For too long, marketers have not been held accountable for showing how marketing expenditures add to shareholder value. As time has gone by, this lack of accountability has undermined marketers' credibility, threatened the standing of the marketing function within the firm, and even threatened marketing's existence as a distinct capability within the firm. This article proposes a broad framework for assessing marketing productivity, cataloging what is already known, and suggesting areas for further research. The authors conclude that it is possible to show how marketing expenditures add to shareholder value. The effective dissemination of new methods of assessing marketing productivity to the business community will be a major step toward raising marketing's vitality in the firm and, more important, toward raising the performance of the firm itself. The authors also suggest many areas in which further research is essential to making methods of evaluating marketing productivity increasingly valid, reliable, and practical.
In their study of marketing services relationships, Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpande (1992) are unable to support a hypothesized link between relational factors (such as clients' trust in their service providers) and clients' use of marketing services. This finding runs counter to relationship marketing theory. To explain their result, Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpande (1992) suggest that, as a relationship becomes more longterm, it becomes prone to negative influences that dampen the positive impact of relational factors. This study replicates and extends Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpande's (1992) work by examining relationships between advertising agencies and their clients. The results replicate findings on seven of ten hypotheses proposed in the original article. The authors also extend the original study by supporting the general hypothesis that long-term relationships have a negative impact on service use, which dampens the impact of trust. The results shed light on the mediating role that certain "dark side" constructs play in marketing services relationships.
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