Redefining the role of marketing - a qualitative case study on how marketing is seen in Finnish B2B companies
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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en
Pages
88
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Abstract
Digitalization, emerging technologies, and the increasingly transparent markets are forcing companies to rethink their business models and the ways they can engage with their customers and ecosystems. To understand this changing landscape of marketing, the objective of this study is to gain a better view on how marketing is organized in the future. As marketing in a B2B context is not discussed as broadly as in a B2C context, the focus here is to understand how the marketing leaders in B2B organizations see the future of marketing and the role of CMO to develop. This paper seeks to contribute to the existing marketing literature by examining the needed organizational structures in the future as well as by identifying the required components and capabilities for future marketing success. The empirical part of this research was conducted as an embedded single case study. The data was mainly collected through semi-structured interviews with a total of 9 marketing leaders from internationally operating B2B companies. The empirical data was analyzed and then compared with the previous literature to formulate the research findings. Overall, the findings contributed to the research questions by determining the organizational structure for a customer-centric firm and by identifying several organizational components and capabilities affecting the success of marketing in the future. The research findings demonstrate that managing customer experiences is becoming increasingly essential for B2B organizations in the future. As customer experiences consist of all the encounters a customer has with a firm’s product, services, and brand, there needs to be a closer alignment of customer-facing functions (i.e. marketing, sales and customer service) to support the seamless and coherent customer experience throughout the customer journey. This will result in the creation of customer and market operations functions, which primary purpose is to ensure the superior customer experience. This customer-centric focus will also force firms to redefine their culture to be more outside-in as well as to adapt their operating models, tools, and metrics. Technological development will bring new opportunities for organizations to enable the data-driven and proactive approach to offer more personalized, contextual and relevant dialogue and services for their customers. Therefore, closer cooperation with other supporting functions such as IT and R&D are also needed in the future. Overall, 12 marketing components were identified as essential for marketing success in the future.Description
Thesis advisor
Tikkanen, HenrikkiHietanen, Joel