Agile marketing as a factor of firm performance: Empirical study of Russian companies
|
ЗАЯВЛЕНИЕ О САМОСТОЯТЕЛЬНОМ ХАРАКТЕРЕ ВЫПОЛНЕНИЯ
ВЫПУСКНОЙ КВАЛИФИКАЦИОННОЙ РАБОТЫ 2
STATEMENT ABOUT THE INDEPENDENT CHARACTER
OF THE MASTER THESIS 2
Аннотация 3
Abstract 5
INTRODUCTION 9
Research gap: 10
Research goal: 11
Research objectives : 11
Research structure 12
CHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGICAL LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE TOPIC OF MARKETING
PRACTICES AND CAPABILITIES OF THE FIRM. MARKET REVIEW 13
1.1 Defining marketing agility and is attributes. Reasoning for considering marketing agility as an
important attribute of successful company performance 13
1.2 Agile marketing concept and its advantages for firm performance 19
1.3 Measuring companies marketing capabilities and marketing agility 25
1.3.1 Dynamic and adaptive marketing capabilities 25
1.3.2 Measuring marketing agility 29
1.3.3 Measuring firm performance 32
1.3.4 An overview of the economic situation in the country 34
1.4 Research questions and methodology 41
1.4.1 Research questions and assumptions 41
1.4.2 Research methodology 42
CHAPTER 2 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS WITH IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS 44
2.1 Chapter summary 44
2.2 Methodology 46
2.3 Interview design 48
2.4 Thematic analysis 50
2.5 Results of thematic analysis 53
Theme 1 Awareness and perception 53
Theme 2 Need for marketing agility 55
Theme 3 Degree of implementation of MA 58
Theme 4 Crisis effects and measures 66
Theme 5 Effective practices 68
Theme 6 Main challenges 70
Theme 7: Changes to be made 73
Other marketing capabilities ascribed to companies under analysis 74
CHAPTER 3: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS 79
3.1 Chapter summary 79
3.2 Research design 80
3.3 Quantitative analysis 82
3.3.1 Descriptive statistics 82
3.3.2 Hypothesis testing and interpretation 82
3.3.3 Confirmatory factor analysis 85
3.3.4 Validity and reliability. 85
3.3.5 Regression modeling hypothesis testing and results 94
3.3.6 Cluster analysis and results 98
2.3.6 Comparing means. 102
CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION OF RESULTS AND PROSPECTS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 105
4.1 Qualitative research results discussion 105
4.2. Quantitative research results discussion 111
4.3 Conclusions and limitations 116
4.3.1 Limitations 116
4.3.2 Theoretical contribution 117
4.3.3 Prospects for further research 118
4.3.4 Practical recommendations 118
Conclusion 122
REFERENCES: 126
APPENDICES 132
ВЫПУСКНОЙ КВАЛИФИКАЦИОННОЙ РАБОТЫ 2
STATEMENT ABOUT THE INDEPENDENT CHARACTER
OF THE MASTER THESIS 2
Аннотация 3
Abstract 5
INTRODUCTION 9
Research gap: 10
Research goal: 11
Research objectives : 11
Research structure 12
CHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGICAL LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE TOPIC OF MARKETING
PRACTICES AND CAPABILITIES OF THE FIRM. MARKET REVIEW 13
1.1 Defining marketing agility and is attributes. Reasoning for considering marketing agility as an
important attribute of successful company performance 13
1.2 Agile marketing concept and its advantages for firm performance 19
1.3 Measuring companies marketing capabilities and marketing agility 25
1.3.1 Dynamic and adaptive marketing capabilities 25
1.3.2 Measuring marketing agility 29
1.3.3 Measuring firm performance 32
1.3.4 An overview of the economic situation in the country 34
1.4 Research questions and methodology 41
1.4.1 Research questions and assumptions 41
1.4.2 Research methodology 42
CHAPTER 2 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS WITH IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS 44
2.1 Chapter summary 44
2.2 Methodology 46
2.3 Interview design 48
2.4 Thematic analysis 50
2.5 Results of thematic analysis 53
Theme 1 Awareness and perception 53
Theme 2 Need for marketing agility 55
Theme 3 Degree of implementation of MA 58
Theme 4 Crisis effects and measures 66
Theme 5 Effective practices 68
Theme 6 Main challenges 70
Theme 7: Changes to be made 73
Other marketing capabilities ascribed to companies under analysis 74
CHAPTER 3: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS 79
3.1 Chapter summary 79
3.2 Research design 80
3.3 Quantitative analysis 82
3.3.1 Descriptive statistics 82
