Marketing and business process re‐engineering

Focuses on the relevance and significance to marketing of the new management technique of business process re‐engineering. Current criticisms of marketing′s contribution to contemporary management are reviewed, with specific examination of the suggestion that the marketing profession has not responded adequately to major environmental changes. Reviews the main components of marketing and business process re‐engineering and concludes that, contrary to some suggestions, these approaches are not antithetical but complementary. This broad hypothesis is currently being tested empirically via a small pilot study in the UK retail sector. The very early results of the pilot study are discussed. These initial results support the hypothesis that business process re‐engineering offers the marketing profession a major opportunity to bring about more effective organizational implementation of the central marketing concept, if they ensure that key marketing ideas are institutionalized in the definition of organizational core processes and systems.