Integrating online communities within business-to-business marketing communications: an exploratory study

© 2015 Taylor & Francis The article provides a conceptual contribution by developing a framework for business-to-business (B2B) marketers seeking to implement online communities (OLCs). Furthermore, the conceptual contribution is augmented by a small-scale exploratory study comprising in-depth interviews with B2B chief marketing officers (CMOs). The findings challenge existing thinking that B2B marketers can follow generic marketing communication frameworks. This is due to the differences in B2B OLCs in terms of multiple stakeholders and two-way information flows and differences in buyer behaviour. For researchers, the contribution is an embryonic model that will facilitate future conceptual development as well as empirical testing through a series of research propositions. A sequential decision-making framework, which identifies key implementation challenges, is provided for B2B managers.

Digital loyalty card 'Big Data' and small business marketing: Formal versus informal or complementary?

This article proposes that a complementary relationship exists between the formalised nature of digital loyalty card data, and the informal nature of small business market orientation. A longitudinal, case-based research approach analysed this relationship in small firms given access to Tesco Clubcard data. The findings reveal a new-found structure and precision in small firm marketing planning from data exposure; this complemented rather than conflicted with an intuitive feel for markets. In addition, small firm owners were encouraged to include employees in marketing planning.

Silent Communication - A Challenge to Established Marketing Communication Practice

Purpose The paper examines the concept of silent communication and its implications in marketing communication. It defines silent communication and proposes an analytic framework enabling an expanded view of marketing communication. Design/methodology/approach By explicitly adopting a customer-oriented perspective, combined with insights from service marketing and relationship communication, the paper extends current models of marketing communication. Findings The paper identifies different types of silent communication and presents new perspectives on marketing communication. The authors outline a framework for understanding how the company can/cannot control different forms of marketing communication and discuss the implications of this. Research implications/limitations The paper concentrates on a conceptual analysis, offering a number of empirical illustrations. The conceptual development creates new research issues that should lead to a deeper understanding of customers’ meaning creation, actions and reactions. Practical implications Silent communication constitutes a managerial challenge as it is often invisible to the management. The paper points to the need to develop methods to reveal the effects of silent communication as well as create guidelines for managerially handling silent communication. Originality/value The customer-based perspective and the focus on silent communication provide a completely new approach to analysing and understanding marketing communication. The paper contributes to service marketing and marketing communication research by introducing conceptualisations of silent communication that have an interest for both academic research and practitioners.

A strategic approach to target marketing-choosing the preferred generic customer : a model of shareholder value performance

In recent years the contribution of the marketing function has changed and interest now centres on its contribution to a firm’s financial performance. The Marketing Science Institute in the USA has stated that it is the number one marketing issue facing corporate America. The Australian Marketing Institute is promoting a set of marketing metrics that will help Australian firms measure the function’s contribution to shareholder value creation. Much of the literature relates notions such as customer satisfaction and other marketing activities with a firm’s profit. A missing link appears to be the choice firms make in terms of which customer groups to target and the resultant impact on shareholder value performance. The generic customer groups comprise: existing customers, former customers and prospects. A review of the literature reveals that marketing costs and benefits vary across these groups. The challenge for management is to determine which group represents the best target and to allocate scarce marketing resources accordingly. The task is made even more challenging because the economic value of members within each group also varies and some product lines may be unprofitable and therefore, may not be worth pursuing. To generate superior shareholder value it may not simply be the case of acquiring the maximum number of new customers from any source but to find the appropriate mix of the generic customer groups and manage the individual customer relationships accordingly. This paper seeks to firstly summarise and review the recent literature on marketing and its relationship to shareholder value and secondly to propose a model for allocating marketing resources across generic customer groups in order to generate improved shareholder value performance. Importantly, the model not only covers increasing business with customers but also shedding customers or shedding the extent of business conducted with customers as means of generating shareholder value.

Business marketing : text and cases

Produced for undergraduate unit MMK368 (Business marketing) offered by the Faculty of Business and Law's Bowater School of Management and Marketing in Deakin University's flexible learning program.

A business marketing identitása - elméleti, kutatási trendek, az innovációvezérelt modell

A business marketing mint a marketingtudomány jellegzetes alkalmazási területe határozott szakmai, elméleti fejlődési utat járt be az elmúlt évtizedekben. Jelen tanulmány – a tudományos identitás jegyeit keresve – felvillantja az industrial, a business marketing történetének fő állomásait, diszciplináris alapjait, a meghatározó elméleti megközelítéseket és az aktuális kutatási kérdéseket, trendeket. A tanulmány második része, az egyik meghatározó kutatási kérdést, az innovációorientáltságot vizsgálja. Az elméleti modellek és a szerző többéves, saját kutatási programjának eredményei megerősítik, hogy a business piacokon is az – összehangolt, innovációportfólióra épülő – "innovációs versenyelőnyök" határozzák meg a vállalkozások sikerét, melyet hatékony marketingképességek és -tevékenységek kell, hogy támogassanak.

Business marketing - szervezetközi megközelítésben

A cikk a szervezetközi marketing tartalmi elemeivel foglalkozik. Röviden bemutatja az IMP-kutatócsoport több, mint negyven éves empirikus kutatási eredményeit. Az IMP-megközelítés alapvető elméleti fogalmainak (interakciós folyamat, üzleti kapcsolatok és hálózatok, az üzleti hálózatok paradoxonjai) bemutatást követően kitér a témával foglalkozó magyar kutatók eredményeinek ismertetésére.

Incentive Compatible Influence Maximization in Social Networks with Application to Viral Marketing

Information diffusion and influence maximization are important and extensively studied problems in social networks. Various models and algorithms have been proposed in the literature in the context of the influence maximization problem. A crucial assumption in all these studies is that the influence probabilities are known to the social planner. This assumption is unrealistic since the influence probabilities are usually private information of the individual agents and strategic agents may not reveal them truthfully. Moreover, the influence probabilities could vary significantly with the type of the information flowing in the network and the time at which the information is propagating in the network. In this paper, we use a mechanism design approach to elicit influence probabilities truthfully from the agents. Our main contribution is to design a scoring rule based mechanism in the context of the influencer-influencee model. In particular, we show the incentive compatibility of the mechanisms and propose a reverse weighted scoring rule based mechanism as an appropriate mechanism to use.