60  Marketing Strategy Seminar

Marketing strategy is the central construct of the broader field of strategic marketing. Where strategic marketing names the field of study, marketing strategy names its object: the integrated pattern of choices through which a firm creates, communicates, and delivers value to customers and, by doing so, attains its objectives. This chapter is a graduate seminar in that construct. It is organized not as a march through tactics but as a tour of the questions a doctoral student must be able to pose and answer: what is a marketing strategy, how do scholars build theory about it, how is marketing organized inside the firm to execute it, and how do the markets the firm serves—customers, channels, and capital markets—price the results.

The chapter is built around a full-semester doctoral reading map. Two commitments run through it. The first is integration: a marketing strategy is a coherent pattern of decisions, not a list of independent marketing-mix moves, and most of the field’s empirical work has paradoxically studied the parts rather than the pattern (Morgan et al. 2018). The second is accountability: strategy is judged by customer, financial, stock-market, and societal outcomes, so the seminar repeatedly forces the soft-sounding constructs of strategy—orientation, capability, culture, relationships—into contact with hard outcome data. Each weekly module below pairs a substantive debate with the empirical strategy used to adjudicate it, because nearly every claim in this field is contested on identification grounds.

60.1 Semester arc

A doctoral seminar in marketing strategy is the field’s bridge between marketing and the firm: it asks not “how do consumers decide?” but “how does marketing create, capture, and sustain value for the firm and its owners?” The arc begins at the boundary of the field—what marketing strategy is as a scholarly domain, and what theories of competitive advantage govern it (the resource-based view, resource-advantage theory, dynamic capabilities). From this footing the seminar moves through the field’s two great empirical engines of the 1990s–2000s: market orientation (the cultural/behavioral antecedent of performance) and marketing capabilities (the routines that convert resources into market position). These early modules establish the dependent variable that animates the whole field—firm performance—and the measurement and endogeneity problems that recur every week.

The middle of the semester turns to assets and accountability: how marketing builds intangible, off-balance-sheet stocks of value—brand equity and customer equity—and how those assets are priced. This opens onto the marketing–finance interface, the most active frontier for two decades. The market-based-assets framework (Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey 1998) reframed marketing outcomes as drivers of shareholder value, launching a large event-study and stock-return literature linking satisfaction, brands, innovation, and advertising to firm value and risk. Innovation strategy and the organization of the marketing function (the CMO, marketing’s contested influence) sit alongside it, because the recurring policy question is whether marketing is an investment markets reward or a cost boards cut.

The seminar closes with synthesis and method: B2B and channel governance (the transaction-cost/relational tradition), meta-analyses and empirical generalizations (the field’s accumulated, replicable findings), and a capstone returning to the opening question—what do we now know, and what should the next generation of dissertations attack? Throughout, the pedagogy is method-forward: each module names the identification challenge—cross-sectional correlation vs. causal effect, reverse causality from performance to marketing, omitted firm-quality variables, event-study and factor-model confounds—that stands between a construct and a finding.

The reading map uses two tags: [F] = Foundational (canon a strategy scholar is expected to know cold) and [R] = Frontier/Recent (an active research front, refreshed as the literature moves). Each week pairs at least one foundational anchor with one frontier paper. DOIs are reproduced as verified in the editorial source; works without a DOI-verified record are named without a link and flagged.

60.2 Week 1 — The domain of marketing strategy

Topic. What marketing strategy is as a field; levels of strategy (corporate, business, functional); the central dependent variable (firm performance) and its conceptual layers.

Subtopics. Domain definition and foundational premises; the marketing concept vs. marketing strategy; outcome chains from marketing actions to financial performance; demonstrating marketing’s value to the firm.

Methods. Conceptual/framework papers; reading the field as nested literatures.

Key readings.

• Varadarajan (2009), “Strategic marketing and marketing strategy: domain, definition, fundamental issues and foundational premises,” JAMS. doi:10.1007/s11747-009-0176-7 — the field-defining statement of scope; anchors the whole semester. [F]
• Rust, Ambler, Carpenter, Kumar & Srivastava (2004), “Measuring Marketing Productivity: Current Knowledge and Future Directions,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.68.4.76.42721 — lays out the chain from marketing actions to financial outcomes. [F]
• Hanssens & Pauwels (2016), “Demonstrating the Value of Marketing,” Journal of Marketing (Hanssens and Pauwels 2016). doi:10.1509/jm.15.0417 — modern framing of marketing accountability and value demonstration. [R]

Debate. Is “marketing strategy” a coherent domain or a borrowing from strategic management? Where does marketing’s distinct contribution lie?

60.3 Week 2 — Theories of competitive advantage: RBV and R-A theory

Topic. The theoretical bedrock: why some firms outperform others, and where marketing-based resources fit.

Subtopics. Resource-based view; VRIN resources; resource-advantage theory of competition; market-based assets as a source of advantage.

