Strategic marketing

The notion of strategic marketing, as a core element in any enterprise, has roots in seminal articles by Jain (1983) and Day and Wensley (1983). Here, the authors present clear guidelines regarding the strategic decisions of how, where, and when to invest in organizational resources, citing marketing as being fundamental to the overall growth and long-term viability of enterprise. More recently, the robust role of strategic marketing was reinforced by Varadarajan (2010), who argues for a better delineation between strategic marketing and marketing strategy, with the former clarified as ".encompassing the study of organizational, inter-organizational, and environmental phenomena concerned with (1) the behaviour of organizations in the marketplace in their interactions with consumers, customers, competitors, and other external constituencies, in the context of creation, communication, and delivery of products that offer value to customers in exchanges with organizations, and (2) the general management responsibilities associated with the boundary spanning role of the marketing function in organizations." We enthusiastically embrace this viewpoint.During the past decade or so, there has been a growing imbalance in the marketing literature between work at the tactical marketing level and work at the strategic marketing level and, as a result, managers (and researchers alike) may have a tendency to marginalise, or indeed ignore, important long-term issues. We believe the time is right for the marketing discipline to attract more research that addresses core strategic issues in marketing and we see the future of strategic marketing research as very bright.This ebook contains both empirical and theoretical/conceptual contributions that aim to address new research directions in the field of strategic marketing as well as to add important new knowledge to the field.