El uso y efectividad de la relación estratégica comunitaria y el marketing en las organizaciones de comercio al por mayor especializadas en productos agropecuarios

El mercadeo relacional no sólo implica desarrollar relaciones con los clientes y satisfacer efectivamente sus necesidades, sino que también implica la vinculación de la empresa con la comunidad, y para esto se deben utilizan estrategias comunitarias generando así un desarrollo y beneficio recíproco a largo plazo. La empresa mayorista del sector agropecuario analizada en este proyecto dentro de su concepto de comunidad tiene claro quiénes son sus principales agentes (clientes externos, proveedores, clientes internos y comunidades vulnerables) y cómo relacionarse con ellos mediante el uso efectivo y equilibrado de las estrategias de marketing y de las estrategias orientadas a la comunidad, lo cual se ve reflejado en sus resultados financieros y en el impacto que ha generado en el desarrollo integral de la comunidad rural y del sector agropecuario. No obstante, la empresa si bien mantiene una relación permanente con sus clientes, proveedores y empleados y algunas fundaciones, se observa que la relación con otros agentes pierde continuidad al ser una iniciativa a corto plazo como respuesta a un cambio.

Influencia de la comunidad de clústers en las relaciones estratégicas comunitarias y el marketing compartido

Un clúster es entendido por la gran mayoría como un gran conglomerado de empresas que giran en torno a un objetivo, en su gran mayoría económico. Su intención es competir con otros conglomerados en cuanto a precios y cantidades, ya que de manera individual no podrían. En consecuencia, esta unión se utiliza en un principio para crear ventajas tanto competitivas como comparativas en contra de la competencia, lo cual genera un valor a esta unión, con el fin de producir fidelidad en el cliente y recordación de todos los productos que tal unión brinde. Según estudios realizados por diversos autores, en muchas ocasiones, los clúster no se crean con una finalidad económica, sino como desarrollo de un perfil comunitario que ayude a la sociedad y las organizaciones que la componen. La base de las relaciones se centra en la comunicación y en las diversas técnicas que existen en ese ámbito para asegurar la sostenibilidad de la organización. Dentro de estas relaciones, se le da un reconocimiento a la educación y la cultura en donde se encuentra ubicado el clúster, ya que las estrategias que se implementen se relacionan directamente con las necesidades de los clientes, generando en el pensamiento de la comunidad la perdurabilidad y sostenibilidad como efecto del desarrollo social.

Incremento de la salud financiera mediante la utilización de la relación estratégica comunitaria y marketing.

Debido a las crisis mundiales, la perdurabilidad empresarial se ha convertido en la primera preocupación de las organizaciones, puesto que los problemas económicos en otros países pueden generar un efecto negativo en las condiciones del mercado doméstico, que junto con el entorno empresarial complejo y dinámico en el que se deben desempeñar las empresas hoy en día gracias a la globalización, sumado al aumento en la competitividad nacional e internacional, la perdurabilidad de las empresas se está viendo seriamente comprometida. Lo anterior, ha llevado a las empresas a buscar nuevas formas de mejorar su salud financiera. Para medir la salud financiera empresarial, se pueden usar distintos indicadores como lo es el flujo de caja que está asociado con la rentabilidad, el patrimonio que está asociado a las dificultades financieras, entre otros, o a través de varios modelos de bancarrota, los cuales, por medio de un conjunto de ratios financieros, reflejan el estado actual de la organización y su probabilidad de fracaso en el futuro. Las estrategias comunitarias y el marketing permiten incrementar la salud financiera de las empresas a través de la orientación al cliente y el establecimiento de relaciones gana-gana a largo plazo con las diferentes comunidades con las que se relaciona la organización.

Utilidad de las relaciones estratégicas comunitarias y el marketing en la administración de negocios con clientes corporativos

Este trabajo de grado propone identificar la utilidad de las relaciones estratégicas comunitarias y el marketing en la administración de negocios con clientes corporativos, también se toman en cuenta conceptos como el marketing organizacional y relacional, estos conceptos ayudan en la investigación a determinar relaciones estratégicas entre las empresas, y el beneficio que estas le generan a las corporaciones; para así fomentar la implementación de estas estrategias en a las empresas a nivel nacional e internacional, así mismo, identificar el concepto de comunidad que tienen los clientes corporativos y como este concepto se puede adaptar al entorno que los rodea. Con el fin de entender las funciones y características de un cliente corporativo, así como su comportamiento, los objetivos específicos de la investigación son describir las estrategias de marketing en la administración de negocios con clientes corporativos, determinar si existe el concepto de comunidad en la administración de negocios con clientes corporativos y determinar si se utilizan relaciones estratégicas comunitarias en la administración de negocios con clientes corporativos. La metodología que se planteó usar fue teórica-conceptual, teniendo en cuenta el marketing y las relaciones estratégicas comunitarias de los clientes corporativos. Llevando la investigación al ámbito de la gerencia y dirección, los resultados que se obtuvieron gracias a la investigación, ayudaran a potenciar la dirección de las empresas, donde se evalué la verdadera utilidad de las estrategias basadas en las relaciones comunitarias y marketing en los negocios con clientes corporativos. Las estrategias comunitarias y el marketing influencian de manera directa las relaciones de las compañias con sus clientes corporativos, debido a que marketing nos permite extender la relación y generar una utilidad a futuro entre ambas partes. De la investigación se concluye que las empresas que logran crear estrategias comunitarias y relaciones estrechas entre ellas, tienden a tener mejores utilidades en el largo plazo y ser empresas más sostenibles.