Methods. Theory-building; conceptual frameworks; the logic of sustainability tests.

Key readings.

• Wernerfelt (1984), “A Resource-Based View of the Firm,” Strategic Management Journal. doi:10.1002/smj.4250050207 — the originating RBV statement; a cross-disciplinary anchor. [F]
• Hunt & Morgan (1995), “The Comparative Advantage Theory of Competition,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1177/002224299505900201 — marketing’s own evolutionary, disequilibrium theory of competition. [F]
• Srivastava, Shervani & Fahey (1998), “Market-Based Assets and Shareholder Value: A Framework for Analysis,” Journal of Marketing (Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey 1998). doi:10.1177/002224299806200102 — reframes marketing outputs as shareholder-value drivers; the hinge between RBV and the marketing–finance interface. [F]
• Day & Wensley (1988), “Assessing Advantage: A Framework for Diagnosing Competitive Superiority,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1177/002224298805200201 — sources vs. positions vs. performance outcomes of advantage. [F]

Debate. Are marketing resources truly inimitable, or transient? Equilibrium (IO) vs. disequilibrium (R-A) views of competition.

60.4 Week 3 — Market orientation

Topic. The behavioral/cultural antecedent of performance: being market-driven.

Subtopics. Construct definition (MARKOR vs. MKTOR scales); intelligence generation/dissemination/responsiveness; culture vs. behavior; antecedents and moderators of the MO–performance link.

Methods. Scale development and validation; survey research; meta-analysis.

Key readings.

• Kohli & Jaworski (1990), “Market Orientation: The Construct, Research Propositions, and Managerial Implications,” Journal of Marketing (Kohli and Jaworski 1990). doi:10.1177/002224299005400201 — the behavioral conceptualization. [F]
• Narver & Slater (1990), “The Effect of a Market Orientation on Business Profitability,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1177/002224299005400403 — the cultural conceptualization plus first profitability test. [F]
• Kirca, Jayachandran & Bearden (2005), “Market Orientation: A Meta-Analytic Review and Assessment of Its Antecedents and Impact on Performance,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.69.2.24.60761 — the meta-analytic verdict; sets up the “how big and when” question. [F]

Debate. Culture vs. behavior measurement; does MO cause performance or do profitable firms afford MO (endogeneity)? Is MO necessary but not sufficient?

The seminar develops this module’s substantive core in Section 60.17.1 below, where Kohli & Jaworski’s decomposition of orientation into three observable behaviors is treated as a worked example of making an abstract construct measurable.

60.5 Week 4 — Marketing capabilities

Topic. The organizational routines that translate resources and orientation into market outcomes.

Subtopics. Architecture of marketing capabilities (specialized vs. architectural/cross-functional); benchmarking; capabilities vs. R&D/operations; the capabilities “gap.”

Methods. Survey-based capability measurement; meta-analysis; structural models.

Key readings.

• Day (1994), “The Capabilities of Market-Driven Organizations,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1177/002224299405800404 — inside-out/outside-in/spanning capabilities typology. [F]
• Vorhies & Morgan (2005), “Benchmarking Marketing Capabilities for Sustainable Competitive Advantage,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.69.1.80.55505 — measures the distinct marketing capabilities and links them to performance. [F]
• Krasnikov & Jayachandran (2008), “The Relative Impact of Marketing, Research-and-Development, and Operations Capabilities on Firm Performance,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.72.4.001 — meta-analytic horse-race showing marketing capabilities’ relative weight. [F]
• Morgan, Vorhies & Mason (2009), “Market Orientation, Marketing Capabilities, and Firm Performance,” Strategic Management Journal. doi:10.1002/smj.764 — integrates MO and capabilities as complementary. [R]
• Day (2011), “Closing the Marketing Capabilities Gap,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.75.4.183 — adaptive/dynamic-capabilities frontier. [R]

Debate. Are capabilities measurable or tautological? Static vs. dynamic/adaptive capabilities; complementarity vs. substitution among functional capabilities.

60.6 Week 5 — Dynamic and competitive strategy

Topic. Strategy under change: reconfiguring resources; value creation vs. value appropriation.

Subtopics. Dynamic capabilities; sensing/seizing/transforming; strategic emphasis (value creation vs. appropriation); product-market strategy and cash flow.

Methods. Conceptual + secondary financial data; strategic-emphasis indices; cash-flow models.

Key readings.