3.3.2 Hypothesis testing and interpretation 82
3.3.3 Confirmatory factor analysis 85
3.3.4 Validity and reliability. 85
3.3.5 Regression modeling hypothesis testing and results 94
3.3.6 Cluster analysis and results 98
2.3.6 Comparing means. 102
CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION OF RESULTS AND PROSPECTS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 105
4.1 Qualitative research results discussion 105
4.2. Quantitative research results discussion 111
4.3 Conclusions and limitations 116
4.3.1 Limitations 116
4.3.2 Theoretical contribution 117
4.3.3 Prospects for further research 118
4.3.4 Practical recommendations 118
Conclusion 122
REFERENCES: 126
APPENDICES 132
Over the last decade, there has been a dramatic change in the way people make purchases and interact with brands (Swaminathan et al. 2020, as cited in Kalaignanam et al. 2021). Digital transformation, emergence of new marketing and sales channels, and an overload of customer data have forced companies to change the way they practice marketing (Kalaignanam et al. 2021). Today, shopping is viewed more and more often as a customer journey, rather than just a simple linear path to purchase (Lee et al. 2018, as cited in Kalaignanam et al. 2021). Furthermore, the pandemic has led to an overall change and fundamental rethinking of marketing models in business, leading to the emergence of new marketing principles and a need for agile practices to be recognized in business (Lemon et al. 2016). Marketing agility (MA) is now viewed by many scholars as a key priority for achieving marketing excellence (Homburg et al. 2020).
However the term is vague and has to be defined properly in order to talk about marketing agility measurement in different companies.
Furthermore, speaking about Russian market, a lot of factors have been driving the need for companies to constantly change and adopt to economic conditions besides digitalization. State of economic crisis locally and globally has affected how the companies operate including the effects of Covid-19 pandemic. Crisis can be defined as “a low probability, high-impact situation that is perceived by critical stakeholders to threaten the viability of the firm” (Pearson and Clair, 1998). As crises can significantly affect the organization and result in poor economic performance and even in company demise managers need to make sense of these events as quickly as possible and devise instruments to effectively manage these events (Grewal et al. 2001).
For the past eight years, since 2014 Russian business has been operating under the influence of European and American economic sanctions. First sanctions largely affected many companies operating in the agricultural sector of economy and in the banking sphere (Connolly 2015). Restrictions on import and export of agricultural production have significantly transformed how this sector of economy looks right now, driving innovation and import substitution. However, vast amount of innovation is largely hindered by insufficient domestic production and poor product quality. For the development and modernization of production, Russian businesses have to import Western equipment and machinery, since there are simply no local analogues of some equipment. Many enterprises, according to experts, profit only thanks to the privileges of the authorities' interest in import substitution. This tendency is relevant not only to the agricultural sector of economy, but mostly to every sphere of domestic production.
The problem has largely become evident with the start of another economic crisis in Russia in February 2022. With the implementation of new, more severe sanction packages on the Russian economy companies from varying economy sectors ceased their operations and reduced or stopped export of technologies, composite materials and manufactured parts for production. Moreover, large number of large and medium enterprises decided to stop their operations on the Russian market, and leave the market. These events have created a great deal of risk for the economic performance of native enterprises, but at the same time have created numerous opportunities for innovation and further development, as the competition in many spheres has decreased or ceased to exist at all and native producers received a chance to acquire the opened niches and penetrate the market.
