Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing

Marketing role in B2B settings: evidence from advanced, emerging and developing markets
Roberto Mora Cortez, Wesley J. Johnston,
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Roberto Mora Cortez, Wesley J. Johnston, (2018) "Marketing role in B2B settings: evidence from advanced, emerging and
developing markets", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-04-2017-0089
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 Marketing role in B2B settings: evidence from
advanced, emerging and developing markets
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
J. Mack College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine predicted business-to-business (B2B) marketing capabilities for the next three to five years by
companies in advanced, emerging and developing economies.
Findings – The authors identify the prevalent marketing capabilities in industrial companies operating in an advanced economy (USA), two
emerging economies (Chile and Peru) and one developing economy (Bolivia), consolidating the themes in firms’ orientations. The study offers a
taxonomy of the marketing role in different stages as per country development.
Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative approach based on grounded theory.
Originality/value – This manuscript contributes to the understanding of B2B marketing across different levels of market development. The authors
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offer theoretical and practical implications regarding the paradigms reigning the role of marketing. The coding scheme emerging from the data
illustrates how companies and markets evolve in a two-way interaction.
Keywords Latin America, Business environment, Marketing capabilities, Qualitative research, Emerging markets
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction importance of such capabilities on competitive advantage

Knowledge, resources and capabilities are central themes of
growing and profitable organizations (Bean and Robinson,
2002; Day, 1994, 2011). Effective organizations have been
claimed to be configurations of practices that facilitate the
development of knowledge (Slater and Narver, 1995). In this
sense, the resource-based view (RBV) asserts that a firm can be
understood as a combination of resources and capabilities
(Barney, 2001; Teece et al., 1997). According to Day (1994,
p. 38), “capabilities are embedded in the organizational
routines and practices that they cannot be traded or imitated”.
Therefore, capabilities and organizational processes are
entangled intrinsically. Without capability, activity cannot be
done successfully (Day, 1994). The current turbulence of
markets requires that companies adjust their activities at a
higher pace. In doing so, companies need to consider the
dynamic and adaptive nature of capabilities (Day, 2011; Teece
et al., 1997; Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000), which recognizes
the impact of context on a firm’s decisions and that learning
needs to be focused on market evolution. Therefore,
capabilities should be reconfigured through time and enable
anticipation of market turning. In this context, marketing
capabilities have been acknowledged as key to deliver value-
added services and products to customers, are operatized with
an outside-in orientation and they are harder to imitate in
comparison with other firms’ capabilities (e.g. technological,
operational; Wu, 2013). The marketing field has recognized the
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on
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Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
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[DOI 10.1108/JBIM-04-2017-0089]
(Vorhies and Morgan, 2005; Merrilees et al., 2011), but its role
on the understanding of markets’ evolution has yet to be fully
addressed in extant business-to-business (B2B) marketing
literature.
The role of capabilities in business performance has been
studied mainly in developed markets (e.g. USA; Vorhies and
Morgan, 2005). Interesting marketing opportunities are
present in special non-traditional markets called emerging
markets (EMs), which are characterized by relatively high GDP
growth rates, decreasing trade barriers and moderate
infrastructure (Burgess and Steenkamp, 2006). According to
Sheth (2011), EMs evolve from the periphery to the core of
marketing practice; thus, it is relevant to understand the
challenges and concerns of their current and future capabilities
and perspectives. Non-developed markets create new
opportunities for companies, but new approaches are needed to
outperform rivals (Burgess and Steenkamp, 2006). The
activities and routines of companies represent an integrative
and overall conceptualization of how organizations relate to
their markets (Coviello et al., 2002). The differences across
countries may inform the developmental stages of their markets
and how different disciplines (e.g. marketing) are positioned
within companies.
The present paper aims to explore and analyze the key
marketing capabilities behind business operations of B2B firms
in four different countries; the similarities and differences
among the countries and identify marketing capabilities
configurations at each maturity market level (i.e. developed,
Received 12 April 2017
Revised 12 July 2017
3 October 2017
23 October 2017
24 October 2017
Accepted 25 October 2017
 Marketing role in B2B settings
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
emerging and developing) to understand the marketing role.
The two research questions guiding this study are:
RQ1. What are the key marketing capabilities that B2B
companies require to be successful at each level of
market development? and
RQ2. Which marketing paradigm reigns at each level of
market development?
Following the premises of the RBV and marketing capabilities,
this study emphasizes the importance of understanding current
business practices and the market requirements for B2B
suppliers. Thus, our approach is based on the experience of
senior sales and marketing practitioners in the analyzed
markets. The research builds over data gathered in South
America by the Centro de Marketing Industrial, Universidad de
Chile (CMI) and in the USA by the Center for Business and
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Industrial Marketing (CBiM) and the Institute for the Study of
Business Markets (ISBM). This study contributes to the existing
RBV and marketing capabilities theory, offering novel insights
regarding the role of marketing at different market
development stages based on grounded theory (Corbin and
Strauss, 2014).
The paper commences by reviewing relevant prior literature
and establishing theoretical underpinnings. Then, we present
the method, including the general characteristics of each stage
of country development. Next, the results of the study are
discussed, including the emerging coding scheme. Finally, we
draw conclusions and the managerial and theoretical
implications, acknowledging limitations and directions for
further research.
2. Literature review and background
2.1 Resource-based view and firms’ capabilities
For many years, companies were understood in economic
terms regarding their basic resource endowments (i.e. factors)
such as labor and capital (Wernerfelt, 1984). From a different
perspective, RBV proposes that firms can be conceptualized as
bundles of resources and capabilities (Eisenhardt and Martin,
2000). It assumes that resources and capabilities can be
heterogeneously distributed across firms and these differences
may persist over time (Barney, 2001). This view’s major
contribution is that it explains that differences in firm
profitability seems to be dependent on firm characteristics (e.g.
capabilities), rather than industry effects or conditions
(McGahan and Porter, 1997). The literature has been unclear
regarding the difference between resources and capabilities and
we provide clarity. The former refers to an asset or input that is
owned by a company at least on a semi-permanent basis. The
latter refers to the ability of an organization to perform a
coordinated set of tasks with a specific objective (Helfat and
Peteraf, 2003). A resource as an asset differs from a capability,
because assets can be given a monetary value (Day, 1994).
Several perspectives of what a firm’s capability is have been
deployed in the literature (Day, 1994; Helfat and Peteraf, 2003).