• Teece, Pisano & Shuen (1997), “Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management,” Strategic Management Journal. doi:10.1002/(sici)1097-0266(199708)18:7<509::aid-smj882>3.0.co;2-z — the dynamic-capabilities anchor; cross-disciplinary. [F]
• Mizik & Jacobson (2003), “Trading Off Between Value Creation and Value Appropriation: The Financial Implications of Shifts in Strategic Emphasis,” Journal of Marketing (Mizik and Jacobson 2003). doi:10.1509/jmkg.67.1.63.18595 — the creation/appropriation tradeoff with financial-market evidence. [F]
• Vorhies, Morgan & Autry (2009), “Product-Market Strategy and the Marketing Capabilities of the Firm: Impact on Market Effectiveness and Cash Flow Performance,” Strategic Management Journal. doi:10.1002/smj.798 — fit between strategy type and capability mix. [R]

Debate. Can dynamic capabilities be observed or only inferred from outcomes? Is value appropriation a zero-sum tradeoff with creation?

60.7 Week 6 — Brand equity as a market-based asset

Topic. Brands as durable, off-balance-sheet assets that drive cash flows and shareholder value.

Subtopics. Customer-based brand equity (CBBE); brand knowledge and associations; brand value and stock returns/risk; financial vs. customer-mindset metrics.

Methods. Conceptual frameworks; calendar-time portfolio returns; Fama-French factor models; linking survey brand metrics to financials.

Key readings.

• Keller (1993), “Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer-Based Brand Equity,” Journal of Marketing (Keller 1993). doi:10.1177/002224299305700101 — the CBBE framework. [F]
• Madden, Fehle & Fournier (2006), “Brands Matter: An Empirical Demonstration of the Creation of Shareholder Value Through Branding,” JAMS (Madden 2006). doi:10.1177/0092070305283356 — strong-brand portfolios earn higher returns at lower risk. [F]
• Mizik & Jacobson (2008), “The Financial Value Impact of Perceptual Brand Attributes,” Journal of Marketing Research (Mizik and Jacobson 2008). doi:10.1509/jmkr.45.1.15 — which brand-perception dimensions move firm value. [R]
• Keller (2016), “Reflections on Customer-Based Brand Equity: Perspectives, Progress, and Priorities,” AMS Review. doi:10.1007/s13162-016-0078-z — agenda update. [R]

Debate. Customer-mindset vs. financial metrics—which is the “real” brand equity? Do brand effects survive controls for firm quality?

The valuation machinery here—event studies, response models, risk decomposition, and Tobin’s \(q\) as the workhorse firm-value outcome—is developed in full in Section 60.17.3 and in Chapter 11.

60.8 Week 7 — Customer equity and customer assets

Topic. The customer base as the firm’s central asset; valuing customers and customer equity.

Subtopics. Customer lifetime value (CLV); customer-equity drivers (value/brand/relationship equity); return on marketing; customer profitability and loyalty; from customer equity to market capitalization.

Methods. CLV/retention models; cohort and migration models; linking aggregate CLV to market cap.

Key readings.

• Rust, Lemon & Zeithaml (2004), “Return on Marketing: Using Customer Equity to Focus Marketing Strategy,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.68.1.109.24030 — customer-equity drivers and ROI framework. [F]
• Gupta, Lehmann & Stuart (2004), “Valuing Customers,” Journal of Marketing Research. doi:10.1509/jmkr.41.1.7.25084 — CLV used to value the firm; links customer metrics to firm value. [F]
• Bolton, Lemon & Verhoef (2004), “The Theoretical Underpinnings of Customer Asset Management: A Framework and Propositions for Future Research,” JAMS. doi:10.1177/0092070304263341 — customer-asset-management theory. [F]
• Kumar & Shah (2009), “Expanding the Role of Marketing: From Customer Equity to Market Capitalization,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.73.6.119 — links customer equity to stock-market value. [R]

Debate. Are acquisition and retention substitutes or complements? Does the sum of CLV reconcile with market capitalization? Loyalty–profitability myths.

60.9 Week 8 — Innovation and new-product strategy

Topic. Innovation as a strategic driver of growth, firm value, and risk.

Subtopics. Radical vs. incremental innovation; the incumbent’s curse; innovation’s effect on firm value and idiosyncratic/systematic risk; the marketing–R&D interface.

Methods. Content-analyzed innovation databases; event studies; long-run abnormal returns; risk decomposition.

Key readings.

• Chandy & Tellis (2000), “The Incumbent’s Curse? Incumbency, Size, and Radical Product Innovation,” Journal of Marketing (Chandy and Tellis 2000). doi:10.1509/jmkg.64.3.1.18033 — challenges the assumption that incumbents cannot innovate radically. [F]
• Sorescu & Spanjol (2008), “Innovation’s Effect on Firm Value and Risk: Insights from Consumer Packaged Goods,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.72.2.114 — distinguishes value and risk effects of radical vs. incremental innovation. [R]

Debate. Does radical innovation pay (and for whom)? Is the stock-market reaction to innovation efficient or biased?

60.10 Week 9 — The marketing–finance interface and firm value

Topic. The field’s flagship frontier: connecting marketing to shareholder value, cash flow, and risk.

