Mena, JA, Hult, GTM, Ferrell, OC et al. (1 more author) (2019) Competing assessments of market-driven, sustainability-centered, and stakeholder-focused approaches to the customer-brand relationships and performance. Journal of Business Research, 95. pp. 531-543. ISSN 0148-2963
Abstract
For over two decades, marketing strategy has centered on the importance of being primarily market-driven to achieve superior customer-brand relationships and firm performance. However, changes in the business environment have prompted some organizations to embrace newer approaches to marketing strategy development, such as being sustainability-centered or stakeholder-focused. Using a competing analysis framework, we assess the marketing performance implications of these three approaches to marketing strategy development (i.e., market-driven, sustainability-centered, and stakeholder-focused) while accounting for other firm and industry effects. The hypotheses are tested using secondary data involving 1716 firms over a four-year period. The results indicate that, in general, placing more emphasis on a broad set of stakeholders (i.e., customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, communities, and regulators) when developing marketing strategy is more important in achieving superior performance than is engaging in market-driven or sustainability-centered efforts. These findings support previous research that social responsibility associated with a stakeholder-focused strategy has a positive impact on customer-brand relationships resulting in performance. The results also indicate that distinctive marketing strategies exist among tangible product firms, service firms, low/stable tech firms, and high-tech firms.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 Elsevier Inc. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Journal of Business Research. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Market-driven; Sustainability; Stakeholders; Hierarchical linear modeling; Marketing strategy |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > International Business Division (LUBS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 08 Feb 2019 12:41 |
Last Modified: | 02 Feb 2020 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.038 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:142301 |