Review Paper: Research in Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy: A Review

Introduction

• Marketing strategy is central to marketing practice, business school pedagogy, marketing theory, and academic research.
• It is essential for understanding the long-term performance of products/brands, SBUs, and firms.
• Recent reports highlight challenges like creating adaptive organizational structures, choosing optimal strategies, and leading customer-centric initiatives.
• A comprehensive review of strategic marketing literature since 1999 is needed.
• The study aims to:
  • Develop a framework to assess marketing strategy research.
  • Illuminate the state of knowledge in marketing strategy sub-domains.
  • Develop a research agenda for aspects needing greater attention.
• Key contributions:
  • Assessment of marketing strategy research focus (1999-2017).
  • Conceptualization of marketing strategy sub-domains.
  • Research agenda for future marketing strategy research.

Conceptualizing Marketing Strategy

• Establishing boundaries and identifying sub-domains is crucial for reviewing research.

• Draws on Varadarajan's (2010) definition:

  • "Marketing strategy is an organization’s integrated pattern of decisions that specify its crucial choices concerning products, markets, marketing activities and marketing resources in the creation, communication and/or delivery of products that offer value to customers in exchanges with the organization and thereby enables the organization to achieve specific objectives." (Varadarajan 2010, p. 119)

• A firm’s marketing impacts marketplace and economic performance through resource deployments for marketing objectives.

• Formulation–implementation dichotomy:

  • Goal-setting and marketing strategy development define desired goals and select strategy options.
  • Enactment operationalizes intended marketing strategy decisions.

• Marketing strategy formulation involves explicit decisions regarding goals, target market selection, value offerings, and positioning.

• Marketing strategy implementation translates decisions into detailed tactics and resource deployments.

• Interdependence exists between strategy formulation and implementation as implementation shapes strategy content.

• Strategy content vs. strategy process dichotomy:

  • Strategy content concerns strategic and tactical marketing program decisions.
  • Strategy process concerns organizational mechanisms for marketing strategy decisions and realization.

• Framework uses these dichotomies to establish external boundaries and identify sub-domains.

• Marketing strategy encompasses the "what" decisions/actions and "how" strategy-making/realization processes.

• This includes selecting target markets/customers, identifying value propositions, and designing integrated marketing programs.

Review of Marketing Strategy Research

Method

• Journal Selection: Examined the ten most influential marketing journals based on Baumgartner and Pieters’s (2003) study.
• Six Journals Selected: Journal of Marketing (JM), Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), Marketing Science (MKS), Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), Journal of Retailing (JR), and International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM).
• Digital copies of articles published in these journals from 1999 through 2017 were obtained.
• Each article was examined and coded into categories like marketing strategy, inputs, outputs, and environment.
• Articles with relevant keywords were retained for further analysis.

Article Selection Criteria

• Focus on strategy (vs. individual tactics).
• Study of marketing (vs. purely management) phenomena.
• Unit of analysis at firm, SBU, brand, or product level.
• Published during the 1999–2017 period.
• Exclusion criteria:
  • Empirical meta-analytic papers.
  • Tactical marketing papers focusing on only one or two aspects of the B4Ps.
  • Purely methodological papers.
  • Studies examining industry-level development and strategy.
• Three researchers independently examined articles.
• Average interrater agreement was 96%, with discrepancies resolved through discussion.
• 257 marketing strategy articles remained in the review sample.
• Each paper was examined and coded according to marketing strategy aspects, theory, and methodological characteristics.

Coding Procedure

• Developed a protocol for coding key aspects of marketing strategy.
• Sub-aspects included: formulation vs. implementation, content vs. process, and composite aspects.
• Document specified definitions, keywords, and examples for each aspect.
• Two researchers independently coded a randomly selected set of 60 articles using the draft protocol.
• Revised protocol based on accuracy assessment.
• Pretested the revised protocol with additional expert judges.
• Three researchers coded each of the 257 eligible articles.
• Interrater agreement ranged from 86%–100%, with discussions to reach consensus.
• Two researchers coded key theory and methodological characteristics.
• High interrater agreement on this coding (97%).