Subtopics. Marketing’s impact on firm value (level, growth, volatility, vulnerability of cash flows); metrics and methods of the interface; meta-analytic generalizations of marketing→value elasticities.

Methods. Event studies; stock-return models; abnormal-returns and risk metrics; meta-analysis of elasticities; the identification/endogeneity toolkit.

Key readings.

• Srinivasan & Hanssens (2009), “Marketing and Firm Value: Metrics, Methods, Findings, and Future Directions,” Journal of Marketing Research (Srinivasan and Hanssens 2009). doi:10.1509/jmkr.46.3.293 — the canonical review/roadmap of the interface. [F]
• Edeling & Fischer (2016), “Marketing’s Impact on Firm Value: Generalizations from a Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Marketing Research (Edeling and Fischer 2016). doi:10.1509/jmr.14.0046 — meta-analytic elasticities of marketing on firm value. [R]
• Edeling, Srinivasan & Hanssens (2021), “The Marketing–Finance Interface: A New Integrative Review of Metrics, Methods, and Findings and an Agenda for Future Research,” IJRM (Edeling, Srinivasan, and Hanssens 2021). doi:10.1016/j.ijresmar.2020.09.005 — the current state-of-the-art review. [R]

Debate. Does marketing create firm value or merely signal it? Market efficiency vs. mispricing of marketing assets; reverse causality and omitted firm-quality controls.

60.11 Week 10 — Marketing and stock returns: satisfaction, brands, advertising

Topic. The empirical core of the interface—whether customer- and brand-based metrics predict abnormal returns and reduce risk.

Subtopics. Customer satisfaction and shareholder value/risk; satisfaction and cash flow; advertising/R&D and systematic risk; calendar-time portfolios vs. event studies.

Methods. Calendar-time portfolio analysis; Fama-French / Carhart factor models; CAPM-beta decomposition; panel regressions with risk controls.

Key readings.

• Anderson, Fornell & Mazvancheryl (2004), “Customer Satisfaction and Shareholder Value,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.68.4.172.42723 — satisfaction (ACSI) linked to shareholder value. [F]
• Fornell, Mithas, Morgeson & Krishnan (2006), “Customer Satisfaction and Stock Prices: High Returns, Low Risk,” Journal of Marketing (Fornell et al. 2006). doi:10.1509/jmkg.70.1.003.qxd — satisfaction portfolios earn excess returns. [R]
• Gruca & Rego (2005), “Customer Satisfaction, Cash Flow, and Shareholder Value,” Journal of Marketing (Gruca and Rego 2005). doi:10.1509/jmkg.69.3.115.66364 — satisfaction raises cash-flow growth and lowers variability. [F]
• McAlister, Srinivasan & Kim (2007), “Advertising, Research and Development, and Systematic Risk of the Firm,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.71.1.035 — marketing/R&D intensity lowers systematic (market) risk. [F]

Debate. Are the abnormal returns real or an artifact of risk-model misspecification (the Fornell debate)? Mispricing vs. efficient incorporation of customer metrics.

60.12 Week 11 — Marketing metrics, dashboards, and accountability

Topic. How firms measure marketing, and whether measurement ability itself drives performance.

Subtopics. Marketing performance-measurement systems; metric selection and dashboards; marketing accountability and the boardroom; assessing performance outcomes.

Methods. Survey of measurement practices; metric taxonomies; linking measurement systems to outcomes.

Key readings.

• O’Sullivan & Abela (2007), “Marketing Performance Measurement Ability and Firm Performance,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.71.2.079 — measurement ability is itself associated with performance and CEO satisfaction with marketing. [F]
• Katsikeas, Morgan, Leonidou & Hult (2016), “Assessing Performance Outcomes in Marketing,” Journal of Marketing (Katsikeas et al. 2016). doi:10.1509/jm.15.0287 — typology and conceptual map of marketing performance outcomes. [R]
• Hanssens & Pauwels (2016), “Demonstrating the Value of Marketing,” Journal of Marketing (Hanssens and Pauwels 2016). doi:10.1509/jm.15.0417 — frames accountability as the demonstration of marketing’s value (revisited from Week 1 through the metrics lens). [R]

Debate. Does measuring marketing improve it, or do better firms simply measure more (endogeneity again)? Which metrics matter—financial, customer-mindset, or market-position?

60.13 Week 12 — Marketing organization and the CMO

Topic. How marketing is organized inside the firm, and the contested rise and decline of marketing’s influence.

Subtopics. Marketing-organization dimensions and determinants; customer-focused structures; marketing’s influence within the firm and the boardroom; organizing for marketing excellence; the CMO role.

Methods. Cross-functional surveys; dyadic/informant data; configuration analysis.

Key readings.

