Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

This article provides an assessment of the state of the field of marketing strategy research and the outlook. Using institutional theory, the authors develop an organizing framework to serve as a road map for assessing research in marketing strategy. Their assessment of the state of the field based on a review of extant literature suggests that significant strides in conceptual development and empirical research have been achieved in a number of areas. Several recent developments in the business world, including deconglomeration and increased organizational focus on managing and leveraging market-based assets such as brand equity and customer equity, suggest that marketing is likely to play a more important role in charting the strategic direction of the firm. However, the theoretical contributions of the field to the academic dialogue on strategy leave much to be desired.

Strategy theorists share (1) the view that the strategic imperative of a firm should be sustained, superior financial performance and (2) the belief that this goal can be achieved through a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. Neoclassical perfect competition and traditional industrial organization economics, however, imply that the sustained performance goal advocated by strategy theorists is anticompetitive and its achievement presumptively detrimental to social welfare. This article addresses the strategy-is-anticompetitive thesis with the goal of grounding strategy in a theory of competition— resource-advantage theory—that does not imply that the strategic imperative and its achievement are presumptively anticompetitive and antisocial. As such, this article initiates a discussion of the public policy implications of resource-advantage theory.

This article provides observations on the state of the art in marketing research during 1987-1997. As such, it updates the earlier state-of-the-art review by Malhotra (1988), which won the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) Best Article Award. The primary thrust of articles published in the Journal of Marketing Research during 1987-1997 is reviewed to determine important areas of research. In each of these areas, the authors summarize recent developments, highlight the state of the art, offer some critical observations, and identify directions for future research. They present a cross-classification of various techniques and subject areas, and make some observations on the applications of these techniques to address specific substantive and methodological issues in marketing research. The article concludes with some general directions for marketing research in the twenty-first century.

Emotions are mental states of readiness that arise from appraisals of events or one’s own thoughts. In this article, the authors discuss the differentiation of emotions from affect, moods, and attitudes, and outline an appraisal theory of emotions. Next, various measurement issues are considered. This is followed by an analysis of the role of arousal in emotions. Emotions as markers, mediators, and moderators of consumer responses are then analyzed. The authors turn next to the influence of emotions on cognitive processes, which is followed by a study of the implications of emotions for volitions, goal-directed behavior, and decisions to help. Emotions and customer satisfaction are briefly explored, too. The article closes with a number of questions for future research.

A traditional assumption concerning how prices influence buyers’ purchasing behaviors has been that buyers know the prices of the products and services that they consider for purchase. However, empirical research during the past four decades repeatedly has discovered that buyers often are not able to remember the prices of items they had recently purchased. One conclusion that has been drawn is that buyers often do not attend to price information in purchase decisions. The authors argue that this conclusion may be incorrect in that what consumers can explicitly remember is not always a good indicator of what they implicitly know. Price information not consciously remembered can still influence internal reference prices and product evaluations. In this article, the authors discuss the conceptual and methodological ramifications of the distinction between remembering and knowing to reassess and refine our understanding of how buyers process and use price information.

During the past three decades, tremendous strides have been made in our understanding of how firms should organize and manage their channels of distribution. Still, we have barely touched the surface of all the managerial issues that need to be addressed. A variety of research needs still exist regarding constructs and issues examined in prior channels research. Furthermore, many issues of managerial importance relating to the organization and management of channels of distribution have received no attention in empirical research. The purpose of this article is to provide a perspective on how channels research should proceed in the future to promote the most progress. It is hoped that the article will help to shape the future direction of marketing thought with regard to channels of distribution and its fundamental domain.

The authors examine how the practice of personal selling and sales management is changing as a result of the increased attention on long-term, buyer-seller relationships and identify some implications of these changes. Changes in the traditional personal selling and sales management activities are needed to support the emergence of the partnering role for salespeople. For salespeople in the partnering role, the personal selling shifts from a focus on influencing buyer behavior to managing the conflict inherent in buyer-seller relationships. The emphasis on building relationships rather than making short-term sales and the use of sales teams dictates changes in the way firms select, train, evaluate, and compensate salespeople and members of sales teams. In this article, the authors have suggested some issues concerning the emerging partnering role for salespeople that deserve the attention of scholars interested in personal selling and sales management research.

This article considers the marketing implications of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (FTDA) of 1995. The FTDA, an amendment to the Lanham Act, will influence the manner in which marketing is practiced well into the twenty-first century. Although the FTDA is specifically concerned with protecting famous trademarks from being diluted—either by having their distinctiveness diminished or positive associations tarnished—by similar trademarks, its influence will not be limited to trademark or branding issues. Implications range from the allocation of advertising resources to the increased use of marketing research.

This article summarizes the most significant developments in survey sampling in the twentieth century, especially as they relate to marketing and marketing research, and attempts to predict, based on what we know now, significant developments that will occur early in the twenty-first century. The article is divided into the following sections: (1) Developments in Door-to-Door Sampling, (2) Developments in Telephone and Mail Surveys, (3) Location Samples, (4) Focus Groups and Other Sloppy Samples, (5) Sampling Rare Populations, (6) Business Surveys, (7) Panels, (8) Developments in the Theoretical Foundation of Survey Sampling, and (9) The Evolutionary Process and Future Developments.