Krasnikov and Jayachandran (2008, p. 1) offer an integrative
definition of capabilities as “complex bundles of skills and
knowledge embedded in organizational process”. Capabilities are
positively linked to performance; specifically represent the ability
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
of firms to use their resources to create competitive advantages
(Barney, 2001). When capabilities are incorporated into the
surrounding context (i.e. embeddedness), ensure superior
coordination of functional activities, are intrinsically valuable,
possess barriers to imitation and are difficult to be transferred,
they help a firm to sustain advantage over its competitors (Day,
1994; Krasnikov and Jayachandran, 2008). The potential
advantage in firm performance is related to the degree of practice
and routine of the capabilities across the company. In addition,
some capabilities may serve as leverage points for new ones and
reinforce the firm’s superior performance through time (Barney,
2001). However, through time, capabilities need to adjust to the
changing business environment. Teece et al. (1997) introduced
the term “dynamic capability” to refer to a firm’s capacity to
renew competences in a variant context. The expected benefit for
the firm is to generate the capacity to anticipate and respond
efficiently to the market.
Capabilities can be outlined according to their different
functional areas in the organization (Krasnikov and
Jayachandran, 2008). Theoretically, Day (2011) proposes that
the key focus of attention should be on marketing capabilities
because these give the company the means to adapt to
environment variation. To test the relative effect of different
capabilities, Krasnikov and Jayachandran (2008) compared
marketing, research-and-development (R&D) and operational
capabilities. The findings support that marketing capabilities
have a stronger positive impact on performance than the others.
This comparatively higher effect lies in the essence of such
capabilities, which involve tacit and idiosyncratic knowledge,
diminishing significantly the risk of mobility, imitation and
replication (Wu, 2013). A company with strong marketing
capabilities is in a vantage position to target and manage its
products, identify customers’ needs better and improve the
understanding of factors that influence customer decisions
(Krasnikov and Jayachandran, 2008). Therefore, marketing
capabilities are reflection of market evolution (Mora Cortez
and Johnston, 2018). The more sophisticated the marketing
capabilities, the more sophisticated the market, and vice-versa.
2.2 The role of marketing and the difference among
countries
With the convergence paradigm of markets blooming because of
globalization, interest in understanding the similarities and
differences in marketing across contexts declined (Coviello et al.,
2002). However, recent events (e.g. BREXIT) and research
(O’Cass et al., 2015) advocate for in-depth comprehension of
markets and societies, individually or grouped under specific
reasons. More interesting, Mellahi et al. (2013) state that there is
no clear explanation of why business practices are adopted or not
in a new country or setting. Contextual perspectives (e.g.
institution-based view; Peng et al., 2008) suggest that
environments significantly shape how firms operate and
consequently their performance. Therefore, marketing
capabilities developed by companies can differ according to the
country context. Further, because firms are driving markets and
playing an active role in shaping markets (O’Cass et al., 2015),
closer attention to their capabilities is needed. In markets with
low economic development, purchase power is commonly
limited. This biases customers toward affordable products with
more basic functionality (Burgess and Steenkamp, 2006).
 Marketing role in B2B settings
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
Moreover, the low levels of productivity in non-developed
economies increase the low-cost orientation of industrial
customers and firms minimize their costs of labor, advertising,
among others. Wu (2013, p. 37) found that “marketing
capabilities are less influential when the market’s economic
development is low”. If marketing plays a different role across
distinct markets, the marketing paradigm reigning in those
countries should differ too. With this general understanding, we
proceed to describe and discuss the research method.
3. Method
3.1 Classification of markets
There is an overabundance of country classification schemes,
and markets have been inconsistently catalogued throughout
the marketing literature and practice (Burgess and Steenkamp,
2006). The traditional economic-based perspective categorizes
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three groups of countries. First, developed economies refer to
countries with a relatively high level of economic development,
order and security. Some countries at this stage of development
are Australia, Canada, Japan and Norway. Second, developing
economies refer to low-income countries characterized by
limited industrialization and low GDP rates. Some
representative nations of this market classification are
Bangladesh, Guatemala, Ukraine and Zambia. Third,
emerging economies refer to fast-growing countries with
moderate GDP per capita, increasing middle class and novel
high level of attractiveness for foreign investment, exporting
and sourcing. Some countries at this stage of development are
Colombia, Hungary, Oman and South Africa.
To provide objective thresholds for country classifications,
we explored the definitions and rationales of key market actors
including the IMF, World Bank, United Nations and the
World Trade Organization. We selected a decision criterion
based on two perspectives of country development: economic
and social, because there is a strong co-evolution of the
economy and society (Luo, 2006). On the one hand, in line
with previous research (Burgess and Steenkamp, 2006), GDP
per capita at PPP is a robust measure of domestic growth and
economic performance. GDP is detrimental to gross national
income (GNI) because the latter includes remittances from
other countries. On the other hand, education and health are
widely accepted as the basic pillars of societies’ development.
For this reason, we considered the Human Development Index
(HDI) from the Human Development Report (HDR, 2016).
In addition, both sources are open to general public and
researchers, which allows others to easily obtain data and
Table I Indexes of economic development
Index USA
a
Population (in millions) 318.9
GDPb (in billions USD) 17,348
GDP PPPb (in billions USD) 17,348
GDP PPPb (% of the world) 15.95
GDP PPPb per capita (USD) 54,369
Average GDP growthc 2010-2015 (%) 2.12
Inflationa (%) 1.6
Unemploymentb (%) 6.15
a b c
Sources: World Bank (2014); IMF (2015); World Bank (2016)
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
classify markets of their interest (Burgess and Steenkamp,
2006).
We define developing markets as those countries in which:
 PPP-adjusted GDP per capita, converted to US dollar
(constant 2011), averaged during the last five years, is
equal or lower than the average of low- and middle-
income countries (IMF, 2015) at the year of evaluation,
currently $9,350; and
 HDI values are medium or low in the HDR.
Next, we illustrate emerging markets as countries in which (1)
GDP per capita is higher than $9,350 and lower than $25,000
and (2) HDI is high or medium. Finally, we define advanced
markets as those countries in which (1) GDP per capita is equal
to or higher than $25,000 and (2) HDI is very high. The
selection of the $25,000 pivot point responds to the final
consensus of a panel of five USA experts in economics.
3.2 Research markets
Latin America has been growing at a fast rate during the last 10-
15 years, but is encountering some difficulties in the present
because of the decrease in commodities’ price. The region is
considered an emerging economy as a whole because many
countries are described as economies of steady growing
income, newly industrialized, or advancing toward social
development. However, not all the countries reach this
category. According to our definitions, for instance: Bolivia,
Guyana and Paraguay are developing countries. We selected
three countries as representative of the region; they are Chile
and Peru as emerging markets and Bolivia as a developing
market, because they accounted for the presence of elaborate
industrial supply chains and the access to data is possible.
Conversely, we chose the USA as our base of comparison to
contrast the results from the non-developed countries with a
developed economy. The USA has been regarded as an
internationally competitive economy, claiming the first place in
IMD world competitiveness ranking (IMD, 2015, World
Competitiveness Yearbook). In Table I, we provide a summary
of data that supports the markets’ classification.
