Configurations of Marketing and Sales: A Taxonomy

Abstract

Little is known about the interface between separate marketing units and sales units. This article develops a multidimensional model of the marketing and sales interface. The model integrates a broad range of conceptual domains, including information sharing, structural linkages, power, orientations, and knowledge of marketing and sales. The authors empirically explore the conceptual model through a cross-industry study of 337 European Union-based companies. They identify five empirical archetypes of the marketing and sales interface. The taxonomy shows that the role and characteristics of marketing and sales vary a great deal. This finding challenges existing stereotypes about marketing and sales. Finally, the article explores organizational outcomes of the five configurations. The findings suggest that the most successful configurations are characterized by strong structural linkages between marketing and sales and a high extent of market knowledge in marketing.

Configuring quality management and marketing implementation and the performance implications for industrial marketers

“…Following Homburg, Jensen, & Krohmer (2008), we empirically group organizations by cluster analyses, followed by company interviews with qualitative findings to supplement the survey findings and to enrich the conceptual development of Q&M implementation configurations. 1 The population of our study consists of all the firms in Hong Kong that practise quality management and we examine the Q&M implementation configurations of firms sampled from this population.…”

“…It helps organizations achieve exchange-determined goals more effectively (Houston, 1986). In contrast to the sales concept, which is short-term with a focus on the selling process, the marketing concept is strategically oriented towards long-term customer satisfaction, rather than sales volume, as the key to profitability (Homburg, Jensen, & Krohmer, 2008). A general belief that firms that are better equipped to respond to market requirements and to anticipate changing conditions are expected to enjoy sustainable competitive advantage and superior profitability.…”

“…It has been argued that, in firms, certain elements of strategy, structure, and process tend to cluster together to form configurations, which are critical organizational characteristics that commonly occur together and which support firms in pursuit of their strategic goals (Doty, Glick, & Huber, 1993). In the marketing literature, researchers are paying increasing attention to the configurations of marketing activities in practice (Homburg, Jensen, & Krohmer, 2008;Vorhies and Morgan 2003). We have seen increasing numbers of industrial marketing researchers using the configuration approach to explain organizational configurations for marketing management.…”

Organizational linkages for new product development: Implementation of innovation projects

“…Recent work in this area suggests that different firms may organize, manage, and reward their sales and marketing functions differently, which may affect interface dynamics (Biemans et al, 2010;Homburg et al, 2008;Malshe, 2010;Malshe & Sohi, 2009a, inter alia). Research reports a positive association between data dissemination and communication, and new product development (Arnett & Wittman, 2014;Fisher et al, 1997;Kotler et al, 2006).…”

“…The interaction approach focuses on factors such as trust and communication to predict cross-functional relationships (Ruekert & Walker, 1987) with the concepts of sales and marketing inter-functional perceived relationship effectiveness (Biemans et al, 2010;Homburg et al, 2008;Kotler et al, 2006). Figure 1 presents the conceptual model that hypothesizes this approach.…”