Customer-focused CRM: a marketing challenge for organizations

The article explains that CRM is all about building longterm business relationships with customers. It is best described as the blending of internal business processes: sales, marketing and customer support with technology. Research indicates that poor project planning, weak and
incomplete business cases, cost and complexity of the technology, lack of.technological skills, lack of system integration and lack of senior management involvement in the CRM process are among the many factors that inhibit the successful adoption ofCRM in companies. The article presents a framework for customer centric CRM.

Marketing research performance and strategy

Purpose - To investigate whether strategic orientation affects the evaluation of specific market research projects in for-profit firms.
Design/methodology/approach - A small-scale follow-up survey was conducted, building on qualitative and quantitative research among a sample of the top-1,000 marketing managers in Australia. The study used an existing market research evaluation tool, the USER scale and items generated from the qualitative research, to investigate the firm's most recent market research project.
Findings - Four market research performance factors were identified - market research as a knowledge enhancing (KE) function, the internal political use of market research, the misuse of market research and the generation of market understanding. The Miles and Snow strategy types were related to these factors, with Prospector types more likely to use market research rationally and less likely to use it for internal political purposes. Tactical projects were more likely to be misused than were those with a strategic orientation. Prospectors were far less likely and analysers far more likely to misuse tactical research projects. Prospectors were more often satisfied with the performance of their most recent market research. The Porter typology was less successful in predicting market research performance.
Research limitations/implications - The study was based on a small sample of market research projects in Australian for-profit firms. Future studies need to study these phenomena more intensively using ethnographic methods and more extensively using larger multi-country samples.
Practical implications - Market research suppliers should learn the nature of their client's strategic intent to improve their effectiveness. Defender firms should carefully monitor the use of market research, especially that of a tactical nature, which may be wasted or misused.
Originality/value - Contributes to an understanding of how strategic orientation relates to the ways market research information is used within the firm.

Career orientations of marketing employees : an empirical analysis

There is a distinct gap in research in marketing in relation to understanding the role of marketing employees in organisational marketing performance, in contrast to the usual focus on identifying the contribution of successfully completing marketing tasks in the pursuit of organisational marketing objectives. The major exception to this has been research related to sales personnel, as a subset of all marketing personnel, but even this has usually been from a sales management perspective and not principally from the viewpoint of individual employees. The current study explored the career orientations of marketing employees in relation to the demographic profile and other work-related characteristics of marketing employees. Operationalised by Schein's (1990) Career Orientations Inventory, the 'internal career' of 78 marketing employees at the Australian headquarters of a major multinational manufacturing firm was examined. Sample means indicated that 'Lifestyle', 'Technical Functionality', and 'Pure Challenge' were the dominant career orientations, but a 'General Managerial' orientation also emerged as important, when individual 'Career Anchors' were examined. An 'Entrepreneurial' anchor was found to be the least dominant of the eight anchors measured, which may be seen as somewhat surprising for Marketing employees. Significant relationships were found between some demographic variables and the dominant career orientations, but overall, career orientation tended to be unrelated to the demographic variables. Future research will examine the relationships between employee career orientation and individual position, and marketing productivity.

Differences in the role of market research and internal CRM according to strategy type

The traditional or conventional role of market research is one of enabling marketing managers to make informed decisions about key strategic issues and likewise reduce chances of poor strategic decisions. (Hamlin, 2000; Raguragavan et al., 2000) Yet recent literature suggests marketing research is becoming marginalized in supporting strategic decisionmaking. (Weber, 2001) In addition internal CRM is emerging as a viable source of aggregated customer intelligence (Malhotra and Peterson, 2001). Very few studies have explored the contingent role business strategy may have in explaining either the changing role of market research or the emergence of internal CRM systems. This study involved a cross-industry postal survey of 240 Australian marketing managers. One contribution of this study was to find market research having a greater role in supporting productivity and political outcomes for Prospector strategies when compared to both Defender and Analyzer strategies. The findings also showed Prospector strategies to have more sophisticated internal CRM systems than Defender strategies.

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.

Marketing planning and business performance : an empirical study of large Australian organisations

The marketing planning process is said to influence organisational performance. This influence is realised through the adoption of a focused approach aimed at achieving specific marketing objectives, which motivates the adaptation of the internal capabilities of an organisation in facilitating an effective implementation. This study investigated the association of formal marketing planning with business performance. The results showed that marketing planning has a stronger, positive relationship with market share, than with the overall financial performance of the organisation. The study also compared the associations of marketing planning and market orientation variables with the performance measures. The results indicated that the two variables associate at about the same magnitude with market share and the overall financial performance.

