مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Strategy typologies and taxonomies have played an influential role in shaping strategic management thought.1 Work incorporating classifi- cation schemes facilitates theory building and advances understanding of the strategic realities facing firms (Thorpe & Morgan, 2007). Despite the popularity of business-level strategy classifications in marketing management (e.g., Menguc & Auh, 2008; Song, Di Benedetto, & Nason, 2007), research has placed little emphasis on marketing strategy typologies or taxonomies. Few studies (e.g., Murphy & Enis, 1986; Slater & Olson, 2001) have developed marketing strategy classifications that feature marketing-related problems and even fewer have incorporated them in empirical research. For this reason, the conceptual landscape of marketing strategy remains underdeveloped.

By contrast, the interface of organizational parameters with realized (implemented) strategies has long been focal to strategic marketing research (see Varadarajan, 2010). Theory argues that performance outcomes of realized strategies are determined, partially, by how well organizational characteristics align with strategy-specific requirements (Yarbrough, Morgan, & Vorhie, 2011). In marketing strategy studies, the focus has been constrained to the alignment of either structural and/or task-specific characteristics with: detached marketing-mix components (e.g., Kabadayi, Eyuboglu, & Thomas, 2007); standardization–adaptation choices (e.g., Xu, Cavusgil, & White, 2006); or business-level strategies (e.g., Vorhies & Morgan, 2003). Despite accumulated knowledge, scholars still call for further research on organizational contingencies (see Morgan, 2012). Thus far, no study has captured how firms deploy structural and more dynamic organizational parameters collectively, within administrative systems, to facilitate the implementation of diverse marketing strategy types. An administrative system refers to the deployment of structural parameters for rationalizing strategic decisions and the formulation and implementation of process facilitating a firm’s dynamic capacity to adapt and evolve (Dvir, Segev, & Shenhar, 1993).

Scholars (e.g., Chandler, 1962) argue that managers initially develop a strategy and then design a fitting administrative system to support their plans. However, evidence suggests firms “reinvent the strategy making process as an emergent process” (Hamel, 2009, p. 91). In increasingly turbulent marketplaces, firms are expected to blend deliberate (i.e., patterns of action realized as initially intended) and emergent (i.e., realized patterns of action not explicitly planned) strategy facets so that strategy corresponds with changing conditions (Mirabeau & Maguire, 2014). Thus, the eventualities of realized marketing strategies can bring about unintended misalignments between the implemented strategy and the supporting administrative system (Hannan, Pólos, & Carroll, 2003). These misalignments impede implementation and may result in unintended outcomes (Balogun & Johnson, 2005).