• Workman, Homburg & Gruner (1998), “Marketing Organization: An Integrative Framework of Dimensions and Determinants,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1177/002224299806200302 — foundational map of how marketing is organized. [F]
• Homburg, Workman & Jensen (2000), “Fundamental Changes in Marketing Organization: The Movement Toward a Customer-Focused Organizational Structure,” JAMS. doi:10.1177/0092070300284001 — shift from product/function to customer-centric structures. [F]
• Verhoef & Leeflang (2009), “Understanding the Marketing Department’s Influence Within the Firm,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.73.2.14 — what drives marketing’s clout (accountability, innovativeness, customer connection). [R]
• Moorman & Day (2016), “Organizing for Marketing Excellence,” Journal of Marketing (Moorman and Day 2016). doi:10.1509/jm.15.0423 — modern integrative framework (capabilities, configuration, culture, human capital). [R]

Debate. Is marketing’s influence genuinely declining, or migrating to other functions? Centralization vs. dispersion of the function; does a powerful CMO improve performance?

The Moorman & Day “marketing excellence” framework is developed as a worked capability theory in Section 60.17.2, and the CMO-performance question becomes a worked identification example in Section 60.17.5.

60.14 Week 13 — B2B, channels, and governance

Topic. Inter-organizational marketing strategy: governing exchange in channels and B2B relationships.

Subtopics. Transaction-cost economics in marketing; relationship marketing and commitment; safeguarding specific assets; relationship-marketing effectiveness.

Methods. TCE/agency theory; dyadic survey data; meta-analysis; relational-governance models.

Key readings.

• Heide & John (1988), “The Role of Dependence Balancing in Safeguarding Transaction-Specific Assets in Conventional Channels,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1177/002224298805200103 — TCE applied to channel governance. [F]
• Anderson & Weitz (1992), “The Use of Pledges to Build and Sustain Commitment in Distribution Channels,” Journal of Marketing Research. doi:10.1177/002224379202900103 — commitment, pledges, and relational governance. [F]
• Palmatier, Dant, Grewal & Evans (2006), “Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Relationship Marketing: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.70.4.136 — meta-analytic synthesis of what makes relationship marketing pay. [F]

Debate. Markets vs. hierarchies vs. relational governance; do relationship-marketing investments earn their cost, and for whom?

The transaction-cost machinery and the relationship-dynamics extension (commitment velocity) are developed as worked governance and estimation examples in Section 60.17.4.

60.15 Week 14 — Meta-analysis, empirical generalizations, and synthesis

Topic. What the field knows with replication-grade confidence; the service-dominant reframing; the agenda for the next generation.

Subtopics. Empirical generalizations and meta-analysis as a knowledge mode; advertising and market-share elasticities; service-dominant logic as an integrating lens; open frontiers.

Methods. Meta-analysis and meta-regression; empirical-generalization methodology; conceptual integration.

Key readings.

• Sethuraman, Tellis & Briesch (2011), “How Well Does Advertising Work? Generalizations from Meta-Analysis of Brand Advertising Elasticities,” Journal of Marketing Research (Sethuraman, Tellis, and Briesch 2011). doi:10.1509/jmkr.48.3.457 — canonical empirical generalization on advertising elasticity. [F]
• Edeling & Himme (2018), “When Does Market Share Matter? New Empirical Generalizations from a Meta-Analysis of the Market Share–Performance Relationship,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jm.16.0250 — revisits a foundational generalization with modern meta-analysis. [R]
• Vargo & Lusch (2004), “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing,” Journal of Marketing. doi:10.1509/jmkg.68.1.1.24036 — integrative reframing of value creation; a capstone debate. [R]
• Morgan (2012), “Marketing and Business Performance,” JAMS. doi:10.1007/s11747-011-0279-9 — integrative review tying the semester’s threads (orientation, capabilities, assets, performance) together. [R]

Debate. Are empirical generalizations stable across eras and contexts? Does service-dominant logic add explanatory power or relabel existing constructs?

60.16 Foundational vs. frontier at a glance

Foundational core (every strategy student must know): Wernerfelt (1984); Day & Wensley (1988); Heide & John (1988); Kohli & Jaworski (1990); Narver & Slater (1990); Anderson & Weitz (1992); Keller (1993); Day (1994); Hunt & Morgan (1995); Teece, Pisano & Shuen (1997); Srivastava, Shervani & Fahey (1998); Workman, Homburg & Gruner (1998); Chandy & Tellis (2000); Mizik & Jacobson (2003); Gupta, Lehmann & Stuart (2004); Rust, Lemon & Zeithaml (2004); Vorhies & Morgan (2005); Kirca, Jayachandran & Bearden (2005); Krasnikov & Jayachandran (2008); Varadarajan (2009); Srinivasan & Hanssens (2009).

