The purpose of this paper is to highlight the increased impact that academic research can gain when collaborating and sharing knowledge with corporate stakeholders and marketing practitioners, through the lens of managing tier demotion and deceitful behaviors in a channel marketing program. In particular, this paper highlights that true impact (defined as being meaningful change) can only be achieved when the research findings are operationalized and deployed as a business solution.
The approach taken in this paper is to challenge the traditional paradigm where field research is led by academics and places the corporate stakeholder at the centre of the research, where they have a leading role. This involves identifying, selecting, collaborating and engaging with key corporate stakeholders early in the research project, thus gaining their input and support so that the research recommendations secure the necessary funding to be successfully deployed.
The authors highlight two research projects focused on tier demotion and disengagement and deceitful behaviour driven from incentivise and gamifying learning. A new tier demotion process involving a highly customised customer care charter has been deployed and resulted in a re-engagement rate of 81% from those channel partners who were demoted (a rise from 40%). Deceitful behaviour detection tools were also deployed, resulting in 4,300 possible deceptive cases being investigated and resolved in Year 1, reducing to 451 in Year 6.
The change in research approach where field research places the corporate stakeholder at the centre of the research will add to the complexity of the research project, impact on timelines and introduce more stakeholders into the research team, which may have wider implications to the original research goal.
This transition will require academics to know more about their corporate partner, the corporate landscape, adding to the complexity of the research project and cede some control over the project.
Whilst academic research contributes to a body of theoretical concepts, equally important is bringing to life the research findings to show actual impact and meaningful change within the research setting. The present research approach has since been applied to multiple channel loyalty programmes across numerous industries increasing revenue and driving the success of the respective programmes. One key learning would be to engage more corporate stakeholders as part of the research project from the outset. The author neglected the legal and trust and compliance team and they had a significant impact on what findings were eventually implemented.