3.3 Sample and data collection
We selected a qualitative approach in line with other
exploratory marketing research (Komulainen, 2014).
Following the procedure used by the ISBM (2012) for their last
study in the USA, the same instrument was applied to senior
marketing of, commercial and/or sales executives of B2B
companies from Bolivia, Chile, Peru and the USA. The
Chile Peru Bolivia
17.76 30.97 10.40
258.1 202.6 33
410.9 372.7 74.78
0.378 0.343 0.065
23,056 11,860 6,953
4.16 5.39 5.29
4.4 3.2 4.1
6.39 6 N/A
 Marketing role in B2B settings Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston

sampling follows a non-random scheme by theoretical
procedure, obtaining 228 respondents[1]. The purpose of this
non-probabilistic sampling is to engage participants that can
provide a deeper explanation of their beliefs and thoughts. The
total sample is divided into 39, 79, 44 and 66 practitioners from
Bolivia, Chile, Peru and the USA, respectively. One important
driver of the sample size of each group was the idea of category
saturation (Corbin and Strauss, 2014), which means that
researchers conducted the interview guide with executives of
each country until they yielded relatively few new insights.
The informants of each country come from a range of
industry sectors (manufacturing sectors such as chemical and
pumps, distribution and services sectors such as maintenance
and cleaning) and organizational business functions. To ensure
enough expertise in our research context, we selected
practitioners with more than 8 years of experience. In the
sample, more than 50 per cent of the interviewees have been
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familiar with it. The Latin American interview guide was a
translated version from the original English version used in the
USA. The translation and back translation was performed by
two independent professional translators. The translation
output from the two different translators was exactly the same
(see the interview guide in the Appendix).
3.4 Data analysis
The interviews were transcribed completely, which amounted
to 104 pages of single-spaced transcripts. The interview started
with the respondents describing their business and target
markets. In questions 1 and 2, the practitioners were asked to
mention the key capabilities of B2B marketing (and the
context) that the company will need to develop over the next
three to five years to reach competitive advantage, and reasons
supporting their answers. Questions 3A and 3B generated
supplementary information to answer our research questions.

managers or higher for at least 5 years (see Table II for more To finalize the interview, the respondents described themselves
details). It is important to state that C-levels and VP titles are and provided some additional information about the
not yet common in Latin America. company’s background.
The recruitment process among the countries varies, but all Following Corbin and Strauss (2014), the researchers used a
assure an individualized response. For Chile and Peru, the general open coding approach at the first phase to register the
CMI recruited participants during a B2B marketing congress in capabilities at the most basic state. The specific technique used
Santiago (October 22, 2015) and Lima (October 20, 2015), is structural coding (MacQueen et al., 2008), paragraph by
respectively. To follow up, the CMI contacted the participants paragraph. This procedure acts as a labeling and indexing
of Bolivia, Chile and Peru through email and phone in early device that allows researchers to quickly access the data
2016. The USA informants were reached thanks to the ISBM (Corbin and Strauss, 2014). The intra-rater reliability (i.e.
via emailing and to the CBiM through phone calls in 2016. degree of consensus between the researchers) reached a
Offering anonymity to B2B executives reduces social and satisfactory level of 94 per cent (Rust and Cooil, 1994) and the
business pressure (Krosnick and Presser, 2010). differences were settled under theoretical agreement. Then, at
The semi-structured interview guide was composed of three the second stage, we applied an axial coding approach that
open-ended questions that allowed the authors to acquire the permits grouping similarly coded data, relating categories to
necessary information regarding future B2B marketing subcategories along their properties and re-labeling them into
capabilities. We focused on the next three to five years, because conceptual categories (MacQueen et al., 2008), in this case,
the future allows thinking of real needs without being biased by marketing perspectives. Finally, during the third, selective
the day-to-day issues. In the USA, the instrument was coding stage, the general perspectives of marketing were
administered in English, whereas the interview guides in integrated into a unifying framework, identifying the overall
Bolivia, Chile and Peru were administered in Spanish because marketing paradigm reigning at each level of market
Spanish is their official language and practitioners are more development. Consistent with grounded theory (Corbin and
Strauss, 2014), we eliminated axial categories that were not
Table II Sample characteristics mentioned by multiple participants (i.e. less than five people)
USA (%) Chile (%) Peru (%) Bolivia (%) or only applied to specific business conditions (e.g. distribution
Criterion (n = 66) (n = 79) (n = 44) (n = 39) of physical products). The general codification process was
supported by NVivo software (version 11.0).
Industry sector As a reliability check of our findings, we contacted two
Products 83.3 50.6 47.7 41.0 independent judges (not related with the study) to code the
Distributor 6.1 25.3 29.5 38.5
verbatim transcripts, and verify the accuracy of the identified
Services 10.6 24.1 25.0 20.5
B2B marketing capabilities (MCs). This exercise was applied
Function for the Bolivian and Chilean data. Following the inter-judge
Marketing 62.1 29.1 20.5 25.6 reliability index (i.e. coding convergence with the external
Sales 12.1 24.1 34.1 48.7 coders) suggested by Perreault and Leigh (1989), the result
Both or other 25.8 46.8 45.5 25.6 reached 0.91, exceeding the 0.7 threshold recommended for
exploratory research (Rust and Cooil, 1994). Content validity
Hierarchy
was supported in four different ways:
C-Level 9.09 5.06 9.09 2.6
1 We sent the results to the participants, which included the
Vice President 12.12 1.27 2.27 12.8
whole coding scheme. We received 35 answers back,
Manager 39.39 63.29 56.82 51.3
Deputy Manager 1.52 13.92 13.64 28.2
agreeing with the overall results and the marketing
Other 37.88 16.46 18.18 5.1 paradigms proposed for each type of market (M = 8.55, in
a Likert scale from 0 to 10 measuring degree of consensus
 Marketing role in B2B settings
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
with our findings). However, 15 participants suggested
minimal modifications to the definitions presented.
2 We presented our framework, definitions and coding
scheme in three practitioner workshops (two in Chile and
one in Peru). These executives again agreed (M = 8.76)
with the overall structure and suggested only slight
changes in wording.
3 We contacted and discussed the results with 10 Bolivian
practitioners (not included in the sample), obtaining high
degree of concordance (M = 9.12). More interesting,
these executives helped us to deepen the reasons behind
the reigning B2B marketing paradigm for developing
countries.
4 Finally, we presented the results to an MBA class (of 40
students with international experience) in a major US
University (52.5% had international experience and 7.5%
were from Latin America), obtaining a 95% agreement of
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the general coding scheme.
In synthesis, the formal coding process and the trustworthiness
assessment assure that our findings are valid and reliable,
regarding B2B MCs and the marketing paradigms representing
developed, emerging and developing countries.