Descriptive Analysis of Marketing Strategy Papers

• Strategic marketing is the general field, while marketing strategy is the central construct.
• Kumar et al. (2017) focus on papers examining all strategic marketing issues, while this study focuses on the domain of marketing strategy.
• Papers coded based on focus on (1) inputs to marketing strategy, (2) outputs of marketing strategy, and (3) environmental factors.
• Also coded studies focusing on relationships involving individual tactical actions.
• Almost 95% of papers published in the six journals are Bnon-strategy^ papers.
• Largest category (36%) contains studies of marketing tactics examining one or two individual marketing program elements.
• Second largest category (15%) deals with marketing strategy–related inputs (6%) and outputs (9%).
• 6% of papers focus on internal or external environmental phenomena.
• Research on marketing strategy comprises the smallest number (less than 6%) of strategic marketing papers.
• JM (9.8%) and JAMS (8.6%) have a higher percentage of marketing strategy papers.
• JM published the greatest number of marketing strategy studies (n = 81).
• Trend lines showing the ratio of marketing strategy versus all other types of papers are downwards.
• JM's trend line is particularly steep.

Marketing Strategy Aspects

• Table 2 suggests some balance across individual aspects.
• But Table 3 reveals little research in the formulation–process sub-domain.
• This may be due to a lack of secondary data on difficult-to-observe phenomena.
• Marketing strategy implementation appears to be an area of relatively strong research coverage.
• Conversely, few marketing strategy studies have focused on the processes by which marketing strategy is developed.
• JM and JAMS tend to publish studies within and across all four sub-domains of marketing strategy.
• Other journals tend to skew toward or away from certain sub-domains.
• 58% of marketing strategy papers in MKS and 44% in JMR were in the implementation–content area.
• As shown in Table 4, the vast majority (202) of the 257 marketing strategy papers in the sample are empirical.
• Recent decrease in the use of primary data and increasing use of secondary data.
• The relatively small number of conceptual/theoretical (35), qualitative (8), and analytical (12) marketing strategy studies.
• This suggests that theory development in published marketing strategy research is rare.
• Regression-based analysis models dominate, with structural equation modeling (SEM) as a distant second.
• Table 6 shows the use of four argumentation approaches: single theory, multiple theories, conceptual development/grounded theory, or atheoretical logical argumentation.
• The most commonly-used is the logic and data-driven approach (48%).
• Examining trends indicates a shift away from theory development to data-driven approaches.
• An increasingly small numbers of marketing strategy papers developing new theory and/or conceptual frameworks.
• Examined the specific theories used in studies employing a single-theory lens.
• The majority (69%) were used only in a single marketing strategy study.
• Only nine theories were used in five or more marketing strategy studies.
• Recent marketing strategy research draws mainly on strategic management theories.

Illustrative Research in Domains of Marketing Strategy

• Identified the most commonly studied topics and discuss exemplar studies in each of the four marketing sub-domains.
• Table 8 shows the most frequently studied topics in each of the four sub-domains of marketing strategy.

Formulation–Content Research

• Concerns the specific goals that a marketing strategy is designed to deliver and the major broad strategic decisions concerning how these are to be achieved.
• The most frequently studied issue involves the intended strategy pursued by a SBU or firm.
• Studies have primarily used existing strategy typologies and primary survey research designs.
• Decisions regarding intended strategy choices generally only explain performance outcomes to the extent that firm’s marketing program choices and behaviors are consistent with the intended strategy.
• Some empirical research examines realized strategy to identify strategy content decisions.
• Less focus on studying the goals that marketing strategies are designed to achieve.

Formulation–Process Research

• Concerns the mechanisms used to develop marketing strategy goals and identify/select the broad strategic means.
• The least investigated of the major sub-domains.
• Most frequently studied aspect has been the marketing strategy making (MSM) process.
• Much of the research that has been published is conceptual in nature.
• May be because disentangling and assessing different aspects of MSM requires data beyond secondary sources.
• One conceptual marketing strategy formulation–process paper is the study by Dickson et al. (2001).
• The authors contend that executives should view the market as a moving video rather than the common practice of viewing it as a static snapshot.

