Marketing strategy is a construct that lies at the conceptual heart of the field of strategic marketing and is central to the practice of marketing. It is also the area within which many of the most pressing current challenges identified by marketers and CMOs arise. We develop a new conceptualization of the domain and sub-domains of marketing strategy and use this lens to assess the current state of marketing strategy research by examining the papers in the six most influential marketing journals publishing such papers over the period 1999 through 2017. We uncover important challenges to marketing strategy research-not least the increasingly limited number and focus of studies, and declining use of both theory and primary research designs. However, we also uncover numerous opportunities for developing important and highly relevant new marketing strategy knowledge-the number and importance of unanswered marketing strategy questions and opportunities to impact practice has arguably never been greater. To guide such research, we develop a new research agenda that provides opportunities for researchers to develop new theory, establish clear relevance, and contribute to improving practice.

No abstract

No abstract

The article reports the findings of a study conducted among 387 consumers regarding their perceptions of the unethicality of business practices of firms and how these affect their response behavior, in terms of trust, satisfaction, and loyalty. The study confirmed that high levels of perceived corporate unethicality decrease consumer trust. This in turn reduces consumer satisfaction, which ultimately has negative effects on customer loyalty. It was also revealed that, although both consumer gender and urbanity have a moderating effect on the link between perceived unethicality and trust, the age group and level of education of the consumer did not exhibit such an effect. With regard to consumer cultural characteristics, both high uncertainty avoidance and low individualism were found to increase the negative impact of business unethicality on trust, as opposed to power distance and masculinity that did not have any moderating effect on this relationship. Implications for managers are extracted from the study findings, as well as directions for future research.

Although many process‐based studies appear in the strategic management literature, little attention has been devoted to the formation process of marketing strategies. Drawing on enactment and information‐processing theories, this study views the external environment as a source of information (i.e. enacted) and organizations as information‐processing entities. We propose a conceptual framework of antecedents and market performance consequences of emergent marketing strategies and test it with a sample of 214 UK enterprises. The results suggest that dimensions of market uncertainty (i.e. dynamism and complexity) and strategic feedback systems influence the formation of emergent marketing strategy. Furthermore, the data reveal that market uncertainty aspects condition the association between emergent marketing strategies and market performance in different ways. These findings provide new insights into how emergent marketing strategies evolve and influence organizational outcomes.