framework. Airbook and Foodcereal belong to the TMCs� cluster. Airbook, an on-line flight booking agency, is an archetypal hi-tech product-cen- tric company, in which the booking software is considered as the competitive differential, and market intelligence is considered poorly significant. Foodcereal is a company oper- ating in the FMCG market, showing quite a clear customer ser- vice culture, but also a clear functional approach to marketing. Their approach to market is characterized by an aggressive pull strategy on the end user and to a penetra- tion-oriented strategy towards the trade; relationships with trade and supply-chain are generally conflictual and aimed at maximizing unique transaction returns. Very few customer retention activities have been implemented (just recently Airbook has started leveraging on customer database to clus- ter the targets of price promotions), and the companies do not show particular interest in developing similar initiatives. Envcons and Metalpack belong to the RMCs� cluster. Env- cons is quite a typical …