4. Findings
We integrated the key capabilities that emerged during the data
analysis into an overall framework that led to the taxonomy of
marketing for different levels of market development. We built
over the insights grounded in the practitioners’ own language.
The results of our research suggest that there are categories of
concordance and discordance between the USA, Chile and
Peru and Bolivia. Our findings suggest that B2B marketing is a
context-dependent function. Table III shows the resulting
coding scheme from the grounded theory research procedure.
At the heart of this framework is the acknowledgment
presented by Moorman and Rust (1999, p. 191), suggesting
that “the appropriateness of any structure for the marketing
function depends on several contingencies in both the
environment and the organization”. Overall, the results show
some convergence and divergence of B2B marketing
capabilities across the levels of market development. For
advanced economies, we recognized eleven marketing
capabilities. The specificity mentioned can be perceived
analyzing the double role played by the CX capability in
developed markets. On the one hand, it appeals to understand
the value process; on the other hand, it relates to creativity
generation. For emerging economies, we identified 11
marketing capabilities. Four capabilities are shared with
advanced economies:
1 customer relationship management;
2 new offering development;
3 designing value propositions; and
4 developing new customers and markets, but the rationale
leading their importance diverges.
The main difference is the timing perspective, where the focus
on emerging markets is more tactical or short-term oriented.
For developing economies, we acknowledged seven marketing
capabilities. Three capabilities are shared with emerging
economies, namely, branding, pricing and marketing
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
communications. The main difference is the dominant internal
or inside-out perspective in developing economies.
Having previously reviewed the theoretical foundations of
marketing capabilities and the data analysis procedure, we next
outline each axial-category within our framework as it emerged
from the data. We represent these categories as marketing
orientations adopted by the firms. We introduce each
orientation related to each level of market development by
giving representative verbatim quotes from the data and
eliciting supportive literature. Considering the coding scheme
shown in Table III, this section examines the way capabilities
are organized into nine firms’ marketing orientations. These
orientations represent basic philosophical approaches of how
B2B companies relate to their markets. More formally, a firm
orientation reflects the organizational culture that guide
interactions with the marketplace (Noble et al., 2002).
4.1 Relevant capabilities to developed economies
4.1.1 Value process orientation
First, value process orientation involves all activities related to
designing, creating and delivering value to customers. The specific
capabilities acknowledged by US practitioners include customer
relationships, marketing channels, customer experience and new
product development. Customer relationship development is a
distinctive capability of B2B firms. For these practitioners, it is a
central element of B2B marketing and impacts long-term
sustainability. Buyer–seller relationships foster the value co-
creation process (Preikschas et al., 2017; Charterina and Landeta,
2010) and companies mutually invest, entangling resources while
sharing data. As one participant explained:
Managing our relationships with customer allows us to keep closer
perspective of the value co-created by our service people and their
maintenance teams. (US CMO, chemicals)
Managing marketing channels involves selecting and
maintaining channels of distribution that maximize the delivery
of value to end-user customers. US practitioners in our study
mentioned that customers are always looking to improve the
marketing channels, advocating for more automatized
processes:
We are pleased with the market response to our new e-commerce channel.
Customers select the service characteristics, scheduling directly on the
platform. Nowadays, the salesforce needs to call once, instead of three or
more times [. . .] We need to sustain this lower cost channel integration (US
CEO, distributor).
Customer experience (CX) understood as the customer
response to what happened during the whole business journey,
is also part of the value process orientation. The participation of
multiple people in a B2B experience makes its evaluation very
complex. Fortunately, more than an outstanding experience,
firms just want one without problems. US suppliers use it as a
source of learning for value co-creation. New product
development is an essential capability in developed markets. It
entails designing, producing and managing product and service
offerings. In the quest of providing superior value to
continuously demanding customers, new offerings are the core
element to sustain competitive advantage. According to US
practitioners, designing the right value propositions is the key
source to demonstrate and document the economic benefits of
product and services. A superior value statement can
 Marketing role in B2B settings Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston

Table III Coding scheme

Open-coding categories Axial-coding categories Selective-coding categories
Developed economies
Customer relationships to improve value co-creation Value process orientation Marketing as an investment and engine of
innovation
Marketing channels’ combination to deliver value
Customer experience to understand the value creation process
New offering development with superior value to the market
Designing value propositions to demonstrate win-win situations
Responding to market turbulence and worldwide competitors Controlling economic return
while sustaining profits orientation
Data analytics and business intelligence to control customer
profitability
Customer education to maximize product/service usage ROI
Developing new markets and customers to sustain growth and
profits
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Managing globalization to create new products faster than Innovativeness orientation

competitors
Social media as a channel of discovery
Customer experience as a source of creativity
Emerging economies
Customer relationships to favor transparency and balance Interaction orientation Marketing as a support function to sales and
relationship developer
Develop new products with customer input
Marketing communications to improve approach to customers
Sales force technical knowledge to provide customers solutions Customer orientation
Managing business strategy to respond to customer needs
Branding to increase customer trust
Market research to learn about the customer
Pricing as a tool to capture market Sales growth orientation
New markets and customers to increase sales
Customer service as driver of new revenue
Design value propositions that helps our sales process
Developing economies
Stabilize selling process to fulfill operations requirements Manufacturing planning Marketing as productivity catalyst and image builder
orientation
Connect the market and the production cycles
Customer relationships to coordinate production, stock and sales Efficacy and efficiency
orientation
Pricing that optimize customer service levels
Support interdepartmental coordination
Advertising and communications Corporate image orientation
Web design and branding elements

differentiate the offering and influence companies to pay a
premium price (Anderson et al., 2006):
We need to measure the key episodes of our customers’ experience,
adjusting as much as we can our offerings to their needs [. . .] Since we
implemented quantitative value propositions; we are capturing a fair share of
the value delivered, almost a 3% more than with the old approach. (US
Sales manager, food)
4.1.2 Controlling economic return orientation
Second, this orientation refers to all the activities involved in
quantifying customer profitability and a firm’s value derived
developing new markets and customers. The volatility of many
markets around the world has an impact on the supply and
demand forecasting. Firms are encountering rapid and
complex changes, including uncertainty regarding customer
needs, escalating competitive pressure and market growth
contingency. This turbulence is seen as an opportunity to find
other sources of profit:
We are exploring different markets and latitudes where we can extract value
with our most sophisticated offerings, besides this sends a message to other
participants on how proactively we are managing the current nervousness in
the industry. (US marketing manager, maintenance).