Frontier / actively updated (refresh each edition): Fornell et al. (2006); Palmatier et al. (2006); McAlister, Srinivasan & Kim (2007); O’Sullivan & Abela (2007); Sorescu & Spanjol (2008); Mizik & Jacobson (2008); Morgan, Vorhies & Mason (2009); Vorhies, Morgan & Autry (2009); Kumar & Shah (2009); Verhoef & Leeflang (2009); Day (2011); Morgan (2012); Edeling & Fischer (2016); Hanssens & Pauwels (2016); Katsikeas et al. (2016); Moorman & Day (2016); Keller (2016); Edeling & Himme (2018); Edeling, Srinivasan & Hanssens (2021).

The split is pedagogical, not chronological: a 1990 paper is foundational because the field still builds on its constructs; a 2009 review is “frontier” because its agenda and metrics are still being executed. Each module deliberately pairs at least one foundational anchor with one frontier paper so students see both the canon and its live edge.

60.17 How this chapter expands

The weekly map is a backbone, not a ceiling. The remaining sections develop five of its modules into worked treatments—turning a reading into an estimator with explicit identifying assumptions—and the chapter is designed to grow along four further axes.

1. An empirical-methods spine as a parallel track. Each module already names its identification challenge (endogeneity, reverse causality, event-study confounds, factor-model misspecification). A future edition should add a short methods companion per week—instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, control-function approaches, Heckman/selection, calendar-time portfolios, Bayesian meta-analysis—so the chapter teaches how the field adjudicates its debates, not only what it concluded. The worked sections below model this.
2. A refreshed frontier every two to three years. The marketing–finance interface, customer-asset valuation, and innovation modules turn over fastest. Replace or supplement frontier readings as new meta-analyses and review articles appear, keeping the foundational anchors fixed.
3. Emerging modules as the field grows: digital/platform and data-driven strategy (algorithmic targeting, platform competition, privacy as strategy); marketing and ESG/sustainability and firm value; marketing strategy and AI (generative AI as capability and as competitive disruptor); and causal machine learning in strategy (heterogeneous treatment effects). Each should follow the template: foundational anchor + frontier paper + identification debate.
4. An internationalized syllabus base. The current canon is US/JM-centric; comparative notes from European and Asian doctoral programs would broaden how programs weight the finance interface vs. capabilities vs. CCT-adjacent strategy.

The following sections supply the worked treatments the map points to.

60.17.1 Market orientation, operationalized

The most influential operationalization of “customer-facing capability” is market orientation, the implementation of the marketing concept. Kohli and Jaworski (1990) define it as “the organizationwide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current and future customer needs, dissemination of the intelligence across departments, and responsiveness to it.” The definition decomposes a culture into three observable behaviors—intelligence generation, dissemination, and responsiveness—and thereby makes an abstract orientation measurable (Figure 60.1).

flowchart LR
  E["Exogenous market factors<br/>+ current & future customer needs"] --> G["Generation<br/>of market intelligence"]
  G --> D["Dissemination<br/>across departments"]
  D --> R["Responsiveness"]
  R --> P["Profitability<br/>(a consequence)"]
  R -.->|feedback| E

Figure 60.1: Market orientation as three observable behaviors. Exogenous market factors and current and future customer needs feed intelligence generation; intelligence is disseminated across departments; the firm responds. Coordinated, cross-departmental work sustains the cycle, and profitability is a consequence rather than a component (Kohli and Jaworski 1990).

Three pillars underpin the construct. Customer focus construes market intelligence broadly, spanning both the exogenous market factors that shape customer needs and customers’ current and future needs themselves. Coordinated marketing requires one or more departments to work jointly toward a shared understanding, so orientation is organization-wide rather than the property of a marketing department. Profitability is deliberately placed as a consequence of market orientation rather than a component of it—a modeling choice that keeps the construct conceptually clean and lets profitability serve as a dependent variable. A terminological note carries strategic weight: “market orientation” is preferred to “marketing orientation” because it is less politically charged inside the firm and keeps the focus on the market rather than on a single function (Kohli and Jaworski 1990).

60.17.2 Marketing excellence and the marketing organization

Moorman and Day (2016) define marketing excellence as “a superior ability to perform essential customer-facing activities that improve customer, financial, stock market, and societal outcomes.” The definition is deliberately outcome-anchored: excellence is not a posture but a measurable capacity whose payoff is observable across four outcome classes.

Excellence rests on four elements of the marketing organization (MARORG) and is expressed through seven activities. The four elements are capabilities—complex bundles of firm-level skills and knowledge that perform marketing tasks and adapt the firm to marketplace change; configuration—the structures, metrics, and incentive and control systems that shape marketing activity; human capital—the people who create, implement, and evaluate strategy; and culture—the shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and artifacts that guide thinking throughout the firm (Moorman and Day 2016). These four elements are mobilized through seven activities, conveniently the “7 A’s” (Table 60.1).

Table 60.1: The seven activities through which the marketing organization’s four elements are mobilized into marketing excellence (Moorman and Day 2016).

