Companies prepared to gather multiple fragments of information about those who use their products and services in a bid to identify hidden patterns can add value for customers – and build an unrivalled market position.
The importance of branding and brand architecture is well established in business-to-consumer (B2C) settings. But in business-to-business (B2B) settings, managers tend to believe that personal selling is the key, and brand building tends to be overlooked. However, authors Steve Muylle, Niraj Dawar and Deva Rangarajan argue that B2B branding and personal selling should be seen as complements, rather than as an either/or choice.
This case presents the approach taken by ING Belgium’s Marketing department to build operational and analytical competency with the ambition of playing a leading role in the strategic transformation of the business. Students are invited to evaluate the bank’s achievements up to the time this case was written and to discuss the issues and challenges facing this ambitious Marketing department.
The Resourceful Paradox - interview with Prof. Marion De Bruyne The cost of failing to react to competition can be exceptionally high: challengers often topple market leaders. An examination of how resources influence the way managers weigh ...
Web 2.0 has spawned household names such as Wikipedia, Facebook and MySpace, and offers companies a powerful tool fit for the new era of social networking. In particular, the technology maximizes the possibilities for staff to exchange and shape ideas online. But do managers try to control how staff use the system, or give employees the creative freedom to shape it themselves? A study by Steven De Hertogh, Stijn Viaene and Guido Dedene suggests the need for an evolving, bottom-up approach to stimulate the decentralized and democratic patterns of use that emerge spontaneously
Customers may be looking for more than just useful features when they invest in a branded product – they may be seeking a soul-mate! When a radical new product appears on the market it can threaten a company’s relationship with existing customers who may be tempted to change brands. So what makes them consider switching and how does a brand ensure their customers’ loyalty when such disruptions to the market occur?
Engineers & marketers: too many cooks in the kitchen? Professor Steve Muylle discusses a frequently recurring issue within B2B marketing by means of a few relevant cases: engineers and marketers have a diferent view point on product mark...
Championing a customer-intimate philosophy – so that business strategies are aligned with customers, individually and collectively – is a laudable goal. But customer intimacy is enhanced when companies take steps to ensure that their people don’t just ‘talk the talk’ but also ‘walk the walk’.
Previous research shows that cooperation between marketing and sales departments on the one hand and finance and accounting departments on the other hand is not always satisfactory. More recent developments in management accounting however propose models and methods that are very useful for marketing and sales professionals. In this case study we describe a customer life time model that is used by a telecom company to define its marketing strategy.
Marketing researchers routinely use questionnaires to understand, explain and predict the behaviour of consumers. But designing a survey to yield watertight intelligence about markets is no mean feat: how many categories for each answer should researchers offer the individuals they quiz, and what is the best way of labelling these? A new study by Bert Weijters, Elke Cabooter and Niels Schillewaert weighs up the pros and cons of the different options surveys employ to rate the answers of respondents.