Alignments and Misalignments of Realized Marketing Strategies with Administrative Systems: Performance Implications

On the basis of intended marketing strategy plans, firms design administrative systems to support strategy implementation. In increasingly turbulent business environments—characterized by complexity, scarce resources, and increasing number of competitive opportunities and threats—firms are forced to alter intended and realize emergent strategies more frequently than the ever before. The eventualities of realized marketing strategies may lead to misalignments between the strategy and the existing administrative system designed to support it. To examine performance implications of such misalignments we use Slater and Olson’s (2001) taxonomy of marketing strategies. We distinguish between intended and realized plans and we propose an administrative system framework of structural (i.e., centralization, formalization, and specialization) and dynamic (i.e., interdepartmental connectedness and strategic control mechanisms) parameters for effective implementation of realized strategies. We propose three-way interactions between realized marketing strategies and the dynamic parameters of the system. Research hypotheses on performance implications and responses from 215 marketing executives show performance differences across strategy types and (mis)alignments of the administrative system. Our findings confirm three-way interactions among strategy types, interdepartmental connectedness, and control mechanisms for all realized strategy types.