Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Volume 27, Issue 2

This issue begins with a paper by Leanne White, of Victoria University in Melbourne, which takes us on a developmental marketing journey showing how marketing has been used to take an everyday, local product into a world-recognised brand. She uses the Foster’s lager “I believe”integrated marketing communications campaign as the basis for a textual analysis based on semiotics, shot combination analysis and content analysis to deconstruct this iconic brand. Through nationalism, humour and latterly, irony,Foster’s Group Ltd have made this one of the most recognised brands in the world.

Susanna Winter and Sanna Sundqvist from Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland discuss the role of integrated marketing communication strategies in the very different context of new high technology product launch, providing evidence that whatever the sector context, high-tech organisations can achieve effective integrated marketing communications through close interaction with customers and being responsive to their feedback.

Two articles addressing innovation follow. The first is about how innovation is important to the success of small companies in a specific sector – the furniture industry. The second is about a much more abstract use of innovation– applied in a very different context – a city. Carmen Otero-Neira and Jesus Fernandez (University of Vigo, Spain) with Marti Lindman (University of Vaasa, Finland) contribute insight into how innovation is linked to performance. Through comparative case studies, these authors give an insight into why some companies are more successful than others in starting and developing innovation. They address the synergies of product, market and process innovations and highlight the importance of the impact of management style. Maxwell Briggs of Queensland University of Technology in Australia has provided an analysis of how marketing systems, especially product management and innovation are relevant to the challenges of urban development. Like organisations, cities need to innovate in order to maintain their image,functionality and stakeholder focus. This paper shows that managing the innovation process can improve the success rate of city development initiatives.

Hande Kmlolu and Hülya Zaral at Bogazici University in Turkey consider something that is always difficult – how to define success, in this case in electronic customer relationship management. First, the Balanced Scorecard is used to create a performance measurement tool for e-CRM – defining the factors and criteria that signify higher levels of success. Organisations with higher levels of successful e-CRM felt the benefit in terms of customer targeting and satisfaction, size and frequency of transactions and profitability, brand image, information management and decreased service support costs.

Alkis Thrassou and Demitris Vrontis of University of Nicosia, with Malcolm McDonald of Cranfield University in the UK present a marketing communications framework for small political parties, specifically in developed countries. They address the interrelationships of existing theory – behavioural,contextual and operational, identifying the underlying causes of voter behavior and crystallising the critical success factors in marketing communications for small political parties.

Gill WrightEditorMichael HarkerAssociate Editor