Leslie Le Meunier-FitzHugh

How Does Market Orientation Affect Sales and Marketing Collaboration and Business Performance

Studies into the sales and marketing interface have neglected the relationship between market orientation and collaboration between sales and marketing. We found that market intelligence processes and management attitudes towards coordination have positive impacts on market orientation, which then has benefits for collaboration between sales and marketing, and business performance. The sales and marketing interface has attracted considerable attention from researchers, but the relationship between market orientation and the level of collaboration between sales and marketing has not yet been fully explored. This issue is important to help understand how to improve collaboration between sales and marketing. As organizations are competing in increasingly crowded markets with more demanding customers and who are struggling to differentiate their offer from their competitors, the effective operation of the customer-facing interface of sales and marketing is critical in helping to achieve success (e.g. Homburg and Jensen, 2007). The objectives of this study are to help understand the relationship between market orientation and collaboration between sales and marketing; to identify the role of senior management and market intelligence in creating market orientation, and to explore if these variables directly or indirectly impact on business performance. Further, the study aims to contribute to the debate on the sales and marketing interface by bridging gaps found in literature.

Service Dominant Logic – An Example of Competitive Advantage

Value and the concept of value co-creation in marketing networks are growing in importance in providing competitive advantage in increasingly saturated markets. Service-Dominant logic (S-D logic) revolves around the concept that value is always co-created by customers and organizations together (Gronroos, 2006; Vargo and Lusch, 2004; 2008). This study provides a conceptual framework around the topic of co-creation, and identifies customer value creating processes, supplier value creating processes and encounter processes within a single case study of a pharmaceutical organization (called PharmCo for this study). This organization has successfully created its own competitive space, achieving 34% market growth, year-on-year, over a seven-year period. The paper summarizes some of the key conditions of service dominant logic (Ballantyne & Varey, 2007), including value in use, stakeholder interaction, co-creation and the role of integrated networks, the role of the marketer as managing communication, interaction and relationships, between networks of co-operators.

Sales and Marketing, and Customer Relationships: A Structured Abstract

This research investigates the impact of sales and marketing collaboration on the customer’s propensity to purchase and customer value, thereby extending the current research into the sales and marketing interface. Prior research has established that sales departments may fail to support marketing initiatives and that marketing been known to fail to communicate marketing objectives effectively and to exclude sales from decision-making. This lack of coordination may become visible to the customer and consequently influence their relationship with the supplier. We suggest that internal sales and marketing relationships can impact on relationship quality and consequently the customers’ propensity to purchase.

Rewards, Can They be Used to Help the Coordination of Sales and Makreting Activities?

This paper considers the role that rewards play in improving sales and marketing coordination. The findings highlighted that organizations may use an aligned rewards to encourage greater collaboration between sales and marketing personnel, but that this needs receive support from senior managers through goal and activity alignment to be effective.

Cross-Functional Activities - Do They Really Reduce Inter-Functional Conflict Between Sales and Marketing?

Studies into the sales and marketing interface have highlighted that inter-functional conflict exists between sales and marketing. This study examines if cross-functional activities can reduce this conflict. We found that cross-functional meetings do reduce inter-functional conflict, but that cross-functional training, job rotation and cross-functional teams do not reduce inter-functional conflict.