Marketing Concepts and Actions: Implementing Marketing‐led Strategic Change

Focuses on the problems for marketing executives of the implementation, rather than just those of the generation, of marketing strategies, and the inevitable associated organisational change involved. Conceptually, the focus is on the impact of the “corporate environment” on the marketing decision‐making process, as a variable influencing both the strategic choices which are made by managers, and most particularly the problems which are faced in implementing marketing strategies. These issues are closely related to the emerging area of research concerned with the importance of culture in corporate “excellence”, but the approach here differs in perspective. While the “excellence” literature has attracted much interest, one of its shortcomings is that it offers no remedy for the most immediate problems which it uncovers. Similarly, the marketing literature offers no conceptual framework, and few practical tools for managing organisational culture as a variable significant to marketing implementation and change. This frame of reference issued to identify an agenda for management to address in implementing marketing strategies, and concludes with an examination of some of the practical diagnostic devices developed to support the confrontation of these issues in marketing. The article concludes with the identification of a preliminary research model of the variables to be tested empirically.