Implementation–Content Research

• Concerns the detailed integrated marketing program tactics decisions taken, and actions and resource deployments to convert these into a concrete set of realized actions.
• Almost half of the published work in this sub-domain has focused on developing analytical models or using secondary data and marketing mix modeling.
• Most published research on this issue is empirical and focuses on the direct and interactive effects of marketing tactics and actions.
• Research that examines all 4 P’s simultaneously and dynamically to ensure relevant managerial insight is rare.
• Conceptual and theoretical papers tend to be less common in the implementation–content area.

Implementation–Process Research

• Concerns the mechanisms used to identify, select, and realize integrated marketing program tactics designed to deliver marketing strategy content decisions.
• The most commonly studied issue is marketing organization design.
• Research in this area has included both conceptual and empirical studies.
• Another relatively popular research focus concerns marketing performance monitoring.
• Also a stream of research investigating how marketing’s engagement with other functions impacts implementation efforts.

Hybrid Marketing Strategy Research

• Some studies cover more than one area.
• Some are conceptual papers covering a broad domain of marketing strategy.
• Some examine how the type of marketing capability dispersion chosen impacts marketing’s influence and marketing implementation outcomes.

Discussion and Implications

• Descriptive and sub-domain content exploration of research published in influential marketing strategy journals reveals new insights.
• First, the relative (and increasing) rarity of research focusing on the core marketing strategy construct is apparent.
• Focus of research attention has been more on individual marketing mix elements than on marketing strategies.
• Second, in terms of theory building and theory use, almost half of the papers have been logic- or data-driven.
• Data-driven approaches are insufficient for understanding "why" relationships.
• Among the theory-based marketing strategy studies published, there are increasingly few theory-building papers.
• The paucity of new theory development is alarming given the dramatic changes in marketing practice.
• Behavioral and modeling researchers rarely seek to build theory specific to marketing.
• Third, in terms of data sources and analysis methods, the use of qualitative approaches is rare and trending down.
• Qualitative approaches are necessary for observing many existing marketing strategy phenomena.
• Trends are away from primary-only research and toward studies using secondary data.
• Again, this raises concerns with respect to the types and aspects of marketing strategy phenomena that are studied.

A Marketing Strategy Research Agenda

• Identifies areas within the sub-domains that are under-investigated, managerially relevant, and present opportunities for theoretically interesting research.
• Draws on conceptual questions and practice-based questions.

Formulation-Content

• Research focus has been on strategy type and positioning, with less research on questions related to goals, business model design, timing, and specific stages of strategy formulation such as market selection.
• Three key topic areas for additional research:
  • Marketing Strategy Goals
  • The role of the CMO/marketing function
  • Longer- vs. shorter-term emphasis in marketing strategy

Formulation-Process

• The dominant focus of research has been the process of marketing strategy making, market analysis, and target market/customer selection.
• Three areas for additional research:
  • Planning Participation
  • Planning Process Design
  • Planning Enablers/Inhibitors

Implementation–Content

• Research in this sub-domain has been dominated by marketing mix studies.
• Three areas for additional research:
  • Marketing Organization
  • Integrated Marketing Programs
  • Marketing Tactic Enactment

Implementation–Process

• Three areas for additional research:
  • Marketing Strategy Adaptation
  • Strategy Realization Processes
  • Marketing Organization Design

Hybrid

• Two Bacross domain^ areas that are either under-researched to date but theoretically very important:
  • Intended versus realized marketing strategy Bgaps^
  • Marketing strategy alignment.

Future Research Directions

• Drawing on sociological and anthropological theories and approaches the field of research in strategic management labeled Bstrategy as practice^ offers opportunities.
• Psychology and behavioral economics researchers have shown that people have systematic (and predictable) biases in thinking and decision-making.
• New technologies, data sources, and analysis possibilities and some research design issues.

Conclusion

• Marketing strategy lies at the conceptual heart of the strategic marketing field and marketing practice.
• Assessed the current state of marketing strategy research and uncovered challenges and opportunities.
• The research agenda provides opportunities for researchers to develop new theory, establish clear relevance, and contribute to improving practice.
• Researchers need to become more eclectic and creative in their research designs.
• There are institutional obstacles but that the payoffs can be enormous.