Marketing’s Influence Within the Firm

A última edição do Journal of Marketing, talvez o mais reputado periódico académico de marketing, publica um estudo de Peter Verhoef and Peter Leeflang sobre a influência do Departamento de Marketing nas empresas. Trata-se de um tema extremamente interessante, quer do ponto de vista prático, quer enquanto tema de investigação. No entanto, não deve ser esta a única perspectiva para aferir da importância do Marketing para asa empresas, pois "o Marketing é demasiado importante para ser deixado a cargo do departamento de Marketing"(David Packard) e, ou existe em toda a organização ou não passa de uma palavra vã no lexico das empresas...



The March 2009 issue of Journal of Marketing includes a study by Peter Verhoef and Peter Leeflang (“Understanding the Marketing Department’s Influence Within the Firm”) whose findings are likely to appeal to both practitioners and academics in the marketing discipline. Motivated by recent declarations about the diminished influence of marketing and that marketing’s role has become less strategic and more tactical in character, the authors attempt to “determine and explain the level and determinants of the marketing department’s influence within the firm.”
Their conceptual model posits that two broad antecedent constructs—marketing department capabilities (e.g., accountability, innovativeness) and control variables (e.g., firm and environmental characteristics)—shape marketing’s influence within the firm (e.g., perceived influence, top management respect, decision influence). In turn, the latter positively influence business performance both directly and indirectly through marketing orientation. Finally, business performance is controlled for firm size and innovativeness.
With respect to marketing’s influence within the firm, Verhoef and Leeflang’s empirical results indicate that accountability and innovativeness of the marketing department are important determinants for all three measures of influence considered. For market orientation, the findings show that both perceived influence and top management respect are statistically significant predictors. Finally, their model results indicate that market orientation mediates the relationship between marketing influence and business performance. Overall, the authors conclude that their research affirms a weakened position of the marketing department in the firm. They suggest two possible approaches for marketing departments to regain their influence within firms: (1) They should become more accountable for the link between marketing actions and financial results, and (2) they should become more innovative by contributing to the firm’s organic growth. The former reflects the spirit of recent research in the marketing literature that explicitly links strategic marketing actions to widely recognized measures of financial performance.
I welcome the authors’ empirical contributions on this new research topic. I request JM readers to take a moment now to comment on their insights.



http://www.marketingpower2.com/blog/journalofmarketing/2009/03/