Differences between differentiators and cost leaders in market research and internal CRM usage

The Porter strategy types of Differentiation and Cost Leadership are put forward as strategies leading to competitive advantage (Porter 1980). These types have quite contrasting implementation guidelines in terms of human resources, organisational structure, job design decision-making process, control systems, and information systems. These internal contrasts suggest Differentiators and Cost Leaders require contrasting roles for market research and internal CRM systems. Very few studies have explored the contingent role business strategy may have in explaining contrasting roles in marketing information systems or market research.

This study involved a cross-industry postal survey of 240 Australian marketing managers. One contribution of this study was to find market research having quite different roles in supporting Marketing (i.e. brand) Differentiators compared to Product (i.e. innovative feature) Differentiators. Surprisingly only one market research role differed when comparing Cost Leaders with Marketing Differentiator strategies. A final contribution was to find that no one strategy having a greater reliance on internal CRM systems in supporting decisionmaking.

Differentiate or die or be 'stuck in the middle' and survive!

“The reality is that traditional (marketing) implementation approaches have failed…” (Dobni et al., 2001, p. 402) Nevertheless recent research still seeks to identify relationships between Porter’s marketing strategies, implementation and performance (Kumar et al. 1997; Teach and Schwartz, 2000). Although each study included the Porter’s strategy types none actually classified business units into ideal differentiators, ideal cost leaders and combination differentiation cost leaders to conduct “implementation-performance process” comparisons.

This study has made a contribution to the study of marketing implementation and marketing performance by separating and comparing strategies such as ideal differentiation, ideal cost leadership, and combination (differentiation/cost leadership) strategies with the “stuck in the middle” marketing strategy type.

A key implementation finding was the importance of paying high salaries to attract the best employees when implementing either a differentiation strategy or a combined (differentiation/ cost leadership) strategy. However for the other six implementation tools, the findings support Kelliher and Perrett (2001, p.421) whose findings “do not indicate a clear relationship between business strategy and the approach to HRM.”

A key performance finding was that differentiation is the best strategy in terms of marketing performance while cost leadership is the worst performing strategy. Both differentiation and the combination strategy (differentiation/cost leadership) outperformed cost leadership.

The impact of Porter's strategy types on the role of market research and customer relationship management

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate the influence of Porter’s strategy types on the use of customer relationship management (CRM) techniques and traditional market research, against theoretical and empirical evidence that differences in strategy types may result in variation in favoured marketing information sources and procedure.

Design/methodology/approach – Depth interviews generated a series of scale items, which were combined with others derived from the literature in a questionnaire measuring strategy types, the roles of market research, and the characteristics of CRM systems. Responses were obtained from 240 senior marketing managers in Australia, and applied to the testing of five research propositions.

Findings – ANOVA found no differences in CRM usage among the strategy types. Variation was widespread, however, in four roles of traditional market research: enhancing strategic decision making, increasing usability of existing data, presenting plans to senior management, and achieving productivity and political outcomes.

Research limitations/implications – Future researchers using the Porter strategic types should separate “marketing differentiators” from “product differentiators” because they function and compete differently.

Practical implications – All organisations can benefit from CRM systems, but “marketing differentiators” exhibit a relatively higher usage of traditional market research. This is likely to be because they compete by creating softer product differences, while others do so on harder characteristics such as price or product functionality.

Originality/value – This is the first study to use the Porter types to explain differences between the roles and uses of market research and CRM within organisations.

Using quantitative and qualitative unit profiling for identifying the contribution of library resources to teaching quality

This paper presents the development and application of a new methodology incorporating both quantitative and qualitative profiling to help discern the characteristics of units of study that are the differentiators of student ratings of library resource quality. From the sub-set of those units with an ‘unremarkable’ rating for teaching quality, those units with the ‘extreme’ library resource quality ratings were selected for investigation. Examination of the handbook descriptions for those units suggests that units of study which explicitly incorporate student interaction with the wider literature and other information resources beyond those provided within the unit environment may lead students to engage with the library in deeper ways that highlight the value of library resources, and hence lead to higher mean ratings of library resource quality. This finding suggests potential areas for intervention to enhance student perceptions of the quality of library resources.