Marketing information sources and the performance of Australian businesses

This study investigated the various sources of information used by business organisations and their association with business performance indicators. The results showed that larger Australian companies predominantly used various internal and external secondary data sources of information, followed by formal primary marketing research. The study indicated an association between market share and the use of competitors, advertising agencies, and sales promotion agencies as sources of information, while overall financial performance was associated with the use of competitors and media/trade publications.

The biotechnology and marketing interface : functional integration using mechanistic and holographic responses to environmental turbulence

This paper serves to specify and ground research into interfunctional integration in a wider theoretical context with particular reference to the interaction between technology and marketing in the biotechnology sphere. The general and specific problem areas are specified as those of interfunctional relations and the dyadic relationship between marketing and biotechnical managerial functions in particular. The contextual/organisational generative mechanisms that are likely to keep interfunctional relations at the centre of scholarly attention for some time are explored from the perspective of cybernetic theory. The law of requisite variety states that in an effective open system environmental variety is matched by internal structural variety. As organisations are faced with ever more turbulent, and complex environments, this must be matched by an increased internal complexity within the organisation. The two modes of response, namely holographic and mechanistic, both highlight the need to further our understanding of interfunctional differences. Having established the problem and its genesis, a specific research agenda is outlined as the exploration of the interfunctional differences from a decision-making perspective.

Consideration of corporate social orientation in managing sport organisations' internal stakeholders

Increasing pressure from the public has raised the expectations on corporations to be better citizens of their communities and society as a whole (Bennet 2002; Carroll 1999; Epstein 1989; Van Marrewijk 2003; Wood 1991). As a result, corporations have engaged in corporate social responsibility efforts with most of the subsequent research focused on its impact on consumer response (e.g., attitudes, behaviours, etc.) (Bhattacharya & Sen 2001, 2004; Porter & Kramer 2002). Similarly, research interest on corporate social responsibility in the sport industry has risen, yet no research studies have explored the influence and perceptions about corporate social responsibility of important internal constituents (employees and volunteers) of sport organisations. Particular interest would be in uncovering what employees and volunteers specifically believe are important among CSR elements (ethical, discretionary, legal, economic) and what impact a sense of 'shared CSR values' with the respective sport organisation would have on employee and volunteer response. Will understanding how shared social values influence organisational commitment provide insight on recruitment, retention and/or development strategies of employees and volunteers? Further, assessing any difference in sensemaking between these two groups would be of additional value to this line of enquiry, as the perceptions of the organisation are understood as "tantamount to reality, since organisations are social constructions made up of and acting in accordance with shared perceptions," (Brickson 2007, p. 865) particularly those of employees and volunteers of sport organisations. With increasing academic and industry interest of corporate social responsibility in sport and to address the obvious gap on CSR and employees and volunteers in the literature, the present study will explore how CSR impacts internal constituents (employees and volunteers) of sport organisations. Specifically, the main purpose of the present study is to assess the level of perceived shared values as they related to CSR (measured as corporate social orientation) between employees- organisation and volunteers- organisation. Further, the influence of the level of perceived shared corporate social orientation (CSO) on organisational identification will be evaluated in the context of a proposed model, which includes the relationship of perceived shared corporate social orientation>organisational identification> attitudinal and behavioural outcomes (i.e., commitment, satisfaction, and organisational behaviour). Using a sample of employees and volunteers of a sport organisation, the respondents will be asked to complete an online survey composed of demographic items, the corporate social orientation scale, and items that measure organisational identification, value commitment, job/ volunteer satisfaction, and organisational citizenship behaviours. Discussion of how other stakeholder (e.g., sponsors, consumers, etc.) perceptions on CSR potentially impacts the model and outcomes (e.g., corporate reputation, consumer behaviour) will be addressed. Analyses and results will support discussion and conclusions made to provide evidence for practitioner and researcher implications.

A model of cause-related marketing for profit-driven and non-profit organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a model of cause-related marketing (CRM) for both profit-driven (PD) and non-profit (NP) organizations.
Design/methodology/approach – The model consists of two parallel internal and external organizational processes – one representing the process of a NP organization and the other a PD organization. They are interlinked as the outcome of a CRM-partnership is dependent upon their mutual efforts.
Findings – The authors argue that it is essential to remember that a CRM-partnership is a challenge and risk for both the PD and NP organizations that may harm their reputation and position in the marketplace and/or society. CRM has benefits as well as downsides that should not be underestimated nor neglected.
Research limitations/implications – Will the involvement of the PD or NP organizations in the resultant partnership be perceived as commercialism, altruism or a combination of both, in the marketplace and society? A focus on both processes opens up opportunities for further research.
Practical implications – A contribution is that the CRM-model may be used as a guide for both PD and NP organizations in order to reveal whether a CRM-partnership is appropriate for them with a potential partner or not. It may also indicate whether the motives are based upon commercial reasons or altruistic reasons or a combination of both.
Originality/value – The model enables these organizations to think through the process prior to engaging in CRM.