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The discipline of marketing uses many metaphors. Historically, the dominant metaphors in marketing strategy have been adapted from warfare and military science. The purpose of this conceptual article is to analyze and evaluate commonly used warfare metaphors in marketing strategy. A cross-domain comparison of these metaphors and conceptualizations of war are assessed to determine whether they are still appropriate in light of the advancements in both military science and marketing theory. The analysis found that there are many fundamental and questionable differences between these two domains; therefore, a new conceptual metaphor for marketing strategy is proposed.

Antecedents and consequences of customer orientation have been the subject of significant empirical investigation. Although several studies have explored employee variables as antecedents to customer orientation, work ethic has received little research attention. Additionally, there have been incongruent findings related to the effect of customer orientation on performance, as some have found it to be direct or indirect via innovation. This study explores overall work ethic as an antecedent to customer orientation and innovativeness as the missing link between customer orientation and performance among Canadian retail pharmacies. The results show support for the influence of work ethic on customer orientation, and the role of innovation as a mediating variable. This study advances the understanding of work ethic, customer orientation, innovation, and performance in Canadian retail pharmacy.

Pharmaceutical marketing is going through a period of transition in which many modern marketing tactics are being adopted in the pursuit of consumer engagement and brand affinity (Medical Media & Marketing, 2015). Right now, pharmaceutical companies are using unbranded social network communities in the promotion and education of diseases through virtual support groups. Rather than using social media as a one-way promotional tool, pharmaceutical companies are using covert tactics in order to engage and monitor their target audiences (Scott Rader et al., 2013).Much of the earlier attention in the pharmaceutical domain online has focused on company-controlled communication such as corporate web portals and drug information sites-which are both regulated-leaving an important and growing area of research focusing on tools such as social media that play an important role in consumer to consumer interaction (Scott Rader et al., 2013; Tyrawski & DeAndrea, 2015).The purpose of this research is to test competing theories of whether persuasion knowledge will be activated in a covert setting, specific to the context of pharmaceutical marketing. Researchers and practitioners have argued both for and against whether consumers will recognize a persuasion attempt in a covert setting, but until now there has not been a conclusive answer.Employing an experimental design, this study is an initial step in the debate on covert marketing's effects on persuasion knowledge, specifically in the context of health and wellness communities on social media. Similar to Wojdynski and Evans' (2016) findings that consumers did not notice native advertising, the results suggest that people do not recognize these tactics, either covert or overt, as persuasion attempts; we find no significant difference in participants' evaluations of health and wellness communities when branding is present versus when it is absent. References Available Upon Request

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