from the marketing function. The capabilities stated by US Data analytics and business intelligence refers to the use of
practitioners are responding to market turbulence, data information to improve the decision-making process. The key
analytics and business intelligence, customer education and domains for analytics applications are customer relationship
 Marketing role in B2B settings
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
management (CRM) with methods that control customer
lifetime value, optimization of the marketing mix,
personalization of the marketing mix and security and privacy.
US practitioners emphasize the first of these applications to
maximize the profitability of the client portfolio. Next,
customer education in a B2B context has been seen as the
natural evolution of the traditional promotion (Ettenson et al.,
2013). In brief, customer education focuses on providing
consumers with the skills to use information rather than merely
the presentation of information and facts without any further
support, as stated by a respondent:
The company needs to change the traditional communication approach to
customer education. We need to demonstrate our superior technology and
help the customer to extract more from the products. Then, if they are
satisfied, they will increase their willingness to pay. (US deputy sales
manager, engineering)
Developing new markets and customers is always on the radar
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of US practitioners. They are looking to migrate to more
profitable segments to sustain organic growth. The firms’
success in new markets depends on how well the market
opportunity was identified, analyzed and incorporated into the
offering’s design. New customers are an intuitive source of
growth, but the level of competition will moderate the
economic output for the supplier:
We need to find market niches where we can outperform our competitors
[. . .] going to a new market doesn’t assure success, we need to do robust
market qualifications to understand rivals positioning and risk. (US CMO,
valves and pumps)
4.1.3 Innovativeness orientation
Third, innovativeness entails a firm’s ability and processes to
create new and better outcomes from business functions. The
identified capabilities by US practitioners include managing
globalization, social media (i.e. digital marketing) and CX.
Globalization is a driver of new product development. US
practitioners strongly believe that the openness of markets
makes companies look toward innovation. Next, social media
refers to the digital bi-directional interaction between
customers and suppliers. Practitioners assert that B2B
customers generally prefer social media only as a source of
information (Keinänen and Kuivalainen, 2015). Therefore, for
companies to support the use of social media as a channel of
discovery, marketers will need to find the way to activate
business social media users. However, if customers’ response is
weak, companies can reduce their efforts, as the following
excerpt reveals:
We have invested money and time to develop social media such as LinkedIn
and Facebook, without the answer from the market that we were expecting
[. . .] We should find the way to involve our customers and get more insights
or review this decision because its maintenance is not at zero cost. We took
the trend and we are failing. (US Sales manager, machinery)
Finally, CX is also perceived as a source of creativity.
Practitioners suggest that the presence of both individual and
organizational creativity mechanisms led to the highest level of
innovation performance. US practitioners acknowledge that
creativity is required to “surprise the market”. CX is a key
capability in companies that want to be successful in developed
economies because it creates opportunities for new ideas:
The office isn’t a good source for progressive ideas [. . .] customers and non-
customers operations are better scenarios to open our mind [. . .] if we learn
from their experiences, we will expand our creativity. (US Sales VP, oil [&]
gas)
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
4.2 Relevant capabilities to emerging economies
4.2.1 Interaction orientation
First, this orientation enhances the focus on individual
customers, incorporating the feedback of customers in specific
and directed actions, aligning customers’ expectations with
suppliers’ activities. The specific capabilities declared by
emerging practitioners include customer relationships, new
product development and marketing communications. Several
practitioners in Chile and Peru acknowledge the importance to
sustain customer relationships with benefits of honesty and
transparency. Communication is the basic activity to link
people and create relationships. The key to successful
communication is sharing information, as one practitioner
noted:
The flow of information with our customers is continuous. With more
transparency and open channels, we can develop better answers to the
market and the market responds favorably by diminishing the business
uncertainty [. . .] trust is developed through time in any kind of relationship
(Chilean CEO, mining).
Developing new products with the help of progressive
customers has been at the core of the success of firms such as
3M or Hitachi (Cavusgil et al., 2003). The customer input is
relevant not just for the adoption of new offerings, but to
strengthen the buyer–seller interaction. Practitioners assert that
the more conscious the customers are about their participation
in the development process, the more attractive will be the
outcome. Next, marketing communications refers to the firm’s
ability to deliver the right message, in the right channel, at the
right moment and manage customer perceptions. Suppliers in
our study mentioned that participation in trade shows or
advertising in an industry magazine, reflects their desire to be
involved in the customer world and create opportunities to
interact:
We need to be present where our customers are [. . .] It will increase the flow
of communication and deliver a strong sign that we are a reliable supplier
[. . .] we have to use these instances to adjust our offering. (Peruvian
marketing manager, construction)
4.2.2 Customer orientation
Second, customer orientation refers to the firm’s generation,
dissemination and responsiveness to customer intelligence.
The particular capabilities acknowledged by interviewees are
sales force technical knowledge, managing business strategy,
branding and market research. The sales force technical
knowledge is one of the most important features of the
supplier’s sales approach from the customer perspective
(Eggert and Ulaga, 2002). A strong knowledgeable sales team
is an indication of the supplier’s customer orientation. Next,
managing the business strategy usually involves modifying the
business model. Short-term and long-term implications of
modifying the business strategy are well established (Dess et al.,
1993). With the current dynamics of the markets, connecting
unique value propositions in the pertinent network of
collaborating users, organizations and other stakeholders is
increasingly difficult in emerging economies. As another
interviewee stated:
“During the 1990-2007 period, the company slightly modified its business
strategy. However, in the last 8 or 10 years we have adapted our structure
and business model more than 5 times [. . .] but satisfactorily for us the
changes were necessary and have kept the customers under the right sight”
(Chilean deputy business manager, machinery).
 Marketing role in B2B settings
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
Market research refers to the processes by which the firms learn
about their markets. Generating the right information about
needs and preferences of customers, as well as the exogenous
factors that influence customer behavior, is the starting point of
market orientation:
“A key capability we have to develop is market research [. . .] it sounds
obvious, but formal processes for data gathering are hard to sustain,
especially when you are dealing with day-to-day operations. If the
information flow is constant, we will have to think more about the market”
(Peruvian sales VP, mining).
Emerging markets’ practitioners consider branding capability
as relevant to cultivate customer trust. The theory proposes a
brand–consumer relationship, which is seen as a substitute for
human contact between the company and its customers
(Kalafatis et al., 2012). In practice, a strong brand decreases the
perceived risk by customers and other stakeholders, which is a
sign of the company’s attitude toward the market:
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“Branding is essential to reach customers at a level where personal
relationships can’t [. . .] brand management provides and emotional
connection with the market, building up trust” (Chilean marketing analyst,
pulp & paper).
4.2.3 Sales growth orientation
Third, this orientation refers to the firm’s focus on reaching a
higher market share. The sales force, as a resource, plays an
active role in achieving the goals (see Farías et al., 2017 for
value quantification). The capabilities recognized by emerging
executives include pricing, developing new markets and
customers, customer service and designing value propositions.
