Graham R. Massey

Antecedents of conflict in marketing's cross‐functional relationship with sales

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model of the factors that explain the level of interpersonal conflict between marketing managers and sales managers. The paper aims to establish the overall level of interpersonal conflict in the full sample and in the two sampled countries (UK and Australia).Design/methodology/approach – The study draws on two theoretical frameworks to develop the model, namely structural contingency theory and the interaction approach. More specifically, the conceptual framework uses three groups of variables to explain interpersonal conflict: structural, individual, and communication. Importantly, the study developed and tested nine hypotheses. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the validity of the measures while OLS regression was used in testing the hypotheses. The data were collected from 200 sales managers in the UK and Australia.Findings – Overall, the study finds that there was a surprisingly low level of interpersonal conflict between market...

Personal characteristics, trust, conflict, and effectiveness in marketing/sales working relationships

Purpose – The key objective of this research is to test how two trust dimensions (cognition‐based trust and affect‐based trust) mediate the effects of three personal characteristics (psychological distance, the marketing managers sales experience, and the marketing managers relative level of formal education) on the following outcome variables: dysfunctional conflict, functional conflict, and perceived relationship effectiveness.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the interaction approach, the paper develops a conceptual framework to better understand the nature of the working relationship between marketing managers and sales managers. In total, it develops and test 13 hypotheses. Partial least squares was used to assess the validity of the measures, and to estimate the structural model. Using a cross‐sectional design, data were collected from 101 marketing managers in Australia.Findings – The hypothesized model has high explanatory power and it was found that both trust dimensions strongly affecte...

A study of relationship effectiveness between marketing and sales managers in business markets

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a structural model of the factors that explain the level of perceived relationship effectiveness between marketing managers and sales managers.Design/methodology/approach – The model integrates trust‐based and power/influence/interdependence‐based models of relationship effectiveness. The data were collected from 113 sales managers in the UK and Australia. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the validity of the measures, while AMOS Version 4 was employed to estimate the model using structural equation modelling with observed variables.Findings – The study found, on average, that the perceived level of relationship effectiveness between sales managers and marketing managers is surprisingly high. The findings clearly demonstrate the potency of interpersonal trust (both cognition‐based and affect‐based) in building effective cross‐functional relationships (CFRs) and also show how interdependence affects both dimensions of trust and the mark...

Marketing to different Asian communities: The importance of culture for framing advertising messages, and for purchase intent

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that culture has differential effects on purchase intent, using respondents from four very different cultural groups within Indonesia, and two different advertisements (one ethical, another unethical). Design/methodology/approach – The study uses survey methods and a highly structured questionnaire to collect data from respondents in four cultural groups. In total, 100 responses were received from each of these groups within Indonesia (Bali, Batak, Java, and Minang). Data were analyzed using partial least squares. Findings – The results suggest that when advertising to culturally conservative groups, caution is required. Such groups have lower purchase intent when they do not like the advertisement. Moreover, other variables such as attitude towards the advertiser may become salient drivers of purchase intent for such groups if the advertisement is perceived to be unethical. Importantly, neither of these factors are salient for more permissive cultures, regar...

Friend or foe? The effects of managerial politics on NPD team communication, collaboration and project success

Much existing work on new product development (NPD) team integration takes an economically rational perspective, specifying appropriate systems, structures and interactions. Few studies however have explored the effects of politics on working relationships between technically trained managers (TTMs; e.g., research and development managers) and marketing managers (MMs) during NPD. Our results reveal that intra‐team politics has positive and negative effects on TTM/MM communication. This is important because communication positively influences collaboration and NPD success. Moreover, the effects of communication variables on these two outcome variables differ depending on whether one is a TTM or MM.