The main focus of this work will be on the concept of marketing agility and marketing agile practices and how they can be used by Russian companies operating on the native market to adopt during the times of high uncertainty and rapid market change, mitigate the impacts of major economic crises, and operate effectively under severe economic conditions. In this paper we aim to identify place and role of marketing agile practices for Russian business and develop practical recommendations on developing competitive advantage in the future using more agile methods of transformation, development and growth under harsh economic conditions.
In this work we will study the theoretical data on agile marketing practices and the advantage they provide as well as on the historical data on the development of Russian business in times of crisis, and will also quickly analyze a couple of crisis management strategies relevant to the topic.
However the term is vague and has to be defined properly in order to talk about marketing agility measurement in different companies.
Furthermore, speaking about Russian market, a lot of factors have been driving the need for companies to constantly change and adopt to economic conditions besides digitalization. State of economic crisis locally and globally has affected how the companies operate including the effects of Covid-19 pandemic. Crisis can be defined as “a low probability, high-impact situation that is perceived by critical stakeholders to threaten the viability of the firm” (Pearson and Clair, 1998). As crises can significantly affect the organization and result in poor economic performance and even in company demise managers need to make sense of these events as quickly as possible and devise instruments to effectively manage these events (Grewal et al. 2001).
For the past eight years, since 2014 Russian business has been operating under the influence of European and American economic sanctions. First sanctions largely affected many companies operating in the agricultural sector of economy and in the banking sphere (Connolly 2015). Restrictions on import and export of agricultural production have significantly transformed how this sector of economy looks right now, driving innovation and import substitution. However, vast amount of innovation is largely hindered by insufficient domestic production and poor product quality. For the development and modernization of production, Russian businesses have to import Western equipment and machinery, since there are simply no local analogues of some equipment. Many enterprises, according to experts, profit only thanks to the privileges of the authorities' interest in import substitution. This tendency is relevant not only to the agricultural sector of economy, but mostly to every sphere of domestic production.
The problem has largely become evident with the start of another economic crisis in Russia in February 2022. With the implementation of new, more severe sanction packages on the Russian economy companies from varying economy sectors ceased their operations and reduced or stopped export of technologies, composite materials and manufactured parts for production. Moreover, large number of large and medium enterprises decided to stop their operations on the Russian market, and leave the market. These events have created a great deal of risk for the economic performance of native enterprises, but at the same time have created numerous opportunities for innovation and further development, as the competition in many spheres has decreased or ceased to exist at all and native producers received a chance to acquire the opened niches and penetrate the market.
The main focus of this work will be on the concept of marketing agility and marketing agile practices and how they can be used by Russian companies operating on the native market to adopt during the times of high uncertainty and rapid market change, mitigate the impacts of major economic crises, and operate effectively under severe economic conditions. In this paper we aim to identify place and role of marketing agile practices for Russian business and develop practical recommendations on developing competitive advantage in the future using more agile methods of transformation, development and growth under harsh economic conditions.
In this work we will study the theoretical data on agile marketing practices and the advantage they provide as well as on the historical data on the development of Russian business in times of crisis, and will also quickly analyze a couple of crisis management strategies relevant to the topic.
Results of the quantitative analysis are consistent with the literature and the insights gathered from the interviews that implementation of MA enhances firm performance especially during economic instability (Kalaignaman et al. 2021). Quantitative data provides generalization on a larger sample, that elements of MA have a positive influence on firm performance and also provided us with deeper insights about the effect of each of the MA capability on firm operational and financial performance, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
4.3.1 Limitations
The main limitations of the research pertain to the composition of our data samples for both of the research methods and the timeline that the research covers.
Our qualitative analysis using in-depth interviews focused on firms from various industries, and was for that reason broad to some extent and did not go very deep into each industry’s specifics. Thus, future research may focus on one or couple of specific industries in more detail to learn about MA implementation and its effectiveness in each industry separately. Moreover, at the time of data gathering some effects of SMO’s consequences on firms operations might not have been seen yet, thus future research is needed to further asses firms under current crisis conditions.
