عوامل موثر بر اهمیت نسبی خلاقیت استراتژی بازاریابی و اثربخشی اجرای استراتژی بازاریابی

It seems logical that performance is maximized when a business produces a creative marketing strategy and achieves marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. However, cultural tensions and resource competition may make it difficult, or impossible, to achieve both. Contingency theory suggests that market and/or firm level influences may exist that make one or the other more important. Thus, it is important for researchers to investigate those conditions so that we can provide managers with guidance regarding where to allocate their resources. The study reported in this article assesses the impact that environmental conditions and business unit strategy have on the relative importance of marketing strategy creativity and marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. We discuss implications for managers and scholars.

Strategy scholars have argued that dynamic capabilities enable managers to adapt, integrate, and deploy physical, human, or organizational capital to achieve alignment with the changing business environment (Barney, 1991 and Teece et al., 1997) and are a source of competitive advantage. Markides (1996) argues that “breakthrough strategies,” those that redefine businesses and reshape markets, are built on the principles of developing a unique position that maintains alignment with the changing demands of the firm's environment and is effectively implemented. Thus, it seems that creative marketing strategies and skill at marketing strategy implementation would enable the firm to maintain this alignment. Therefore, the prescription for managers should be to strive for excellence at both. Is this a reasonable prescription? Some research suggests that it is. For example, O'Reilly and Tushman (2004) found that some organizations, which they term “ambidextrous organizations,” have been successful at “both exploiting the present and exploring the future,” (p. 75). However, they also note (p. 74) that “few companies do it well.” For example, a recent article in Business Week (Hindo, 2007) described the challenge of “managing the yin and yang of discipline and imagination” (p. 7) at 3M. The article goes on to argue (p. 8) that managing this tension “is one that's bedeviling CEOs everywhere.” Andrews and Smith (1996), in their study of antecedents to creative marketing programs, asserted that marketing creativity substantially influences performance, but neglected to test for the existence of this relationship. Subsequently, Menon, Bharadwaj, Adidam, and Edison (1999) found a positive relationship between marketing strategy creativity and market performance. However, Im and Workman (2004) found no relationship between marketing program creativity and new product performance. Noble and Mokwa (1999), in their study of the antecedents to marketing strategy implementation success argued (p. 57) that, “Implementation pervades strategic performance,” but neglected to test for the presence of a relationship between marketing strategy implementation effectiveness and performance. Vorhies and Morgan (2005), in their study of marketing capabilities, found that high performing firms had a stronger marketing strategy implementation capability than did average performers. Marketing strategy creativity and marketing strategy implementation effectiveness are established constructs in the marketing strategy literature because of their relevance to executives. We find it somewhat perplexing that strategy scholars have not investigated the issues that arise at the intersection of pressures for creativity and for implementation. Thus, this article contributes to the literature by simultaneously examining the impacts of marketing strategy creativity and marketing strategy implementation effectiveness on performance (which we define as the business unit achieving its objectives), and by testing for important moderators of these relationships. Before we develop our framework for predicting when attention to one or the other should dominate, we further explore the theoretical rationale for having to choose which to emphasize.

Our basic finding, that both marketing strategy creativity and marketing strategy implementation effectiveness are positively and generally associated with the business unit achieving its objectives, comes as no surprise. The more nuanced and interesting finding is that their relative importance depends, to some degree, on context. However, while the coefficients for the interaction terms are significant and in the hypothesized directions, matching focus to environmental conditions has only a modest impact on performance as shown by the small increase in R2. Thus, we do not advocate that managers should try to adjust their focus as conditions change. The story with regard to strategy is considerably more interesting. For all of the strategy types, one or the other focus seems to dominate. The conclusion though is not that the other focus should be neglected. Instead, when faced with a constraint that requires a dominant focus, whether it is resources, skills, or culture, the marketing executive should direct the firm's activities in the optimal direction as suggested in this study. Of course, this begs the questions: how does the firm develop a creative marketing strategy and what does it take to successfully execute a strategy? A creative strategy is the result of certain organizational characteristics and an appropriate strategy formulation process. Andrews and Smith (1996) found that marketing program creativity is positively influenced by both individual and situational factors including the manager's knowledge of the macro-environment, formal business education, intrinsic motivation to plan, a willingness to take risks, organizational use of a moderately formal planning process, and low time pressure. Menon et al. (1999) found that cross-functional integration and communication quality were positively associated with marketing strategy creativity while an emphasis on marketing assets and capabilities hurts creativity. In their meta-analysis of the antecedents and consequences of a market orientation, Kirca, Jayachandran, and Bearden (2006) found that market orientation was positively associated with innovativeness, which we infer to mean marketing strategy creativity as well since market-oriented firms have greater insight into customers' extant and latent needs. In the only specific study of the antecedents to marketing strategy implementation effectiveness, Noble and Mokwa (1999) found that managers' commitment to the marketing strategy mediated the relationships between the perceived fit of the marketing strategy with the organization's vision and marketing strategy implementation effectiveness, and between the perceived importance of the marketing strategy to the organization's future and marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. Other studies have claimed to assess how product-market strategies are implemented by studying, among other things, the relationships between marketing organization structure (Vorhies and Morgan, 2003 and Olson et al., 2005) and performance, and between market orientation and performance (Matsuno and Mentzer, 2000 and Slater et al., 2007). However, none of these studies specifically addressed the impact of these organizational characteristics on marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. Given the importance of marketing strategy implementation effectiveness to performance, this is an area that warrants further study. Given the constraints facing marketing managers, it is imperative that they carefully consider which of these critical activities to invest in, develop supporting capabilities for, and organize around. However, we suggest caution as it must be noted that neither marketing strategy creativity nor marketing strategy implementation effectiveness appears to be a drag on performance for any of the strategy types. We see an analogy in Treacy and Wiersema's (1995) discussion of value disciplines. While they argue that market leaders have a clear and consistent focus on one value discipline, they also achieve competitive parity on the other two. Thus, while there may be no statistically significant relationship between the non-dominant activity in this study and performance, sub-par performance in that area may negate excellent performance in the dominant area. Consequently, our recommendation is to commit the bulk of resources to the most critical activity but not neglect the other. It may be that too great an emphasis on marketing strategy creativity for Prospectors inhibits their ability to “cross the chasm” and compete successfully in the mass market. And, it may be that too great a focus on implementation distracts the management team in Low Cost Defender firms from reinventing their marketing strategies, thus turning them into Reactors. The study reported in this article provides guidance to managers regarding conditions under which to emphasize either the development of a creative marketing strategy or the implementation of marketing strategy. These results complement those from previous studies that helped to provide insight into the general characteristics of marketing strategy for the different product-market strategy types (Conant et al., 1990, Matsuno and Mentzer, 2000, McKee et al., 1989 and Olson et al., 2005; Slater and Olson, 2000, Slater and Olson, 2001 and Slater et al., 2007). These studies are serving to form the basis of a contingency-based approach to the study and practice of marketing strategy. However, despite these advances, significant work remains to be conducted. To provide a more complete roadmap marketing scholars should further investigate the antecedents to the development of a creative marketing strategy and to marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. They should also investigate other potential performance predictors for the different strategy types. This work would have important implications for both scholars and managers.