Is Marketing Relevant within Partnerships?

Transcription

1 HSW > HOCHSCHULE FÜR WIRTSCHAFT LUZERN IBR > INSTITUT FÜR BETRIEBS- UND REGIONALÖKONOMIE Working Paper Is Marketing Relevant within Partnerships? Sacha Knorr, Stefan Michel November 2002 University of Applied Sciences of Central Switzerland Zentralstrasse 9, CH-6002 Lucerne, Switzerland Tel , Fax

2 Is Marketing Relevant within Partnerships? Is there a need for Partnership Marketing? One might want to answer: of course. And that seems to be true, as many aspects of relationships between companies can be related to the marketing discipline. In the field of industrial- and B2Bmarketing there have been many indicators for the relevance of applying marketing in an interorganisational context. But when it comes to answer the question how in the field of services marketing a general concept for partnerships is lacking. In our research project we focus on service industries, as the special characteristics of services affect the relationships of a company and increase their importance. Often the partners are visible for the customer and even have direct contact to them. With simultaneity in production and consummation of services it makes it hard to hide partners within the production process. And with some services the direct customer contact is even outsourced completely (e.g. to a logistic partner). The first confrontation with this topic came, when talking to practitioners about B2B-relationships. Almost everybody agreed on the strong and growing impact of these relationships on business success, especially in partnerships. But, hardly any company had a strategic concept on (a) how to manage them, (b) how to become or stay a favourable partner and (c) how to influence the behaviour of all involved persons and organisations. According to the practitioners, most partnerships seemed to be governed by coincidence. Only the process of choosing a partner seems to be a strategic issue, many other aspects are very much dependent on personal contacts and competences. It seems as there is a gap or mismatch between the perceived importance and the actual doing. From this we drew the conclusion, that a deeper analysis of existing partnerships in service industries seems appropriate and a framework for partnership marketing needs to be designed. The aim of the research will be to answer the above mentioned questions (a), (b) and (c), taking into account the special characteristics of services. The second step in our research process consisted of a desk-research, identifying academic contributions from different disciplines. The literature review brought up several contributions showing different aspects of partnerships on different levels of abstraction. Striking was the 1

3 heterogeneity of the used terms and viewpoints by which authors tackled the topic. This made it even more obvious, that there is a need for a basic framework which supports a common understanding of the topic in marketing research. Partnership marketing So, how does partnership marketing fit into the picture with the existing theories of interorganisational exchange? There are three research streams which influence the approach of partnership marketing. The first one is the relationship-marketing discipline, which evolved from the services marketing context (Berry 1983) and was mainly applied to customer relationships. Several authors have than broadened the focus of relationship marketing from the customer perspective to other relationships of a company (e.g. to suppliers or competitors) (Gummesson 1996; Morgan and Hunt 1994; Sheth and Parvatiyar 1995). This broadening of focus lets relationship marketing research overlap with the second research stream: network research. When looking at networks, the research focus is on a long-term perspective on interorganisational exchange. In this context marketing is seen as an investment activity (Mattsson 1997). For partnership marketing these two relationship-driven research streams have to be combined with the transaction oriented marketing mix approach (Figure 1). As some researchers might see this as a step backwards, we think that the situation in the business world described above shows a need to combine these viewpoints. Therefore the marketing mix of service companies needs to be completed by an instrument dealing with the management of partnerships. 2

4 Marketing Mix Network Approach Relationship Marketing Instrumental Strategic Partnership Marketing Figure 1: Three combined research approaches for partnership marketing The three research approaches have been developed in the marketing discipline from left to right (compare Figure 1). Partnership marketing aims at bringing these perspectives together. Following the broadened focus of organisational relations there are several actors with whom an organisation has relationships. For partnership marketing we have to define who the possible partners are. In a first step we characterized partnerships as follows: B2B-relationships, taken voluntarily, does not matter whether the partnership is dyadic or within a network, all parties can profit from the partnership (win-win) and the aim is the pooling of resources and competencies to increase competitiveness and profitability or to establish closer relationships From our point of view these characteristics make it impossible to just transfer relationship marketing theory onto these partnerships. It might well serve as one theoretical basis, but needs to be completed by the other two. Figure 2 shows the different types of relationships from a focal organisations point of view. The broadened focus of relationship marketing contains all of them including the relationships to customers (❶). Partnership marketing excludes these relationships and concentrates on the long- 3

5 term partnerships with the above mentioned characteristics. The partners can be found on a horizontal or vertical level. An example for relationships with horizontal partners (❷) for example is the pooling of competences and resources to offer a one-stop-shopping. Vertical relationships (❸) mostly are supply chain partnerships with a strong integration of the supplier. This integration can start as early as joint market research or service design. Partnership marketing also includes affiliate marketing, which can be with vertical or horizontal partners and has its main focus on strengthening an organisations market position. In this case the partners are used to get in contact with (potential) customers. Customers ❶ Focal Organisation ❷ Horizontal Partners (Peers, Competitors) ❸ Vertical Partners (Suppliers, ) Partnership Marketing Relationship Marketing Figure 2: Partnership Marketing and relevant relationships Our literature review showed different areas of partnerships as well. The most described field were vertical partnerships, in the areas of supplying, producing, selling and innovating. Further research As a next step in our research process we will carry out in-depth, semi-standardized interviews with practitioners responsible for managing partnerships in their organisations. These interviews will be 4

6 used to evaluate the current state in service companies. From this status quo, separating good from bad examples, we want to derive a framework, which will need to prove its effectiveness in a second quantitative sample. It surely is a clear yes that marketing is relevant within partnerships. Unclear is what a framework for partnership marketing needs to include. In terms of the marketing mix it might even need an addition of partnership to the seven Ps (Magrath 1986). During the conference we would like to contribute our findings on this topic and debate about the necessary next steps in the research process. 5

7 Berry, Leonard L. (1983), "Relationship marketing," in Emerging perspectives on services marketing, Leonard L. Berry and G.L. Shostack and G. Upah, Eds. Chicago: AMA. Gummesson, Evert (1996), "Relationship marketing and imaginary organisations," European Journal of Marketing, 30 (2), Magrath, A.J. (1986), "When marketing services, 4 Ps are not enough," Business Horizons, 29 (May/June), Mattsson, Lars-Gunnar (1997), ""Relationship marketing" in a network perspective," in Relationships and networks in international markets, Hans Georg Gemünden and Thomas Ritter and Achim Walter, Eds. Kidlington et al.: Pergamon. Morgan, R.M. and Shelby D. Hunt (1994), "The commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing," Journal of Marketing, 58 (3), Sheth, J.N. and A. Parvatiyar (1995), "Relationship marketing in consumer markets," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 23 (4),