Gregory J. Whitwell

Schools of Thought in Organizational Learning

This article attempts to bring coherence to the diversity that characterizes organizational learning research. It argues that organizational learning is embedded in four schools of thought: an economic school, a managerial school, a developmental school, and a process school. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the schools, describes how they differ from each other, and outlines how each of them can be employed effectively. To demonstrate the benefits of theoretical plurality, the four schools are applied to the key marketing topics of market orientation and new product development. Implications for future research in marketing are provided.

Country-of-origin contingencies Competing perspectives on product familiarity and product involvement

Purpose – This study was undertaken to clarify how product familiarity and product involvement can moderate the importance that consumers place on COO image when they evaluate products for purchase or consumption. The authors adopted a contingency approach and empirically examined, by way of competing hypotheses, the alternative possibilities by which product familiarity and product involvement may influence the importance that consumers place on COO image when they evaluate products.Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered from 388 consumers in Australia across four different product classes. Data analysis was conducted using hierarchical regression analysis with interactions and post hoc slope analysis.Findings – Overall, the study findings suggest that the importance that consumers place on COO image when they evaluate products is contingent on the product context. Specifically, the study findings show that consumers consider COO image to be more important for their product evaluations when the...

Buyer satisfaction with relational exchange across the relationship lifecycle

Purpose – This paper aims to explore how relational constructs (total interdependence, trust, commitment, cooperative norms and conflict) impact the buyers relationship satisfaction across the relationship lifecycle.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through mail survey from a sample of 162 Australian buyers. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to purify the measurement scales and multiple regression analysis techniques using dummy variables were used to test the hypotheses.Findings – The results indicate that interdependence and trust are associated with higher relationship satisfaction in the build‐up and maturity phases while commitment is associated with higher relationship satisfaction in the maturity phase. Unexpectedly, cooperative norms are found to drive relationship satisfaction in both the build‐up and maturity phases. Conflict, however, is not found to affect relationship satisfaction in the decline/deterioration phase.Research limitations/implications – A limitation of this ...

How can a shareholder value approach improve marketing's strategic influence?

Abstract For many marketers, the world of corporate finance, and shareholder value in particular, remains a peripheral issue. Accordingly, marketings influence at the top management and board level continues to languish. A more synergistic marketing–finance relationship, we argue, rests on answers to two questions: What can marketing do for shareholder value; and what can a shareholder value approach do for marketing? Some valuable work on how marketing contributes to shareholder value has been conducted. But marketings failure to incorporate current financial valuation techniques and properly demonstrate its contribution to financial market performance suggests that the latter question remains open. We address this question and set out a framework for understanding the contribution shareholder value can make to marketing. Particular emphasis is placed on the opportunities that arise for marketing from embracing and incorporating shareholder value principles and metrics.

Extending the Vision of Social Marketing through Social Capital Theory: Marketing in the Context of Intricate Exchange and Market Failure

Broadening the conceptual boundaries of marketing in the late 1960s led to a significant paradigm shift. Social marketing emerged under the auspices of this extended concept. It is not surprising, therefore, that social marketers have tended to apply conventional marketing tools, albeit within a vastly different context. Thisarticle argues that social marketers, operating in an environment that is characterized by amplified market failure brought about by externalities, may be ill-equipped to foster change utilizing conventional marketing tools. The article proposes that social capital is a useful and appropriate theory to supplement traditional notions ofmarketing to further enhance the field of social marketing.

Why Do Customers Get More Than They Need? How Organizational Culture Shapes Product Capability Decisions

The capability level of a product that a firm provides to a customer is an important marketing decision. In the extant literature, the normative heuristic for this decision is one of matching—of providing product capability levels that meet customer needs. However, industry evidence suggests that supplier firms routinely make product decisions that lead to “overshot” customers, whereby customers receive products with capabilities that exceed their requirements. The authors demonstrate how a supplier firms organizational culture can cause overshooting scenarios and how these effects can be attenuated to the extent that the focal firms basic values also reflect a customer orientation.

Power and marketing

This paper argues that research on power has suffered from fragmentation and limited convergence, and that the application of power theory in marketing has been limited to a very small number of areas. In order to obviate these limitations, and to revive interest in an area that has the potential to make further important contributions to research on marketing strategy, the paper presents a categorisation of the main schools of thought in power research. These are the bureaucratic, critical contingencies, network and psychological perspectives. The paper provides a review of the application of these perspectives in marketing, and concludes with a brief discussion of potential future research areas, including the influence of marketing within the firm and strategic alliances.

Heuristics revisited: implications for marketing research and practice

The marketing literature has devoted limited attention to the nature and scope of heuristics in marketing theory development and in marketing-related decision-making processes. This is of concern because the use of heuristics can profoundly influence managerial choices and, in turn, the ability of firms to compete. The authors analyze heuristics, first in general terms by providing a review of the concept and its mechanics, and then more specifically by exploring the use of heuristics in the discipline of marketing. The market orientation and marketing concept constructs are discussed as examples of marketing tenets that, over time, have been enriched through the incorporation of heuristics. The following findings are derived from the analysis: heuristics signal the maturing of a theoretical concept; heuristics act as a measure of a disciplines impact; heuristics do not exist in isolation; effective heuristics are balanced and established; and effective heuristics evolve and adapt. Overall, the purpose of this study is to improve the understanding of the value of heuristics to marketing theory and practice and to renew research interest into heuristics in a marketing context.

Internal and External Organisational Orientations: Comparing the Resource Based View and Market Orientation

Two methods for attaining organisational success include the exploitation of firm resources by adopting the resource based view (RBV) and the development of a market orientation (MO). The ultimate objective of the RBV is to create superior value for the firm by deploying unique and costly to imitate resource bundles for the purpose of exploiting environmental opportunities and neutralising threats (Barney 1991). The MO of a firm differs from the RBV as its objective to create superior value for customers relative to competition (Narver & Slater 1990).

Manifest conflict, customer orientation and performance outcomes in international buyer-seller relationships

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of manifest conflict on performance outcomes. In particular, this paper aims to examine the moderating effect of the supplier’s customer orientation (CO) as perceived by the buyer on the conflict-performance outcomes relationships in international channel relationships. Design/methodology/approach A survey of 162 Australian importers was conducted to elucidate the associations among manifest conflict, CO and performance outcomes. Findings Manifest conflict was found to be negatively related to the importer’s evaluation of the exporter’s overall performance, which is consistent with previous work. However, CO was found to moderate the negative direct effect of manifest conflict on two outcome measures, “satisfaction with business outcomes” and the “evaluation of the exporter’s overall performance”. Moreover, it actually changed the effect from dysfunctional to functional for “evaluation of the exporter’s overall performance”. That is, CO changes the nature of the manifest conflict–outcome relationship by turning it from negative to positive. Research limitations/implications This research helps answer the appeal for research on the conditions in which conflict causes dysfunctional and functional outcomes. From a practical standpoint, providing the importer views the exporter as being customer-oriented, conflict should not be avoided if it stems from disagreements that arise due to the exporter acting in the best interests of the importer. The power of CO in affecting the functionality of outcomes resulting from conflict should be highlighted. Originality/value Conflict is a fact of life in channel relationships, but little is known about its functional and dysfunctional effects (Frazier, 1999; Skarmeas, 2006). The empirical evidence largely points to conflict being dysfunctional; however, research also indicates that context can play an important role in moderating the functionality of conflict. In this paper the authors ask: what role does CO play as a determinant of the functionality of manifest conflict in channel relationships? They argue that the exporter’s CO changes the context in which the importer and the exporter interact and, thereby, changes the way in which the importer interprets the supplier’s actions.