Activity	What the firm does
Anticipating	Reads marketplace changes before they arrive
Adapting	Reshapes the firm to fit those changes
Aligning	Coordinates processes, structures, and people
Activating	Triggers efficient, effective individual and organizational behavior
Accountability	Creates responsibility for marketing performance
Attracting	Draws in financial, human, and other resources
Asset management	Develops and deploys marketing assets

The MARORG framework is a capability theory of strategy, and it inherits the resource-based logic of Week 2: a capability confers sustained advantage when it is valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and embedded in an organization able to exploit it. Capabilities of this kind are precisely what event studies later price when they reward acquirers with strong marketing capability (Germann, Ebbes, and Grewal 2015).

60.17.3 Branding as strategic asset

Branding is where marketing strategy is most fully expressed as a financial asset, and a large literature connects brand-related actions to capital-market outcomes. Swaminathan et al. (2022) synthesize this brand–finance interface, building on earlier reviews of how marketing creates shareholder value (Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey 1998; Keller and Lehmann 2006; Edeling and Fischer 2016; Edeling, Srinivasan, and Hanssens 2021) and assembling well over a hundred studies that link brand actions to stock-market outcomes. The chapter on Chapter 11 develops the behavioral and valuation machinery in full; the present treatment isolates the strategic logic—how brand actions are classified and how they reach firm value.

Four measurement families dominate. Event studies read the market’s valuation of a discrete brand action from short-window stock returns. Response models extend the logic to continuous, ongoing brand activity. A third family decomposes risk into idiosyncratic and systematic components, since strong brands can lower a firm’s risk as well as raise its returns. The fourth uses firm value, operationalized as Tobin’s \(q\)—the ratio of a firm’s market value to the replacement cost of its assets, \[ q = \frac{\text{market value of the firm}}{\text{replacement cost of assets}}. \tag{60.1}\] Values of \(q\) above one indicate that markets price the firm above the cost of rebuilding its tangible assets, the wedge being attributable to intangibles such as brand. The measure has drawn methodological criticism (Bendle and Butt 2018), to which the literature has offered replies (Peters and Taylor 2017).

Swaminathan et al. (2022) classify brand actions on two axes—cause and scope—that together organize the empirical findings (Table 60.2). On cause, actions are proactive (firm-initiated) or reactive (responses to external events such as recalls or disputes). On scope, actions are strategic (broad, long-horizon) or tactical (short-horizon marketing-mix moves).

Table 60.2: Brand actions classified by cause (proactive/reactive) and scope (strategic/tactical), with representative examples from the brand–finance literature (Swaminathan et al. 2022).

	Strategic (broad, long-term)	Tactical (short-term)
Proactive	Brand introduction and innovation; brand architecture (house of brands vs. branded house); brand leverage; reputational capital, CSR, sociopolitical activism	Name changes; quality improvement; advertising; social-media and word-of-mouth communication; pricing and channels; celebrity endorsement
Reactive	(Strategic responses to crises and structural threats)	Product recalls; trademark disputes; brand crises (e.g., boycotts)

Two theoretical perspectives explain why brand actions move financial outcomes. Under signaling theory, brands are credible signals of quality to consumers and investors alike, with credibility depending on the signaler, the signal’s quality, the receiver, the environment, and the feedback loop (Connelly et al. 2010). Under resource-based theory, a brand generates value when it is valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and exploited by an organized firm. Between brand action and firm value lie mediators—brand-quality perceptions, attitudes, engagement, marketplace outcomes such as CLV and market share—and moderators—advertising, prior brand strength, marketing capabilities, and competitive intensity.

60.17.4 Channels, governance, and relationship dynamics

When the firm must decide whether to make, buy, or ally, transaction cost analysis (TCA) supplies the governance logic. TCA sits within the New Institutional Economics and views the firm itself as a governance structure rather than a production function (Rindfleisch and Heide 1997). Its appeal in marketing is twofold: it centers on exchange, the discipline’s native unit, and its constructs are amenable to survey measurement. Table 60.3 sets out its behavioral assumptions alongside the transactional dimensions they generate.

Table 60.3: The behavioral assumptions and transactional dimensions of transaction cost analysis (Rindfleisch and Heide 1997).

Behavioral assumptions	Transactional dimensions
Bounded rationality	Environmental uncertainty
Opportunism	Asset specificity
Risk neutrality	Transaction frequency

The decisive driver is asset specificity: investments specialized to a particular exchange create quasi-rents that opportunistic partners can expropriate under bounded rationality, so high specificity, especially when compounded by environmental uncertainty, pushes governance toward hierarchy (Rindfleisch and Heide 1997). As an identification matter, governance form is chosen: firms select into integration on the basis of specificity and uncertainty the analyst observes only partially, so naive regressions of performance on governance form confound the treatment with its selection. Credible designs either model the selection explicitly or exploit exogenous shifts in the cost of an asset’s specificity.

