Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Edited by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave. Pp. viii, 282. £3·50, paperback £1. 1970. (Cambridge University Press.)

Brand experience is conceptualized as sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioral responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand's design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments. The authors distinguish several experience dimensions and construct a brand experience scale that includes four dimensions: sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral. In six studies, the authors show that the scale is reliable, valid, and distinct from other brand measures, including brand evaluations, brand involvement, brand attachment, customer delight, and brand personality. Moreover, brand experience affects consumer satisfaction and loyalty directly and indirectly through brand personality associations.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1960358_code1671431.pdf?abstractid=1960358&mirid=4

Brand Experience: What is it? How is it Measured? Does it Affect Loyalty?

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Brand Experience: What Is It? How Is It Measured? Does It Affect Loyalty?

Word of mouth marketing — the intentional influencing of consumer-to-consumer communications — is an increasingly important technique. The authors overview and synthesize extant word of mouth theory and present a study of a marketing campaign in which mobile phones were seeded with prominent bloggers. Eighty-three blogs were followed for six months. Findings reveal the complex cultural conditions through which marketing “hype” is transformed by consumers into the “honey” of relevant, shared communications. Four word of mouth communication strategies are identified — evaluation, embracing, endorsement and explanation. Each is influenced by communicator narrative, communications forum, communal norms and the nature of the marketing promotion. An intrinsic tension between commercial and communal interests plays a prominent, normative role in message formation and reception. This “hype-to-honey” theory shows that communal word of mouth does not simply increase or amplify marketing messages. Rather, marketing messages and meanings are systematically altered in the process of embedding them. The theory has implications for how marketers should plan, target and benefit from word of mouth and how scholars should understand word of mouth in a networked world.

Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities

Getting to YES. Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

There has been growing interest in the future of marketing and changes in marketing’s organization and role within the firm. However, there has not been research that holistically explores key changes in marketing organization. The authors draw on qualitative interviews with 50 managers in the United States and Germany and argue that changes in marketing organization that have been discussed in isolation are part of a more general shift toward customer-focused organizational structures. They initially discuss two specific changes related to the overall shift: changes concerning primary marketing coordinators and increasing dispersion of marketing activities. They then introduce the concept of a customer-focused organizational structure that uses groups of customers as the primary basis for structuring the organization. They identify typical organizational transitions as firms move toward a customer-focused organizational structure and discuss the challenges firms face in making this transition. They conclude with implications for academic research, managerial practice, and business school curriculum.

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Fundamental Changes in Marketing Organization: The Movement Toward a Customer-Focused Organizational Structure

Most firms struggle with the challenge of managing their key customer accounts. There is a significant gap between the importance of this organizational design problem in practice and the research attention paid to it. Sound academic research on key account management (KAM) is limited and fragmented. Drawing on research on KAM and team selling, the authors develop an integrative conceptualization of KAM and define key constructs in four areas: (1) activities, (2) actors, (3) resources, and (4) approach formalization. Adopting a configurational perspective to organizational research, the authors then use numerical taxonomy to empirically identify eight prototypical KAM approaches on the basis of a cross-industry, cross-national study. The results show significant performance differences among the approaches. Overall, the article builds a bridge between marketing organization research and relationship marketing research.

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A Configurational Perspective on Key Account Management

The literature is divided on whether differences between the thought worlds of marketing and sales are deleterious or beneficial. This article empirically investigates various facets of thought-world differences and their effects on various outcomes. It confirms that, in general, differences hamper the cooperation between marketing and sales, which leads to a lower market performance of the business unit. However, some facets of thought-world differences enhance the market performance of the business unit through a direct effect that outweighs the negative effect mediated by the quality of cooperation between marketing and sales. Market performance is enhanced if one side plays the customers' advocate while the other plays the products' advocate. Market performance is also enhanced if one side plays the advocate of short-term considerations while the other plays the advocate of long-term considerations. In contrast, differences between marketing and sales in regard to product knowledge and interp...

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The Thought Worlds of Marketing and Sales: Which Differences Make a Difference?:

While there is a significant amount of research on determinants of selling effectiveness for individual salespeople, there is a surprising lack of study offactors that affect selling effectiveness in team-selling situations The authors focus on the context of key account management (KAM) and develop a conceptual model offactors that affect KAM effectiveness They test hypotheses with data from 385 firms using structural equation modeling and find that firms should seek to build esprit de corps among those involved in KAM, should proactively initiate activities with key accounts and do these activities more intensively, should ensure that key account managers have access to key resources within the marketing and sales organization, and should involve top managers of the firm

Intraorganizational Determinants of Key Account Management Effectiveness

Little is known about the interface between separate marketing units and sales units. This article develops a multidimensional model of the marketing and sales interface. The model integrates a broad range of conceptual domains, including information sharing, structural linkages, power, orientations, and knowledge of marketing and sales. The authors empirically explore the conceptual model through a cross-industry study of 337 European Union–based companies. They identify five empirical archetypes of the marketing and sales interface. The taxonomy shows that the role and characteristics of marketing and sales vary a great deal. This finding challenges existing stereotypes about marketing and sales. Finally, the article explores organizational outcomes of the five configurations. The findings suggest that the most successful configurations are characterized by strong structural linkages between marketing and sales and a high extent of market knowledge in marketing.

Ove Jensen

Papers

Fundamental Changes in Marketing Organization: The Movement Toward a Customer-Focused Organizational Structure

A Configurational Perspective on Key Account Management

The Thought Worlds of Marketing and Sales: Which Differences Make a Difference?:

Intraorganizational Determinants of Key Account Management Effectiveness

Configurations of Marketing and Sales: A Taxonomy