The main limitations of the quantitative part of the research can be ascribed to two main issues. First of all, the survey was conducted in the beginning of 2022 thus only considering the effect of Covid-19 pandemic as external factor affecting firm performance and not considering recent events connected to special military operation (SMO) and its implications on business operations. In this survey the effects of the crisis that started in the end of march of 2022 was not taken into account.
Furthermore, the sample represents primarily micro organizations, thus some results may be biased, concerning primarily this group of companies.
Thus, there exist a number of limitations towards the results of this research and its research abilities. These limitations can be overcome in future studies.
4.3.2 Theoretical contribution
1. There is a limited number of studies that research marketing agility (see Khan 2020, Kalaignaman et al. 2021) and one of the main aims of this research was to contribute to the literature on Marketing agility. Scholars have stressed the need to test the influence of the main elements of MA on a firm's performance in volatile markets (Cerit, M. M. et al. 2021). In this research we particularly looked at each of the four main arguments of MA defined by (Kalaignaman et al. 2021) and examined how they contribute to firm performance measures (both operational and financial performance) as well confirmed positive effects of MA implementation on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (suggested in Aghina et al. 2020 and Kalaignaman et al. 2021).
2. We believe that our research makes important contributions to the literature of agile transformation of business processes and effectiveness of agile practices on firm performance (Aghina et al. 2020). The results yielded in this research indicate that not only complete agile transformation leads to enhanced firm performance, but that transforming separate functions of the firm, in particular marketing function results in the enhanced firm financial and operational performance in comparison to firms with more traditional approaches to marketing function. This research shows concrete links of agile marketing elements implementation to enhancement of firms’ operational and financial performance.
3. Moreover there has been a lack of literature on the topic of implementation of MA in emerging markets, especially in the Russian context under turbulent economic conditions. Khan, H. (2020) displays in his research of emerging market firms operating in developed economy markets the positive effect of agile marketing utilization on financial and market performance of the firms from emerging markets Our research contributes to the theory of firm effectiveness and agile market practices implementation in the context of the Russian market. It elaborates further on the implementation of agile principles by the emerging market firms in particular Russian firms that operate on local markets which can be characterized as highly turbulent and complex. Both qualitative and quantitative research contribute to better understanding of MA implementation benefits for local firms as well as country specific peculiarities and challenges are identified for implementing MA.
4. Furthermore, Kalaignaman et al. 2021 raises the need of adopting an effective tool for measurement of companies’ marketing agility and degree (success) of its implementation for firms undergoing or planning to undergo the transition (Kalaignaman et al. 2021). Hoogveld and Koster (2016) propose to use the “Objectives-Principles-Strategies framework” defined by
Soundararajan, S. (2013). In this paper we adopt the framework and suggest to complement the framework with concrete capabilities related to marketing agility, firm’s constructs necessary for effective implementation of agility (Kalaignaman et al. 2021), and to take into account industry and country specific limitations identified in this research.
...
4.3.1 Limitations
The main limitations of the research pertain to the composition of our data samples for both of the research methods and the timeline that the research covers.
Our qualitative analysis using in-depth interviews focused on firms from various industries, and was for that reason broad to some extent and did not go very deep into each industry’s specifics. Thus, future research may focus on one or couple of specific industries in more detail to learn about MA implementation and its effectiveness in each industry separately. Moreover, at the time of data gathering some effects of SMO’s consequences on firms operations might not have been seen yet, thus future research is needed to further asses firms under current crisis conditions.
The main limitations of the quantitative part of the research can be ascribed to two main issues. First of all, the survey was conducted in the beginning of 2022 thus only considering the effect of Covid-19 pandemic as external factor affecting firm performance and not considering recent events connected to special military operation (SMO) and its implications on business operations. In this survey the effects of the crisis that started in the end of march of 2022 was not taken into account.
Furthermore, the sample represents primarily micro organizations, thus some results may be biased, concerning primarily this group of companies.
