This paper proposes a domain statement for strategic marketing as a field of study and delineates certain issues fundamental to the field. It also proposes a definition for marketing strategy, the focal organizational strategy construct of the field, and enumerates a number of foundational premises of marketing strategy. The domain of strategic marketing is viewed as encompassing the study of organizational, inter-organizational and environmental phenomena concerned with (1) the behavior of organizations in the marketplace in their interactions with consumers, customers, competitors and other external constituencies, in the context of creation, communication and delivery of products that offer value to customers in exchanges with organizations, and (2) the general management responsibilities associated with the boundary spanning role of the marketing function in organizations. At the broadest level, marketing strategy can be defined as an organization's integrated pattern of decisions that specify its crucial choices concerning products, markets, marketing activities and marketing resources in the creation, communication and/or delivery of products that offer value to customers in exchanges with the organization and thereby enables the organization to achieve specific objectives. Chief among the issues that are fundamental to strategic marketing as a field of study are the questions of how the marketing strategy of a business is influenced by demand side factors and supply side factors.

In an environment characterized by growing awareness of environmental sustainability among various stakeholders in organizations, innovating for sustainability can be expected to grow in importance from the standpoints of organizational legitimacy, reputation, and performance. Relatedly, a firm's sustainable innovations capabilities as a source of competitive advantage and the sustainability related attributes of a firm's product offerings as bases for market segmentation, target marketing, positioning, and differentiation can also be expected to grow in importance. The emergence of sustainability as a major driver of innovation highlights a number of important issues that merit investigation, such as potential avenues for sustainable innovation and sustainable product innovation and factors underlying differences between firms in their commitment to a sustainable innovations orientation. In an attempt to gain insights into these issues, this paper presents (1) a conceptual framework delineating potential avenues for sustainable innovations and (2) a conceptual model delineating a number of firm-related and industry-related antecedents of sustainable innovations orientation, along with performance outcomes of sustainable innovations orientation. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

Interorganizational alliances are widely recognized as critical to product innovation, particularly in high-technology markets. Many new product development (NPD) alliances tend to be asymmetric, that is, they are formed between a larger firm and a smaller firm. As is the case with alliances in general, asymmetric alliances also typically result in changes in the shareholder values of the partner firms. Are the changes in shareholder values of the partner firms significant? Are asymmetric NPD alliances win-win or win-lose partnerships? Are the gains or losses symmetric for the larger and smaller partner firms? What factors drive the changes in shareholder values of the partner firms? These important questions remain largely unexplored as evidenced by the dearth of empirical research on the effect of asymmetric NPD alliances on shareholder value and on the apportionment of this value between the partner firms. We develop and empirically test a model of short-term changes in shareholder values of larger and smaller firms involved in NPD alliances, using the event study methodology on data covering 167 asymmetric alliances in the information technology and communication industries. In this model, we examine alliance, firm, and partner characteristics as potential determinants of the changes in shareholder values of the partner firms due to an NPD alliance announcement. Our model accounts for selection correction, potential cross-correlation across the residuals from the models of firm value changes for the larger and smaller firms, and unobserved heterogeneity. The results suggest that both the partners experience significant short-term financial gains, but there are considerable asymmetries between the larger and smaller firms with regard to the effects of alliance, partner, and firm characteristics on the gains of the partner firms. The results relating to alliance characteristics suggest that while a broad scope alliance enhances the financial gains for the larger firm, a scale R& D alliance (relative to a link alliance) contributes positively to the financial gains for the smaller firm. With regard to partner characteristics, while partner alliance experience positively influences the financial gains for the larger firm, it has no significant effect on the financial returns for the smaller firm. Further, partner innovativeness is positively associated with the financial gains for the larger firm, but partner reputation is unrelated to the financial gains of the smaller firm. Regarding firm characteristics, the magnitude of the financial gains accruing from a firm's own alliance experience is considerably higher for the smaller firm than it is for the larger firm. We outline the implications of the research findings for future research and management practice.innovation, new product development, strategic alliance, shareholder value, strategic management

No abstract

No abstract