Relationships between exchange partners are not static, and treating them as such discards the information in their trajectories. Palmatier et al. (2013) introduce commitment velocity—the rate and direction of change in commitment—and argue that the dynamic elements of relational constructs forecast future behavior better than their static levels. The estimator is a latent growth curve model (LGCM). For dyad \(i\) observed at time \(t\), a relational construct \(y_{it}\) is decomposed into an individual-specific intercept (level) and slope (velocity), \[ y_{it} = \alpha_i + \beta_i\, t + \varepsilon_{it}, \qquad \begin{pmatrix}\alpha_i \\ \beta_i\end{pmatrix} = \begin{pmatrix}\mu_\alpha \\ \mu_\beta\end{pmatrix} + \begin{pmatrix}\zeta_{\alpha i} \\ \zeta_{\beta i}\end{pmatrix}, \tag{60.2}\] where \(\alpha_i\) is the dyad’s baseline commitment, \(\beta_i\) its commitment velocity, and the random effects \((\zeta_{\alpha i}, \zeta_{\beta i})\) capture heterogeneity across dyads. Identification of the slope factor requires at least three waves of panel data and rests on the usual LGCM assumptions: a correctly specified growth form, errors uncorrelated with the latent factors, and—when velocity predicts performance—no time-varying confounder driving both commitment growth and the outcome (Palmatier et al. 2013). The substantive lesson—that change in a relational construct carries information beyond its level—generalizes to any longitudinally measured strategic construct.

60.17.5 Human capital: the CMO and firm performance

The marketing-organization framework names human capital as one of its four elements; the cleanest test of its strategic value asks whether the senior marketing role pays off in firm performance. The natural unit of analysis is the presence of a chief marketing officer (CMO) in the top management team (Nath and Mahajan 2008), and the sharpest estimate comes from a study finding that firms with a CMO exhibit roughly 15% higher Tobin’s \(q\) than firms without one (Germann, Ebbes, and Grewal 2015).

That headline number is interesting only if it is causal, and the design is built to make it credible. CMO presence is not randomly assigned, so a cross-sectional comparison confounds the CMO effect with whatever drives the appointment. Germann, Ebbes, and Grewal (2015) use two complementary strategies. First, panel data with firm fixed effects absorb time-invariant heterogeneity, so identification comes from within-firm changes in CMO presence: \[ y_{it} = \gamma\, \text{CMO}_{it} + \mathbf{x}_{it}^{\top}\boldsymbol{\beta} + \mu_i + \tau_t + \varepsilon_{it}, \tag{60.3}\] where \(y_{it}\) is Tobin’s \(q\), \(\text{CMO}_{it}\) indicates CMO presence, \(\mu_i\) is a firm fixed effect, \(\tau_t\) a year effect, and \(\gamma\) the parameter of interest. Fixed effects do not, however, defeat time-varying endogeneity—reverse causality (rising performance funds an appointment) or a contemporaneous shock driving both. The second strategy therefore adds instrumental variables: a valid instrument shifts the probability of CMO presence (relevance) without affecting firm performance except through the CMO (the exclusion restriction). The exclusion restriction is the assumption that cannot be tested from data and on which the causal claim ultimately rests (Germann, Ebbes, and Grewal 2015)—a worked illustration of the seminar’s recurring point that a strategic construct becomes a finding only when its estimator and its identifying assumptions are stated in full.

60.18 Key Takeaways

• Marketing strategy is an integrated pattern of decisions evaluated against objectives; the field’s empirical work is biased toward single tactics over integrated programs (Morgan et al. 2018), and the 14-week map above is organized so each module pairs a foundational anchor with a live frontier.
• The semester’s spine runs from the domain and theories of advantage (RBV, R-A theory) through market orientation (Kohli and Jaworski 1990) and marketing capabilities, into brand and customer assets, the marketing–finance interface (Srinivasan and Hanssens 2009; Edeling and Fischer 2016; Edeling, Srinivasan, and Hanssens 2021), innovation (Chandy and Tellis 2000), organization/CMO (Moorman and Day 2016), channels/governance, and a meta-analytic synthesis (Sethuraman, Tellis, and Briesch 2011).
• Marketing excellence is an outcome-anchored capability resting on four organizational elements mobilized through seven activities (Moorman and Day 2016); market orientation operationalizes the customer-facing capability as intelligence generation, dissemination, and responsiveness (Kohli and Jaworski 1990).
• Brand actions reach firm value through signaling and resource-based paths and are priced by markets; the cause × scope taxonomy organizes the evidence, and Tobin’s \(q\) (Equation 60.1) is the workhorse outcome (Swaminathan et al. 2022).
• Governance (transaction cost analysis), relationship dynamics (commitment velocity, Equation 60.2), and human capital (the CMO effect,
  1. each become testable only once their estimator and identifying assumptions—selection, exclusion, correct growth form—are made explicit.

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