Pricing, in emerging markets, is conceived as a mechanism to
capture value. Practitioners acknowledge the power of price
definitions when negotiating with customers, sometimes the
“ease” to modify this variable leads to sacrificing profitability
(Anderson et al., 2006). Moreover, the interviewees seem
“obsessed” with the role of pricing. As one executive shared:
“Everything is price here. We need to manage the pricing process in a more
mature manner. Today, if the price is fair and lower than our competition,
the customers prefer your offering. But, often, we lose and spend hours
analyzing how more expensive was our quotation, generally without any
critic about the value we were delivering. Sometimes the firm’s conclusion is
as simple as we lost by $1” (Peruvian commercial manager, machinery).
Next, new markets and customers are operated as vehicles to
increase sales. The potential success in a new segment is
intrinsically related to the understanding of the marketplace.
However, the focus on customer needs tends to disappear when
the pressure is high on the supplier. As another interviewee
expressed:
“We need to create new customers whenever there is a chance, the traditional
market is flat and future perspectives are not so good. So, if someone from the
industry “X” calls us and requires a product for a different application, we will not
ask many questions. Of course we try to position our equipment smartly, but I have
seen the reality of my salespeople and we are always attentive to what happen with
these particular cases” (Peruvian business development manager,
lubrication).
Customer service refers to the support that the customer
receives along the business journey. According to suppliers in
our study, there is always a debate about what level of service
should be free and what level could be paid. They acknowledge
that a way to keep the price as low as possible is to sell the
product or service without any supplementary service. Then if
the customer requires something additional, it will have a
charge. On the other hand, it is argued that the situation
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
increases the supplier’s attention to the quality of the core
product or service and provides “incentive” to the customer to
be more careful. This is in line with the findings of McCollough
et al. (2000), which express that suppliers have a better
customer’s evaluation by avoiding service failure than by
responding to failure with superior recovery. Finally, value
propositions are operated in emerging markets as supportive
tools for the sales process. Practitioners recognize the potential
of value propositions, but delimit their scope to a more tactical
than strategic operation. As declared by one practitioner:
“We need to work on communicating our value propositions. The concept in the
company is relatively new and we expect to improve our sales funnel hand in hand
with the implementation of this concept. I hope that customers will react positively
and close the deal in shorter time.” (Chilean marketing VP, steel)
4.3 Relevant capabilities to developing economies
4.3.1 Manufacturing planning orientation
First, manufacturing planning orientation involves all the activities
related to improve the throughput of the plant, factory or
operations in a firm. The specific capabilities stated by developing
practitioners are selling and matching operations with the
marketplace. The selling capability refers to the processes that
firms implement to acquire customer orders. Bolivian
practitioners informed that production, manufacturing and
engineering departments are powerful and possess and inside-out
perspective of the business. The government role is also
mentioned as probable cause of “myopia”. Thus, the sales
function is more concerned about internal planning than
answering to customers’ needs. Subsequently, marketing
planning capability, understood as the firm’s ability to strategically
link a firm’s resources and the marketplace, is commonly
mentioned by practitioners. However, in developing markets, the
goal is forcing the demand to be coordinated with the resources
and internal activities, and in case of mismatch the supplier
prioritizes its operations. Practitioners in the sample stated that if a
customer requires some modifications of a service, and breaks the
operations program, the most probable situation is that the
company will not provide the service at all:
“Often customers have emergencies and require special attention, but our
plant doesn’t think about it, even when we stress the willingness of the
customer to pay a premium. This is frustrating.” (Bolivian service manager,
maintenance)
4.3.2 Efficacy and efficiency orientation
Second, this orientation involves minimizing the costs related
to the overall operation and standardizing the offering. The
capabilities emerged from the executives’ interviews include
pricing and interdepartmental coordination. Suppliers are
interested in building relationships with customers to align
operations, stock and sales. As one practitioner stated:
“We are elaborating a relationship plan to interconnect the operations of
some customers with ours. The integration process will lead us to learn how
to decrease our production costs, while delivering a good product.”
(Bolivian business manager, control equipment)
At some level, practitioners in developing markets assume the
offering as fixed, not as a variable depending of customers’
needs, or at least the presumption of stasis is higher than in
emerging and advanced markets. Next, pricing is perceived as
defining a margin over the production cost. The customer
service is generally not exhaustively controlled; hence, the
challenge matches the cost to serve with the price paid by
 Marketing role in B2B settings
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
customers. This situation is perceptively coherent, but doesn’t
include the perspective of value. For example, an executive in
our sample stated:
“Sometimes we fixed a problem in 60 minutes that provides the customer
with a sophisticated solution due to the effort and knowledge displayed and
we will charge linearly for this, while in other cases we can take 5 hours for a
minimal issue due to our lack of knowledge, and we will charge the customer
according to our hourly fee” (Bolivian commercial manager, maintenance).
The marketing function is requested to develop a capability to
coordinate different departments. The organizational setting,
which should be coordinated by the human resources or
administrative function, in developing markets is attached to
the marketing role. Practitioners comment that it creates
interdepartmental conflict which makes it unlikely to respond
correctly to market needs. Although marketing intrinsically
possesses an integrative role and emphasizes the relevance of
people, organizations and social processes, market-based
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capabilities are what ultimately contribute to shareholder value.
4.3.3 Corporate image orientation
Third, corporate image orientation refers to the activities
designed to improve the supplier’s reputation in the market.
This orientation is the only one with an outside-in perspective.
However, as we will describe through the capabilities’ focus,
the implementation is far from being adequate. The specific
capabilities acknowledged by interviewees are advertising and
Web design and branding. Marketing communications is
minimized to advertising and direct communications with
customers. The rationale behind publishing in an industry
magazine or newspaper is “being present”. As one executive
declared:
“The CEO requests to advertise in some local newspapers related to our industry.
The challenge is to define a message to enhance our reputation and show the
market that we are thriving” (Bolivian deputy marketing manager,
scaffolding).
Finally, branding is conceived as logo design and some other
basic tasks that include the conception of the website without a
clear reasoning about the functional customer-based
configuration of the site. Practitioners acknowledge that due
because of abundant market imperfections, companies deal
with issues of hidden information by providing devices to
project specific meaning. As the following excerpt reveals:
“As many customers are unknown, signaling is very important [. . .] In this
market you have some big brands and many small local businesses. We are
perceived negatively, almost as invaders, by the common people. Working in
our brand elements is key to transmit a clear a better idea of who we are”
(Bolivian deputy sales manager, processed steel).
