CfP JBR: Extracting Value from Investments in IT-Led Marketing Change

Special Issue – Journal of Business Research: 

Extracting Value from Investments in IT-Led Marketing Change

Guest editors:
Dr Stan Maklan (Cranfield School of Management – UK)
Professor Joe Peppard (European School of Management and Technology – Berlin, Germany)

Paper submission Deadline:
15 January 2016

Overview:

This JBR special edition seeks to advance our understanding of how organizations can extract value from the unprecedented investments they are making in technology supporting marketing practices. Over the past 40 years management theory and practice have been strongly influenced by advances in information technology, nowhere more so than in the marketing discipline (Reinartz, Krafft, & Hoyer, 2004; Rust & Espinoza, 2006). Relationship marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) (Payne & Frow, 2005; Reinartz et al., 2004), service marketing (Berkley & Gupta, 1994), customer experience (Dawes & Rowley 1998), business model innovation (Juttner, Christopher, & Baker, 2007), Omni channel (Brynjolfsson, Hu, Rahman, & Brynjolfsson, 2013; Montoya- Weiss, Voss, & Grewal, 2003), social CRM, community, network and social marketing (Malthouse, Skiera, Wege, & Zhang, 2013) represent almost all of marketing’s major advances in practice and each is shaped by technology. This trend will accelerate with significant investments being made in the quest to explore so called “big data,” analytics, mobile devices, Internet of Things, wearables and local (3D) printing. Indeed, a recent report from IT analyst firm Gartner claims that by 2017 Marketing Directors will outspend IT Directors on technology (Arthur, 2012).

However, the evidence is overwhelming that most organizations struggle to demonstrate how their investments in IT impact performance ( Hendricks, Singhal, & Stratman, 2007; Mithas, Tafti, Bardhan, & Goh, 2012; Mahmood, Kohli, & Devaraj, 2004; Brynjolfsson & Hitt, 2000; Bharadwaj, A., Bharadwaj, S., & Konsynski, 1999) and, in particular, those focused on enabling and shaping marketing initiatives (Maklan, Peppard, & Klaus, 2015). Yet, the next round of IT-Marketing investment will dwarf that which has preceded it both in scale and expected contribution to business results.

Scholars in the information systems discipline have long identified that it is complementary capabilities, rather than the technology alone which yields performance benefits overall (Peppard, Ward, & Daniel, 2007; Santhanam & Hartono, 2003). Marketing researchers have made similar conclusions when studying specific IT-enabled investments such as those made for CRM (Orr, Bush, & Vorhies, 2011; Vorhies, Orr, & Bush, 2010; Ernst, Hoyer, Krafft, & Krieger, 2010; Chang, Park, & Chaiy, 2010; Morgan, Slotegraaf, & Vorhies, 2009), perhaps the most mature and well-researched of the IT-led marketing change programs.

Topics:

The increasing impact and role of technology for marketing generates important challenges that are located at the heart of the interplay between theory and practice, for example:

1. What is the impact of new technology on marketing’s most cherished frameworks? The dynamic nature of real time predictive analytics challenges the traditional sequence of Segment-Target-Position (STP). Customers will be crafting their own solutions and systems will be making offers without reference to normal management processes, often in real time. So at what point does marketing automation replace the traditional frameworks of S-T-P and 4Ps?
2. Will theories of consumer behavior be challenged by evolving consumer purchasing processes? Does personalization and immediacy, real-time offers that are generated depending on consumers’ context and their behaviorial history influence how consumers form their assessments and reactions: that is, the cognitive and affective responses to suppliers?
3. How can technology be harnessed to create and develop brands? The internet has become an indispensable tool for marketers, yet there are still gaps in understanding its role in shaping how consumers choose among brands.
4. What are the research agendas for integration between traditional disciplines, such as, Marketing-IS, Marketing-Finance, Marketing-Supply Chain?
   1. Can marketing’s research benefit from the IS discipline’s depth of research on extracting value from IT investment? Can the context of marketing enhance that IS research?
   2. The operations management literature has a dominant mental model of marketing generating demand that the supply-chain subsequently fulfills. Predictive, real-time analytics coupled with local manufacturing potentially reverses that logic. Is there an integration of the two disciplines that can advance both operations and marketing research?
   3. How should firms assess the benefits of IT-led marketing change? Traditional financial theory, based upon discounted cash flow analysis, fails to recognize the mechanisms by which technology contributes to marketing success; a conclusion reach many years ago by scholars from the information systems discipline. New evidence of practice, underpinned by more nuanced financial thinking is required.
5. How will firms organize their marketing function (resources) in a future, where technology, data and new business models dominate? Marketing’s traditional capabilities are not well suited for the today’s emerging business models. Will marketing functions re-assert themselves in the new environment or be ever more relegated to a support service? How are advances in digital marketing shaping the evolving role of the Chief Marketing Officer?
6. How will firms determine and assess which “questions” it should ask of data to generate insight? Is marketing all about data-dredging and mining, database marketing or will it evolve to understand how to enquire and then generate answers? Practitioners often phrase this dilemma in terms of asking whether it is easier to make their marketers better data scientists, or make data scientists into better marketers.

