Michael D. Hutt

Cross-Unit Competition for a Market Charter: The Enduring Influence of Structure

Marketing strategists who operate in turbulent markets face a competitive landscape marked by volatility and evolving market structures. As customer requirements change, an organization that stays in alignment with its markets will form new business units or alter the market charters of existing business units. In a longitudinal study, the authors traced the structural realignments that accompanied a Fortune-500 firms entry into the Internet market. As the charter moved from a freshly created unit to an established business unit, the authors found support for the prediction that the former organizational structure will continue to shape the identity, beliefs, and social ties of managers. The study highlights the structural, social, and cognitive factors that must be managed as corporate decision makers search for the best strategy–structure fit for an emerging market opportunity.

Balancing Risk and Return in a Customer Portfolio

Marketing managers can increase shareholder value by structuring a customer portfolio to reduce the vulnerability and volatility of cash flows. This article demonstrates how financial portfolio theory provides an organizing framework for (1) diagnosing the variability in a customer portfolio, (2) assessing the complementarity/similarity of market segments, (3) exploring market segment weights in an optimized portfolio, and (4) isolating the reward on variability that individual customers or segments provide. Using a seven-year series of customer data from a large business-to-business firm, the authors demonstrate how market segments can be characterized in terms of risk and return. Next, they identify the firms efficient portfolio and test it against (1) its current portfolio and (2) a hypothetical profit maximization portfolio. Then, using forward- and back-testing, the authors show that the efficient portfolio has consistently lower variability than the existing customer mix and the profit maximization portfolio. The authors provide guidelines for incorporating a risk overlay into established customer management frameworks. The approach is especially well suited for business-to-business firms that serve market segments drawn from diverse sectors of the economy.

A network perspective of account manager performance

Purpose – The paper seeks to provide a conceptual model of the account management process that isolates the social connections of more versus less effective account managers.Design/methodology/approach – The sales performance research tradition is reviewed and a social network perspective is offered to explore the web of internal working relationships that account managers activate to acquire customer and competitor information and create solutions for customers.Findings – Available evidence suggests that network size, network range, and network diversity are among the relational properties that may influence account manager performance. By building a strong network of relationships both within the firm as well as within the customer organization, high‐performing account managers, compared with their peers, are better able to diagnose customer requirements, mobilize internal experts, and choreograph the activities that are required to out‐maneuver rivals and create the desired customer solution.Practical ...

The Role of Culture Strength in Shaping Sales Force Outcomes

Although a strong culture has been widely acknowledged as a defining characteristic of successful firms, past research has failed to examine the influence it exerts on the attitudes and behavior of salespeople. In a two-sample study, we measure culture strength and explore its relationship to value congruity and to three sales force outcomes that define the sales management research tradition: role stress, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. Within the contexts of the sales subculture of a Fortune 500 firm (Study 1) and specialized sales organizations (Study 2), the results reveal a compelling portrait of the forces that shape salesperson–culture fit. Specifically, the results of both studies indicate that a strong culture leads to higher levels of value congruity, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and lower levels of role stress. Key implications are highlighted for sales managers and for researchers.

Role identity and attributions of high‐performing salespeople

Purpose – This paper aims to propose and test an exploratory model, illustrating performance differences based on underlying role identities and attributions of salespeople in business markets.Design/methodology/approach – The sample consists of 60 salespeople from a Fortune 100 high technology firm responsible for managing multi‐million dollar customer projects. Interviews with both salespeople and their sales managers provided the data to examine the relationships among role identities, attributions, and performance.Findings – The model suggests that higher‐performing salespeople have role identities as sales consultants, whereas lower performers tend to have role identities as technical specialists. Further, those salespeople with sales consultant role identities were more likely to attribute success to relational factors, whereas salespeople with technical specialist role identities were more likely to attribute success to technical factors. There were no significant relationships among role identitie...

Commentaries and Rejoinder to "Balancing Risk and Return in a Customer Portfolio"

Tarasi et al.’s (2011) article titled “Balancing Risk and Return in a Customer Portfolio” makes a noteworthy contribution to customer portfolio management theory, an important subject that has yet to receive a great deal of research attention. This brief comment emphasizes a few issues regarding the application of modern financial portfolio theory to customer portfolio management. The reason for developing financial portfolio theory was to help financial investors make decisions regarding their securities market portfolios. As Devinney, Stewart, and Shocker (1985) argue in their comments on Cardozo and Smith’s (1983) work, applying financial portfolio theory to a marketing context requires substantive modifications to the theory because this context does not meet some of the critical assumptions in financial portfolio theory. In accordance with that perspective, I highlight some key issues with Tarasi et al.’s approach (2011) that require attention for the work to be truly useful.

Undergraduate Education: The Implications of Cross-Functional, Relationships in Business Marketing–The Skills of High-Performing Managers

ABSTRACT Like other specialty areas in the business school curriculum, marketing management classes emphasize an analytical perspective and provide students with a valuable set of strategy tools, but fail to come to grips with other facets of the managerial work of marketing-namely, the relational skills that are required for managing across functions, reconciling diverse interests, and creating integrated strategies and customer solutions. By serving as an advocate for the customer at various levels of the organizational hierarchy and across functions, the business marketer must initiate, develop, nurture, and sustain a rich network of relationships with multiple constituencies within the firm and within customer organizations. To effectively perform this challenging interdisciplinary role, a unique set of relationship management skills are required. This article explores the collaborative skills that high-performing managers have mastered and examines the resulting implications for the business marketing course. Recent research is examined that reveals the characteristics of reputationally effective managers, isolates the factors that define effective cross-functional exchange episodes, and details the specific behavior that top-performing account managers employ. By exploring the relational competencies that are instrumental to the work of marketing managers, the business marketing course can fill an important gap in the marketing curriculum.

Bridging the Theory-Practice Gap in Business Marketing: Lessons from the Field—The JBBM at 21

ABSTRACT Purpose: The purpose of this article is to first examine the distinctive role that Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing (JBBM) assumes in the marketing discipline, explore its heritage and notable accomplishments, and highlight the opportunities and challenges that specialized business journals confront across functional areas. Next, the authors explored the academic-practitioner divide and propose action steps that can be followed to craft corporate research partnerships to address business marketing problems. Methodology/approach: The authors drew on research experience gained across more than a dozen empirical studies that have been used in a collaborative approach with a partner firm from the business-to-business sector to examine a core marketing problem. Findings: High levels of engagement and support from the partner organization appear to be most likely to occur when members of the partnering firm were actively involved in framing the research question. Research implications: A set of action steps is proposed as a vehicle for initiating and managing a corporate research partnership. By providing potential access to rare data, a collaborative approach may provide a path for attacking substantive research issues in business marketing.

Realigning industrial marketing channels

Abstract Dramatic changes are occurring in industrial patterns of distribution. This article provides a structure for analyzing realignments in industrial marketing channels. Specifically, the analysis centers on the channel efficiency and effectiveness dimensions that were generated by a shift from industrial distributors to a public warehouse.

Commentary on “Business-to-Business Marketing Textbooks: A Comparative Review”

ABSTRACT The proposal by Backhaus, Muehlfeld, and Okoye (2002) to design a business marketing text around a framework of customer-relationship types is provocative and spawns a useful debate on the issue of what should actually be taught in the business marketing course, particularly at the undergraduate level. We believe that the approach may increase the attention given to relationship marketing but do so by sacrificing coverage of core content that students and informed business marketing managers need to know. In the end, we opt for a more comprehensive approach in exploring strategy making for the business market while they chart a narrower and more specialized path.