5. Discussion
To develop a generalizable conceptualization of the marketing
paradigms reigning at each level of market development, we
integrate the orientations that emerged from the data by
analyzing their properties and theoretical underpinnings
(Corbin and Strauss, 2014). A paradigm represents “a typical
example or pattern of something; a pattern or model” (Oxford
Dictionary, 2016). In addition, the term paradigm may be
defined as a loose collection of logically related assumptions,
concepts or propositions that orient thinking and behavior
(Bogdan and Biklin, 1998). Therefore, a prevalent marketing
paradigm, in a particular economy, leads to the transformation
of the market. The process of transformation is a continuous
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
and bidirectional interaction between the market and
companies; thus, as the market evolves, the companies evolve
too. In consequence, there is no fixed path for the evolution of
markets and the knowledge entailed in the process. Hence, it is
unlikely that the marketing paradigm reigning today in
advanced markets will be representative of the future marketing
paradigm of current developing or emerging markets, even if
they reach an advanced status. Moreover, the characterization
of markets is decided by assigning a “label” that is indicative of
certain conditions. As social science recognizes (Banathy,
2013), societies, organizations and people also evolve through
time, which modify the criteria regarding what is perceived as
relevant or significant.
Our findings suggest that different paradigms are prevalent
under certain market conditions. First, in advanced economies,
marketing is perceived as an investment and engine of
innovation. According to Kumar (2015), technology progress,
new level of customer insight and the formulation of marketing
activities directed at the customer level explain the concern of
companies toward marketing accountability and customer
centricity. The success of this paradigm relies on the
understanding of the relationship marketing concept, a cross
disciplinary approach and combining theory and practice
(Gummesson, 2014). In addition, companies conceive
marketing as the engine of innovation because the learning
process about the market makes inherent the use of the new
knowledge in a way that creates economic value for the firm.
This conceptualization of marketing is robust and progressive,
but has not reached a level where marketing is at the core of the
organization and brings down functional barriers. B2B
companies, in developed economies, are satisfactorily following
the recommendations of strategists from the 90’s in a way that
marketing is the grand competence of the firm (Jüttner and
Wehrli, 1994). The dynamics of the firm’s behavior (Stalk
et al., 1991) and the innovativeness of the company, drive long-
term success in industrial markets (Jüttner and Wehrli, 1994).
Second, in emerging markets, marketing is still very attached
to its origin as a form of support for the sales function.
However, companies are pointing the way toward a customer-
oriented and service-dominated concept of marketing. The
short-term sales growth orientation and the pro-market
orientations seem to be struggling to co-exist, making it difficult
for the practitioners to support the marketing concept. As
Drucker (1954) asserted, marketing is more than selling and is
distinct from it. For companies, in emerging markets, to keep
enhancing the marketing concept, managers must develop
better measures of marketing productivity, connecting the
results to the financial systems and goals of the firm (Webster,
2005). The distinction with the original and basic role of
marketing in the 60’s, is the relevance assigned by the suppliers
to the relationships with customers. A strong relationship with
customers can be the milestone to start demonstrating the
economic effect of marketing (Corsaro and Snehota, 2010). On
the one hand, the risk and uncertainty associated with future
cash flows generated by the customers are lower. Therefore, the
weighted average cost of capital should decrease. On the other
hand, the supplier can increase revenues by up-selling and
cross-selling, according to the size of the customer wallet.
Third, in developing markets, marketing is perceived as a
productivity catalyst and image builder. In these economies,
 Marketing role in B2B settings
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
marketing is concerned about the stability of the manufacturing
or operations processes. Managers are pursuing efficacy and
efficiency of their managerial and operational activities. The
pressure to measure the effectiveness of their expenditures,
biases the company’s focus toward areas in which executives
can track and report results (Webster, 2005). Reduction of cost
is a simpler task than increasing revenues. However, companies
recognize that an excessive attention to cost can lead to a
decline in quality. As end-users are increasing their
sophistication and expectations about products and service,
suppliers and other actors up-stream implement manufacturing
standards to avoid quality issues (Hillebrand and Biemans,
2011). The standardization process leads to a balance in the
firm’s operations which creates an opportunity for sales and
marketing. Companies in developing economies are paying
attention to brand management as a capability to escape from
the trap of commoditization. A brand is operatized as a name,
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term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these, which
intends to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of
sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors
(Kotler and Pfoertsch, 2007). Companies, however, are yet at
the base of the brand equity process, just enhancing their
salience in the market. Companies in developing economies are
expected to go a long way and they need to start by adopting an
outside-in perspective. According to Webster (2005, p. 124),
“customer orientation and value delivery must be at the core of
the firm if the company is to maximize long-term value for its
owners and its other constituencies”. The differences across the
marketing paradigms described are evident and present a big
challenge for the future. All in all, this study supports that
marketing role is less important when the market’s economic
development is low (Wu, 2013).
6. Conclusions and implications
This study offers detailed information about B2B marketing
capabilities that are needed to be successful in advanced,
emerging and developing markets in the next three to five years.
We highlight the differences and similarities of B2B marketing
capabilities in the USA, Chile and Peru and Bolivia, introducing
the prevalent companies’ marketing orientations. Despite the
business importance of how firms interplay with the
environment, prior research has provided little explanation of
the underlying marketing capabilities affecting firm performance
in each domain. Therefore, we build on and extend extant
literature on marketing capabilities in an international context.
Our findings also contribute in three main areas to a better
understanding of how B2B suppliers can compete and reach
profitability in different market environments.
First, a key contribution is to identify the distinctive
capabilities that B2B suppliers must develop to keep moving
toward an organic growing and profitable future, in variant
levels of market development. We did not focus on generating
an exhaustive list of generic capabilities per se; rather, we
expected to distinguish capabilities that create value through
specific applications. Open coding allowed us to identify cross-
country convergence (e.g. customer relationships) where the
capability has different degrees of depth, and divergence among
the countries (e.g. social media as a relevant theme only for the
USA).
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
Second, we analyzed the underlying properties of each
capability and created a theoretical network to elevate the level
of abstraction and establish marketing orientations at each
stage of market development. For advanced economies, three
marketing orientations are representative of the expected
patterns of practice and learning:
1 value process orientation;
2 controlling economic return orientation; and
3 innovativeness orientation.
These marketing perspectives refer to the importance given by
B2B suppliers to the creation of long-term value from a
continuous approach and properly harvesting the value shared
with the market. For emerging economies, three marketing
orientations are illustrative of companies’ visions toward the
market:
1 interaction orientation;
2 customer orientation; and
3 sales growth orientation.
For developing economies, another three marketing
orientations are characteristic of a firm’s business approach:
1 manufacturing planning orientation;
2 efficacy and efficiency orientation; and
3 corporate image orientation.
Overall, we conclude that companies in advanced economies
have a relatively robust market orientation; firms from
emerging economies have a predominant sales orientation and
companies operating in developing economies have a prevailing
production orientation.