Guest Editors’ Policy:

We encourage contributions that seek to add new perspectives on the issues and challenges that new technologies pose for the marketing discipline. Articles should make important and rigorous theoretical contributions, counter-intuitive practical contributions that advance theory and accepted wisdom in the field. The editors have no preferences regarding methodological approach reflecting our view that this area would benefit from a broad ontological perspective. We particularly welcome cross-disciplinary contributions, as we believe that they can add substantially to marketing’s perhaps limited, dominant epistemological frameworks. We genuinely welcome articles written or perhaps co- authored by practitioners.

All manuscripts should apply the general author guidelines for the Journal of Business Research found by selecting authors’ guidelines at this URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-business-research/. In addition, the editor provides supplementary writing style guidelines which follow this call.

Manuscripts should not have been previously published or be under consideration by other journals. Manuscript length should between 2,000 and 15,000 words, exceptions to this can be negotiated with the guest editors. Please submit your paper electronically directly to either one of the guest editors at the following email addresses: s.maklan@cranfield.ac.uk; Joe.Peppard@esmt.org.

References

Arthur, L. (2012). Five Years From Now, CMOs Will Spend More on IT Than CIOs Do. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaarthur/2012/02/08/five-years- from-now-cmos-will-spend-more-on-it-than-cios-do/

Berkley, B. J., & Gupta, a. (1994). Improving service quality with information technology. International Journal of Information Management, 14, 109–121.

Bharadwaj, A., Bharadwaj, S., & Konsynski, B. (1999). Technology Effects on Firm Performance as Measured by Tobin’s q. Management Science, 45(6), 1008–1024.

Brynjolfsson, E., & Hitt, L. (2000). Beyond Computation: Information Technology, Organizational Transformation and Business Performance. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(4), 23–48.

Brynjolfsson, E., Hu, Y. J., Rahman, M. S., & Brynjolfsson, B. E. (2013). Competing in the Age of Omnichannel Retailing. MIT Sloan Management Review, 54(4), 23–29.

Chang, W., Park, J. E., & Chaiy, S. (2010). How Does CRM Technology Transform into Organizational Performance? A Mediating Role of Marketing Capability. Journal of Business Research, 63(8), 849–855.

Dawes, J., & Rowley, J. (1998). Enhancing the customer experience  : contributions from information technology. Management Decision, 36(5), 350–357.

Ernst, H., Hoyer, W. D., Krafft, M., & Krieger, K. (2010). Customer Relationship Management and Company Performance—the Mediating Role of New Product Performance. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39(2), 290–306.

Hendricks, K. B., Singhal, V. R., & Stratman, J. K. (2007). The Impact of Enterprise Systems on Corporate Performance: A Study of ERP, SCM, and CRM System Implementations. Journal of Operations Management, 25(1), 65–82.

Juttner, U., Christopher, M., & Baker, S. (2007). Demand Chain Management-Integrating Marketing and Supply Chain Management. Industrial Marketing Management, 36, 377–392.

Mahmood, A., Kohli, R., & Devaraj, S. (2004). Special Section: Measuring Business Value of Information Technology in E-Business Environments. Journal of Management Information Systems, 21(1), 11–16.

Maklan, S., Peppard, J., & Klaus, P. (2015 forthcoming). Show Me the Money: Improving our Understanding of How Organizations Generate Return from Technology-Led Marketing Change. European Journal of Marketing.

Malthouse, E. C., Skiera, B., Wege, E., & Zhang, M. (2013). Managing Customer Relationships in the Social Media Era: Introducing the Social CRM House. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), 270–280.

Mithas, S., Tafti, A., Bardhan, I., & Goh, J. M. (2012). Information Technology and Firm Profitability: Mechanisms and Empirical Evidence. MIS Quarterly, 36(1), 205–224.

Montoya-Weiss, M. M., Voss, G. B., & Grewal, D. (2003). Determinants of Online Channel Use and Overall Satisfaction with a Relational Mutlitchannel Service Provider. Journal of the Acadamy of Marketing Science, 31(4), 448–458.

Morgan, N. a., Slotegraaf, R. J., & Vorhies, D. W. (2009). Linking marketing capabilities with profit growth. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 26(4), 284–293.

Orr, L. M., Bush, V. D., & Vorhies, D. W. (2011). Leveraging firm-level marketing capabilities with marketing employee development. Journal of Business Research, 64(10), 1074–108

Payne, A., & Frow, P. (2005). A Strategic Framework for Customer Relationship Management. Journal of Marketing, 69(4), 167–176.

Peppard, J., Ward, J., & Daniel, E. (2007). Managing the Realization of Business Benefits from IT Investments. MIS Quarterly Executive, 6(1), 1–17.

Reinartz, W., Krafft, M., & Hoyer, W. D. (2004). The Customer Relationship Management Process: Its Measurement and Impact on Performance. Journal of Marketing Research, 41(3), 293–305.

Rust, R. T., & Espinoza, F. (2006). How technology advances influence business research and marketing strategy. Journal of Business Research, 59, 1072–1078.

Santhanam, R., & Hartono, E. (2003). Issues in Linking Information Technology Capability to Firm Performance. MIS Quarterly, 27(1), 125–153.

Vorhies, D. W., Orr, L. M., & Bush, V. D. (2010). Improving customer-focused marketing capabilities and firm financial performance via marketing exploration and exploitation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39(5), 736–756.