James M. Hulbert

To Serve or Create? Strategic Orientations toward Customers and Innovation:

This article reviews a central tension in management—the relationship between customers and innovation. It explores the contrast between serving and creating customers and examines the sometimes uneasy relationship between an innovation orientation and a customer orientation. From this discussion, the article develops a model that provides an inclusive paradigm of the different strategies that firms have used to resolve the tension and explores the dynamics of the change process for several well-known companies. It concludes by developing the managerial implications of the model, with a particular emphasis on how new technology is changing the desirability of alternative strategies.

Innovation or customer orientation? An empirical investigation

This paper explores the contrast between marketing and innovation orientations and develops a model that provides an inclusive paradigm. The resulting archetypes and their inter‐relationships are discussed. A measurement scale, ICON, is developed to assess the extent to which a firm or a business corresponds to the resulting archetypes. An empirical test of reliability and validity resulted in four clearly defined factors that correspond to the archetypes in the model. A refined version of the scale is then used to examine the relationship between the strategic archetypes and firm performance.

Elegy on the death of marketing

Considers the past, present and future of marketing. Whimsically but not without seriousness, concludes that marketing faces something of a Y2K problem. Indeed, as the next millennium begins, concludes that, though the marketing concept may survive, the marketing function itself is dead. Nonetheless, cautions against the concomitant extermination of marketing scholars.

Decision systems analysis in industrial marketing

With so many mathematically bowdlerized, and computerized, versions of the application of systems analysis abroad it is a pleasure to welcome this purely descriptive account of the application of decision system analysis (DSA) to four marketing decision systems. Professors Capon and Hulbert describe the application of DSA to pricing, forecasting, advertising and new product development that they carried out with the cooperation of a large, multinational, British firm specialized in the marketing of processed raw materials to secondary processors. From their experience the authors conclude that the application of DSA to key marketing decisions yielded considerable insight into the problems faced by the company; and that the majority of problems identified were amenable to managerial solutions without formal information system development. DSA is recommended as a means of auditing marketing activity but the reader is warned that DSA can be labour intensive and expensive if there is a tendency to seek too much unnecessary detail.

Brand custodianship:: A new primer for senior managers

Traditionally the management of brands has been entrusted to middle management. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that brands are of such critical strategic importance, that they are more appropriately placed under the direct responsibility of senior management. Indeed, we believe that senior managers should act as brand custodians. For this new responsibility, senior managers need integrative overviews of brands and their management. In this paper, we examine the functions that brands perform, the consequent values they generate, and delineate the critical dimensions that need to be managed. The contribution of the article is twofold. First, it offers senior managers a series of integrative frameworks to facilitate thinking about and managing brands. Second, the traditionally unitary constructs of brand function and brand equity are disaggregated into function and equity for two different sets of stakeholders, namely buyers and sellers.

Consuming Technology: Why Marketers Sometimes Get It Wrong

Marketing tends to view technology as a means to meeting customer needs and desires. This view has led some marketers to focus perhaps too exclusively on the customer to the detriment of a deep understanding of technology and its interaction with society. Drawing on the ideas of the philosophers Heidegger and Popper, this article contends that technology is more than a means to the end of satisfying consumer needs and wants, it is an active force which frequently escapes the control of the marketer. The article explores the ways in which technologies, firms, customers, and society interact, and it suggests how firms might adopt different strategies towards technology to take advantage of these emergent interactions.

Organizational analysis and information-systems design: A decision-process perspective

Abstract Acquiring relevant information, processing it sensibly and acting rationally on the results is central to proper functioning at all management levels of an organization. To improve these capabilities is a major concern of developers of management information systems, yet a growing consensus indicates that it is infeasible to initiate system development by modeling a total organizations information system. Thus, many systems designers— drawn less from the ranks of technologists than of experienced managers—have scaled down aspirations, and are thinking of parts of an organization rather than of the whole. This change of philosophy has emerged most clearly in marketing, where Chambers comments that “attempts to construct large scale models in marketing have generally resulted in failure… the management scientist has now recognized that it is usually better to begin by solving smaller segments of the total problem” [9]. Failure of systems designers to adapt their efforts to the structure of the organization and to the people in it also has impeded successful development of information systems. Researchers and managers long have recognized the necessity for such adaptation [25, p/ 483] and also have been concerned by other behavioral problems raised by information systems [25, 3]. This study presents a structure for development of “partial” information systems in their organizational context. It utilizes a growing body of empirical knowledge—drawn mainly from marketing—to help analyze organizations in terms of operational guidelines for the development of information systems.

In search of relevance and rigour for research in marketing

There is concern that academic research in marketing does not sufficiently support firms confronting todays hostile business conditions. This paper offers a perspective on enhancing the relevance and rigour of research in marketing. It takes the view that rigorous research conducted on issues relevant to practising managers is especially valuable for the marketing disciplines future development and status. Emphasis is placed on identifying a number of “hot” topics worthy of future investigation, accomplished by a brainstorming workshop involving a large number of distinguished marketing professors. Areas identified were global marketing strategy, consumer behaviour and marketing strategy. It is hoped that the identification and discussion of these topics will spark greater research on fundamental marketing issues, and that the allied explication of research rigour will likewise enhance the efficacy of research in marketing.

Beyond market orientation: A conceptualization of market evolution

Abstract The authors develop a comprehensive conceptualization of market evolution. Toward this end, they take an information-processing perspective on the problem, integrating this outlook with an evolutionary view of market development. Four stages of product-market development are identified in a parsimonious conceptual framework that subsumes a number of existing approaches. The authors then examine the possible future trajectory of the information economy by extending the framework to address what many have alleged is a discontinuity emerging from the forthcoming availability of ubiquitous information accessibility via the World Wide Web. The authors conclude that—as we enter the next millennium—marketing stands, labile at the cusp of another major shift, one that will lead to questioning many of the assumptions on which traditional marketing organizations have been built.

In Search of Excellence Ten Years Later: Strategy and Organisation Do Matter

The Peters and Waterman framework of eight management principles, focused largely on organisational design issues, is used to examine differences between 19 “excellent” and 50 “non‐excellent” firms. Data from large United States manufacturers show that the “excellent” companies earn higher returns on capital, have less variable returns and are more innovative. They also tend to operate businesses which emphasise high value‐adding activities further downstream, closer to the final market. Twenty‐two measured items associated with the eight Peters and Waterman principles differ systematically between the “excellent” and “non‐excellent” firms. In addition, 13 measures associated more directly with strategy also differ systematically. High investment in R&D, a strong international posture, and strong market positions provide an alternative explanation to the Peters and Waterman principles for good profit and innovation performance by the “excellent” firms, thus reinforcing the need to better understand indust...