Third, answering our second research question, we
integrated the marketing orientations emerged from the data
and identified the dominant paradigm of marketing practice at
each level of development. This categorization offers taxonomy
of the marketing role in different levels of country development,
leading to a set of implications for theory and practice.
6.1 Theoretical implications
Our study has three primary theoretical implications. First,
from an RBV perspective, we provide new insight regarding
which particular marketing capabilities are linked to business
performance. Our results indicate that the context (i.e. stage of
market development) affects the genesis and development
of resources and capabilities. The heterogeneity occurs because
of the divergence in the attributes of individuals, the teams,
their leadership and the available inputs (Helfat and Peteraf,
2003). Practitioners’ internal and market understanding of
business depends on their knowledge. The economic and social
development of a country interacts with the organizational
knowledge, which leads to the cultivation of specific
organizational capabilities. Therefore, superior knowledge and
a more sophisticated market context foster the robustness of
marketing and other organizational capabilities. Moreover, the
results are aligned with the peripheral conception of marketing
practice in emerging and developing countries (Sheth, 2011).
Second, in comparing marketing capabilities across
economies, our study contributes to the role of marketing in
different contexts. We found initial evidence that economy’s
institutional environment shapes the behavior and performance
of B2B suppliers. Three distinct but interrelated institutional
 Marketing role in B2B settings
Roberto Mora Cortez and Wesley J. Johnston
subsystems, namely, socioeconomic, cultural and regulative
(Burgess and Steenkamp, 2006), influence the variability in the
context. Our classification of markets did not consider
complete variation in the cultural aspect because Bolivia, Chile
and Peru share similar properties at different levels of market
development. Therefore, further research could include
variability in this matter. We also enrich the marketing role by
introducing the prevailing marketing paradigm for each
country classification. Our findings support that the overall
orientation of companies, at the most basic level of
development, evolve from an internal orientation (i.e.
operations, production), passing through a sales orientation
(i.e. short-term revenue), to a market-driven orientation. If the
people in an organization do not believe in or understand the
marketing concept and its customer imperatives, and
management priorities are directed away from market needs,
then strategic marketing capabilities are likely to be low
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(O’Cass et al., 2015). Therefore, the importance of marketing
capabilities is subject to the institutional context in which a firm
is operating (Wu, 2013).
Third, our study also contributes to the literature on general
firms’ capabilities and organizational learning. The knowledge-
influencing behavior has been analyzed in prior research as
individual or interdependent capabilities (Vorhies and Morgan,
2005). However, we introduced proof that some capabilities
(e.g. CX) can influence multiple activities or processes
simultaneously. Therefore, further research could explore
which firm’s capabilities cover a greater scope of business or
cross-functional amplitude. The more areas or departments
covered, the more integrated the company and the better the
use of its resources.
6.2 Managerial implications
Our findings provide insights into how managers can adjust
their commercial strategy to achieve sustainable competitive
advantage. A requirement for long-term success in this
complex business environment is the ability to manage
unpredictable rapid markets shifts while holding enduring
capabilities (Jüttner and Wehrli, 1994). First, practitioners
need to recognize the uniqueness of their firms and markets
where they are operating. For example, a multinational
company operating in the USA, Chile and Bolivia (e.g.
Siemens, Caterpillar) cannot adapt marketing practices from
the most mature market to growing markets without
considering the business and socioeconomic environment. In
the field, the use of accumulated experience by an organization
is fundamental during the development of capabilities for a
specific market context.
Second, capabilities development can be influenced by a
firm’s internal characteristics (e.g. levels of knowledge).
Considering the uniqueness of some capabilities, people who
have the same objectives may choose different alternatives
based on their mindsets, emotion and background (Helfat and
Peteraf, 2003). For example, an engineering team working on
defining or adjusting the marketing planning capability may
rely on a structured control-based process, whereas a team of
psychologists may choose a more activity-independent
creativity-based procedure. Therefore, a two-fold approach is
required:
1 cross-functional or multi-background strategic team; and
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
2 participation of a leader with an integral vision, highly
experienced, to summarize perspectives and drive action.
Third, based on the discussion during the practitioner’s
workshops, companies arriving for the first time to the analyzed
markets, can use the list of capabilities and orientations
presented here, but must evaluate their compatibility with the
organizational culture, resources, procedures and internal
skills. If the company chooses to build capabilities from its
understanding of the market, it will need to ensure the quality
of the information gathered and implement a sophisticated
methodology of analysis. Over time, both cases require
organizational learning and the power of the capabilities
developed will diminish until they reach marginal impact. The
challenge, therefore, is to implement a system that allows
building adaptive capabilities (Day, 2011), which are based on
continuous learning-by-doing, vigilant and market-oriented
top management attitude, multiple sources of knowledge,
organizational entanglement (i.e. unified vision) and market-
driven leadership (i.e. CEO).
6.3 Limitations and further research
There are some limitations in the study that can offer avenues
for future research. Our approach only considered suppliers’
perspective. Taking both the seller’s and the customer’s
viewpoints into account would complement the analysis of
marketing capabilities deployment in the market and can give
additional information regarding the depth of implementation
and the perceived differences. Furthermore, the findings of this
study can be contrasted with previous scientific works on the
role of marketing in emerging and developing economies to
provide additional directions for research. In this sense, our
study shows that different orientations to the market drive
divergent paradigms regarding the marketing role for
companies doing business in developing, emerging and
developed markets. In particular, building over this finding,
future research could extend this study by seeking to answer the
following questions:
RQ1. What are the environmental characteristics that
influence the implementation of specific marketing
capabilities? and
RQ2. What organizational factors enhance complementarity
between different types of marketing capabilities?
Note
1 An extensive sample size that minimized the risk of
omitting relevant concepts for our analysis and reached
data saturation.
References
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“Customer value propositions in business markets”, Harvard
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Appendix. Interview guide
1 What are the key, B2B marketing challenges that your
company will need to face in order to reach superior
performance in the next three to five years? Please support
your answers.
2 What are the key skills and processes (i.e. capabilities) the
company must build over the same time period? (to be
successful in the implementation of Q1 answers)
3a What are the market and social drivers behind your
answers to Q1 and Q2?
3b What country or company is your benchmark? Why?
About the authors
Roberto Mora Cortez (PhD candidate Georgia State
University) is the former executive director of the Center of
Industrial Marketing, University of Chile. He is an
industrial engineer and has a master’s degree in marketing
as well as an MBA; both postgraduate theses were focused
on B2B sales and marketing. Roberto Mora Cortez is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: rmora1@
gsu.edu
Wesley J. Johnston (PhD, University of Pittsburgh) is the
director of the Center for Business and Industrial Marketing
in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State
University. He is also the CBIM RoundTable Professor of
Marketing and teaches courses in sales management,
business-to-business marketing and customer relationship
management.