Thus, there exist a number of limitations towards the results of this research and its research abilities. These limitations can be overcome in future studies.
4.3.2 Theoretical contribution
1. There is a limited number of studies that research marketing agility (see Khan 2020, Kalaignaman et al. 2021) and one of the main aims of this research was to contribute to the literature on Marketing agility. Scholars have stressed the need to test the influence of the main elements of MA on a firm's performance in volatile markets (Cerit, M. M. et al. 2021). In this research we particularly looked at each of the four main arguments of MA defined by (Kalaignaman et al. 2021) and examined how they contribute to firm performance measures (both operational and financial performance) as well confirmed positive effects of MA implementation on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (suggested in Aghina et al. 2020 and Kalaignaman et al. 2021).
2. We believe that our research makes important contributions to the literature of agile transformation of business processes and effectiveness of agile practices on firm performance (Aghina et al. 2020). The results yielded in this research indicate that not only complete agile transformation leads to enhanced firm performance, but that transforming separate functions of the firm, in particular marketing function results in the enhanced firm financial and operational performance in comparison to firms with more traditional approaches to marketing function. This research shows concrete links of agile marketing elements implementation to enhancement of firms’ operational and financial performance.
3. Moreover there has been a lack of literature on the topic of implementation of MA in emerging markets, especially in the Russian context under turbulent economic conditions. Khan, H. (2020) displays in his research of emerging market firms operating in developed economy markets the positive effect of agile marketing utilization on financial and market performance of the firms from emerging markets Our research contributes to the theory of firm effectiveness and agile market practices implementation in the context of the Russian market. It elaborates further on the implementation of agile principles by the emerging market firms in particular Russian firms that operate on local markets which can be characterized as highly turbulent and complex. Both qualitative and quantitative research contribute to better understanding of MA implementation benefits for local firms as well as country specific peculiarities and challenges are identified for implementing MA.
4. Furthermore, Kalaignaman et al. 2021 raises the need of adopting an effective tool for measurement of companies’ marketing agility and degree (success) of its implementation for firms undergoing or planning to undergo the transition (Kalaignaman et al. 2021). Hoogveld and Koster (2016) propose to use the “Objectives-Principles-Strategies framework” defined by
Soundararajan, S. (2013). In this paper we adopt the framework and suggest to complement the framework with concrete capabilities related to marketing agility, firm’s constructs necessary for effective implementation of agility (Kalaignaman et al. 2021), and to take into account industry and country specific limitations identified in this research.
...
Подобные работы
- THE RELATIOSNHIP BETWEEN THE BOARD
COMPOSITION AND THE LEVEL OF IPO
UNDERPRICING IN RUSSIAN COMPANIES
Магистерская диссертация, ценные бумаги. Язык работы: Английский. Цена: 5620 р. Год сдачи: 2016 - FACTORS AFFECTING KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION IN SMALL
IT-ENTERPRISES
Магистерская диссертация, менеджмент. Язык работы: Английский. Цена: 5670 р. Год сдачи: 2016 - FACTORS AFFECTING KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION IN SMALL
IT-ENTERPRISES
Магистерская диссертация, менеджмент. Язык работы: Английский. Цена: 5600 р. Год сдачи: 2016 - Impact of Job-Related Factors on Employee Loyalty in a Hybrid Setup:
Comparison of Russian and Chinese employees in Russian Consulting
Дипломные работы, ВКР, менеджмент. Язык работы: Английский. Цена: 4750 р. Год сдачи: 2024 - THE COUNTRY-SPECIFIC INFLUENCES ON SUPPLY CHAIN DIGITALISATION IN
RUSSIA
Магистерская диссертация, логистика. Язык работы: Английский. Цена: 5720 р. Год сдачи: 2018 - COST ALLOCATION METHODS IN
COLLABORATIVE LOGISTICS
Магистерская диссертация, логистика. Язык работы: Английский. Цена: 5670 р. Год сдачи: 2017