George S. Day

A Two-Dimensional Concept of Brand Loyalty

Development of a two-dimensional brand loyalty concept compared to a purely behavioral definition.

Managing market relationships

The ability of a firm to create and maintain relationships with their most valuable customers is a durable basis for a competitive advantage. To keep this edge over rivals, who continually try to attract these customers away, a firm has to master the three elements of a market-relating capability. First, a relationship orientation must pervade the mind-set, values, and norms of the organization. Second, the firm must keep deepening its knowledge of these customers and putting it to work throughout the organization. Third, the key processes must be internally integrated and externally aligned with the corresponding processes of the firms customers.

Continuous Learning About Markets

Market-driven firms stand out in their ability to continuously anticipate market opportunities and respond before their competitors. The market learning processes in these firms are distinguished by: open-minded inquiry based on the belief that all decisions are made from the market back; widespread information distribution that assures that relevant facts are available when needed; mutually informed mental models that guide interpretation and ensure that everyone pays attention to the essence and potential of the information; and an accessible memory of what has been learned. However, mastery of all the steps in the learning process is rare. Most firms suffer disabilities at one or more stages. Overcoming these learning disabilities and enhancing market learning competency is an important management challenge.

Charting New Directions for Marketing

Four fundamental issues serve to establish the identity of the field of marketing, distinguish it from other fields and disciplines, and compel further research inquiry. These issues ask (1) How do...

Closing the Marketing Capabilities Gap

Marketers are being challenged by a deluge of data that is well beyond the capacity of their organizations to comprehend and use. Their strategies are not keeping up with the disruptive effects of technology-empowered customers; the proliferation of media, channel, and customer contact points; or the possibilities for microsegmentation. Closing the widening gap between the accelerating complexity of their markets and the limited ability of their organizations to respond demands new thinking about marketing capabilities. Three adaptive capabilities are needed: (1) Vigilant market learning that enhances deep market insights with an advance warning system to anticipate market changes and unmet needs, (2) adaptive market experimentation that continuously learns from experiments, and (3) open marketing that forges relationships with those at the forefront of new media and social networking technologies and mobilizes the skills of current partners. The benefits of these adaptive capabilities will only be realized in organizations that are more resilient and free-flowing, with vigilant leadership and more adaptive business models.

Customer-Oriented Approaches to Identifying Product-Markets

The need to identify the boundaries of increasingly complex product-markets has spawned a number of analytical methods based on customer behavior or judgments. The various methods are compared and ...

The path to customer centricity

The concept of customer centricity and its benefits have been discussed for more than 50 years. Despite this fact, many firms are still struggling to fully align themselves to the customer-centric paradigm. This article identifies fundamental issues and challenges that typically deter a firm from becoming customer-centric. These are mainly related to the organizational culture, structure, processes, and financial metrics of the firm. To overcome these barriers, the article suggests a path to customer centricity that is driven by a strong leadership commitment, organizational realignment, systems and process support, and revised financial metrics. The article concludes with directions for further research.

Diagnosing the Experience Curve

Few strategy concepts are more likely to give misleading insights than the experience curve. As a result there is considerable disenchantment with the simplistic market share prescriptions that mar...

Invited Commentaries on "Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing"

In the preceding article, Vargo and Lusch (V&L; 2004) observe that an evolution is underway toward a new dominant logic for marketing. The new dominant logic has important implications for marketing theory, practice, and pedagogy, as well as for general management and public policy. Thus, their observations are likely to resonate with a broad cross-section of the business community. With the goal of stimulating discussion and debate, I invited some distinguished scholars to write brief commentaries on different aspects of V&Ls article. I was delighted to receive a thoughtful and diverse set of comments. The ideas expressed in the article and the commentaries will undoubtedly provoke a variety of reactions from readers of Journal of Marketing. I hope you will enjoy reading, and thinking, about these scholars’ views on the fundamental premises of marketing as much as I did.

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Emerging Technologies

Despite their superior resources, incumbents have a poor track record in developing and managing emerging technologies. Established firms are prone to delay participation and stick with the familiar too long. Even if these pitfalls are sidestepped, incumbents are often unwilling to make a full-fledged commitment and find it difficult to persist in the face of uncertainty and adversity. Some established firms have been able to avoid these pitfalls by: attending closely to signals from the periphery of their markets; investing in a learning capacity so there is a diversity of viewpoints that challenge prevailing mind-sets and myopic views of new ventures; maintaining their flexibility by adopting a real options perspective, which lets the firm make informed investments when the time is right; and organizationally separating the fledging initiative pursuing the emerging technology from the mainstream activities.