Harley Krohmer

Marketing's influence within the firm

Although there is increased interest in marketings changing role within the firm, there is little empirical research that measures the influence of marketing or links marketings role to situation...

Emotional Brand Attachment and Brand Personality: The Relative Importance of the Actual and the Ideal Self

Creating emotional brand attachment is a key branding issue in todays marketing world. One way to accomplish this is to match the brands personality with the consumers self. A key question, however, is whether the brands personality should match the consumers actual self or the consumers ideal self. On the basis of two empirical studies of 167 brands (evaluated by 1329 and 980 consumers), the authors show that the implications of self-congruence for consumers’ emotional brand attachment are complex and differ by consumers’ product involvement, consumers’ individual difference variables, and the type of self-congruence (fit of the brands personality with the consumers actual self versus with the consumers ideal self). On a general level, actual self-congruence has the greatest impact on emotional brand attachment. Product involvement, self-esteem, and public self-consciousness increase the positive impact of actual self-congruence but decrease the impact of ideal self-congruence on emotional brand attachment. The authors discuss important managerial and academic implications of these findings.

Strategic Consensus and Performance: The Role of Strategy Type and Market-Related Dynamism

Our research examines the relationship between consensus on the type of SBU-level strategy among senior marketing and R&D-managers and organizational performance for a sample of 101 US and German SBUs in three industry sectors: consumer packaged goods, electrical equipment and components, and mechanical machinery.

How Should Consumers' Willingness to Pay Be Measured? An Empirical Comparison of State-of-the-Art Approaches

This study compares the performance of four commonly used approaches to measure consumers’ willingness to pay with real purchase data (REAL): the open-ended (OE) question format; choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis; Becker, DeGroot, and Marschaks (BDM) incentive-compatible mechanism; and incentive-aligned choice-based conjoint (ICBC) analysis. With this five-in-one approach, the authors test the relative strengths of the four measurement methods, using REAL as the benchmark, on the basis of statistical criteria and decision-relevant metrics. The results indicate that the BDM and ICBC approaches can pass statistical and decision-oriented tests. The authors find that respondents are more price sensitive in incentive-aligned settings than in non-incentive-aligned settings and the REAL setting. Furthermore, they find a large number of “none” choices under ICBC than under hypothetical conjoint analysis. This study uncovers an intriguing possibility: Even when the OE format and CBC analysis generate hypothetical bias, they may still lead to the right demand curves and right pricing decisions.

Configurations of Marketing and Sales: A Taxonomy

Little is known about the interface between separate marketing units and sales units. This article develops a multidimensional model of the marketing and sales interface. The model integrates a broad range of conceptual domains, including information sharing, structural linkages, power, orientations, and knowledge of marketing and sales. The authors empirically explore the conceptual model through a cross-industry study of 337 European Union–based companies. They identify five empirical archetypes of the marketing and sales interface. The taxonomy shows that the role and characteristics of marketing and sales vary a great deal. This finding challenges existing stereotypes about marketing and sales. Finally, the article explores organizational outcomes of the five configurations. The findings suggest that the most successful configurations are characterized by strong structural linkages between marketing and sales and a high extent of market knowledge in marketing.

A Strategy Implementation Perspective of Market Orientation

The authors conceptually and empirically explore the role of market orientation in the context of strategy implementation. Specifically, market orientation plays a key role for the successful implementation of a premium product differentiation (PPD) strategy. This result is based on the empirical findings from an international study that shows the performance effect of a PPD strategy is to a significant extent mediated through the construct of market orientation. Implications for future research and managerial practice are discussed.

Should Marketing be Cross-Functional? : Conceptual Development and International Empirical Evidence

While it has frequently been stated that decisions on marketing activities should be made cross-functionally, there is no empirical evidence that shows benefits of performing marketing activities in this way. This paper examines the link between the cross-functional dispersion of influence on marketing activities and performance at the SBU level and considers dynamism of the market, which may moderate the strength of this relationship. Using data from a cross-national study in three industry sectors, the authors find that cross-functional dispersion of influence on marketing activities increases the performance of the SBU. They also find that the relationship between the cross-functional dispersion of influence on marketing activities is negatively influenced by dynamism of the market. This research thus provides empirical evidence for the positive performance implications of cross-functional interaction in the context of marketing activities. D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Customer Satisfaction in Transnational Buyer-Supplier Relationships

This study analyzes customer satisfaction in buyer–supplier relationships across national boundaries (transnational business relationships) with manufacturing firms on both sides of the dyad. The analysis is based on data from 511 industrial customers from the United States and Germany, 201 of which reported on a transnational relationship. The results indicate that quality and flexibility are important antecedents of customer satisfaction. These antecedents were significantly lower in transnational relationships than in domestic ones. Using equity theory and the confirmation/disconfirmation paradigm, the authors develop alternative models for describing the relationships between customer satisfaction and its antecedents in transnational as opposed to domestic relationships. The findings reveal that there are no structural differences between transnational and domestic relationships regarding the relationships between customer satisfaction and its antecedents. Specifically, a lower level of customer satisfaction in transnational relationships is due to lower levels of the antecedents and does not constitute an effect of transnationality per se.

Governance of International Business Relationships: A Cross-Cultural Study on Alternative Governance Modes

The authors examine the effects of both transnationality (cross-border versus domestic exchange) and national culture (U.S. versus German buyers) on the use of three primary modes of governance: (1) the market mechanism, (2) trust, and (3) formal contracts. Drawing on theory, the authors develop a series of hypotheses. Then, they test the model on a sample of more than 500 buyer–supplier relationships. The results show that transnationality and culture both affect the choice of governance modes.

When Hostile Consumers Wreak Havoc on Your Brand: The Phenomenon of Consumer Brand Sabotage

In recent years, companies have been confronted with a new type of negative consumer behavior: consumers who have turned hostile and who are strongly determined to cause damage to the brand. Empowered by new technological possibilities, an individual consumer can now wreak havoc on a brand with relatively little effort. In reflection of this new phenomenon, the authors introduce the concept of consumer brand sabotage (CBS). On the basis of different underlying motives, a conceptual framework distinguishes CBS (a form of hostile aggression: harming the brand as dominant motive) from other forms of negative consumer behavior, such as customer retaliation and negative word of mouth (instrumental aggression: harming a brand is only a means to achieve other objectives, e.g., restoring equity). This framework adapts insights from aggression and appraisal theories as well as qualitative interviews with actual saboteurs to a consumer–brand relationship context in order to develop an improved theoretical understanding of the under-researched phenomenon of CBS. The authors analyze the mental escalation processes of individual consumers toward CBS and develop a road map for future research.