In Search of the Marketing Imagination: Factors Affecting the Creativity of Marketing Programs for Mature Products

Abstract

The profitability of established products is affected greatly by the extent to which they are meaningfully differentiated from competing alternatives. Maintaining meaningful differentiation, in turn, is facilitated by ongoing development of creative marketing programs. Although marketplace observation reveals a general lack of creativity in the way established products are marketed, some product managers are able to devise creative marketing programs for their products. The authors test hypotheses concerning the effects of individual (i.e., product manager) and situational (i.e., planning process) characteristics on marketing program creativity. The findings reveal that marketing program creativity is a function of individual problem-solving inputs (e.g., knowledge of the marketing environment, diversity of experience, diversity of education), motivational factors (e.g., intrinsic motivation, risk taking), and situational factors (e.g., planning process formalization, interaction with others, time pressure).

Marketing and business performance

“…As there are usually alternative ways of operationalizing marketing strategy decisions through and across marketing program elements, and decisions about one marketing program element may affect choices concerning other marketing program elements, designing marketing programs requires strategic choices and often involves trade-offs, negotiation, and compromise (e.g., Bonoma 1985;Cespedes 1995). In addition, the importance of achieving meaningful differentiation in delivering desired value propositions means that translating marketing strategy content decisions into marketing program designs has increasingly been viewed as a creative rather than simply an analytic process (e.g., Andrews and Smith 1996;Moorman and Miner 1998;Sterling 2003).…”

The contingent roles of R&D–sales versus R&D–marketing cooperation in new-product development of business-to-business firms

“…A high level of short-term control and incentive systems would constitute an impediment to marketing's long-term focus: -Due to the incentives for salespeople and their results orientation, salespeople often tend to be more short-term-oriented than marketers‖ (Rouziès et al 2009, p. 115). Third, marketing's tasks, such as creating brand equity or advertising and promotion material, often entail a high level of imagination (Andrews & Smith 1996). In this respect, prior research shows that high control and incentive levels may impair employee inventiveness (Ariely et al 2009).…”

The ad creativity cube: conceptualization and initial validation

“…Implied in this template-guided perspective of creativity is that the novel element must also be meaningful. Similarly, Andrews and Smith (1996) define creativity as the extent to which ideas deviate in a meaningful way from industry practice.…”