一个通过参数和非参数分析的整合经销商营销能力性能标.docx

Industrial Marketing Management 39 (2010) 150–160
M. Billur Akdeniza,⁎, Tracy Gonzalez-Padronb,1, Roger J. Calantone

An integrated marketing capability benchmarking approach to dealer performance through parametric and nonparametric analyses
一个通过参数和非参数分析的整合经销商营销能力性能标杆管理方法

关键词：
Marketing capabilities营销能力
Benchmarking标杆管理
Data envelopment analysis数据包络分析
Stochastic frontier analysis随机前沿分析
Dealership network经销商网络
ABSTRACT
The role of marketing capabilities as a source of sustainable competitive advantage has been discussed previously in the marketing strategyfield. Benchmarking, a well-known learning mechanism, is suggested as a tool to identify and improve the marketing capabilities of afirm. Despite its popularity as a theoretical concept, there is not much empirical evidence to support the view of benchmarking marketing capabilities as a route to guide managers' efforts in this direction. This paper contributes to the three perspectives in the literature that support the view that benchmarking marketing capabilities can offer a basis for sustainable competitive advantage of thefirm through both a conceptual and integrated benchmarking model. They are empirically analyzed using stochastic frontier and data envelopment analysis methods based on four-year data set of forty-five dealers of a leading business-to-business supplier. The results indicate the importance of competent salespeople and building a long-term relationship in enhancing dealer performance. In addition, they reinforce a recipe of how marketing capabilities can be benchmarked to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Discussions and implications for managers are also presented.
© 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
摘要：
营销能力的作用作为一个可持续的竞争优势的来源以前就已经在市场战略领域被讨论了。标杆管理,一个众所周知的学习机制,被作为用来识别和改善稳固公司的营销能力的工具提出。尽管它的流行是作为理论概念,没有多少经验证据支持基准营销能力的观点作为路线指导经理人在这个方向努力。本文从文献中的三个视角阐述支持的观点,这个观点是，可以通过概念和综合基准模型来提供公司可持续发展优势的基础。他们是使用随机前沿和数据包络分析方法实证分析了基于四年数据集的45个领先的b2b供应商的经销商。结果表明营销人员的能力和与经销商建立长期关系的重要性。此外,他们加强如何标准化营销能力来实现可持续的竞争优势的秘方。对经理的决定和影响也被提出了。

1. Introduction
1.介绍
The role of marketing capabilities as a source of sustainable competitive advantage has been discussed previously in the marketing strategyfield. Recently, benchmarking, a famous management tool for organizational learning, has been suggested as a method to improve the marketing capabilities of a firm (e.g., Andersen, 1999; Vorhies & Morgan, 2003). Benchmarking is the process of identifying the highest standards of excellence for products, services or processes,
and hence making the improvements necessary to reach those standards, which are commonly called“best practices”(Biehl, Cook,& Johnston, 2006; Bhutta & Huq, 1999). It offers the opportunity to recognize good performance and expose poor performance for remedial action
营销能力的作用作为一个可持续的竞争优势的来源以前已经被在市场战略领域讨论了。最近，标杆管理,一位著名的为管理学习的管理工具,被建议作为一种提高公司的营销能力方法(如Andersen, 1999，Vorhies & Morgan, 2003)。标杆管理是确定最高标准的卓越的产品、服务或流程的过程并且因此做出必要的改进来达到这些标准,这些标准通常被称为“最佳实践”(Biehl, Cook,& Johnston, 2006; Bhutta & Huq, 1999)。它提供了为不就行动识别好性能和揭露差性能的机会。

In both academia and the business world, benchmarking has been discussed and analyzed in terms of the processes of marketing implementation, i.e. the ways in which a company converts its marketing inputs of cash, information, expertise, time, and strategy into marketing outputs of new products, communications, customer expectations, sales, and margins. Benchmarking of marketing productivity, processes, and capabilities utilize diverse methods. Some methods rely on an expert assessor external to the company for scoring marketing capabilities as input to regression analyses (Woodburn, 1999). Other types of methods rely on financial data and operating statistics to estimate efficiency frontiers through data envelopment analysis (Donthu, Hershberger, & Osmonbekov, 2005),and stochastic frontier analysis (Dutta, Narasimhan, & Rajiv, 2005).Despite its popularity as a theoretical and empirical concept, there is not much evidence to support the view of benchmarking marketing capabilities as a way to sustainable competitive advantage or to guide managers' benchmarking efforts (Vorhies & Morgan, 2005)
在学术界和商界,标杆管理就营销实现的过程即公司将营销的方式投入的资金、信息、技术、时间和策略营销新产品的输出、通信、客户期望、销售和利润问题展开过讨论和分析,。标杆管理的营销效率、流程和功能使用不同的方法。一些方法依赖于公司外部的专家评估营销能力得分作为回归分析的输入(Woodburn, 1999)。其他类型的方法依赖于财务数据和操作数据来估计效率前沿通过包络分析,和随机前沿分析((Donthu, Hershberger, & Osmonbekov, 2005)。尽管它的流行作为理论和经验的概念,但是没有多少证据能够支持基准营销能力作为一种可持续的竞争优势或指导经理人标杆管理工作的观点(Vorhies & Morgan, 2005)。

We build our study on three theoretical perspectives of benchmarking marketing capabilities mentioned in the literature. These are resource-based view of the firm, market orientation, and organizational learning. Our aim is to demonstrate the relevance of these theoretical perspectives of benchmarking in a business-to-business(B2B) context; specifically in a dealership network for this study.Characteristics of business markets include, among others, a small number of customers, long-term business relationships, and a high degree of interaction between members of the supplier and the customer company (Homburg & Fürst, 2005). There are several reasons to choose a B2B context for this study. Companies doing business in a B2B environment have a narrower range of marketing measures available to them, and generally focus on expenses, which rarely contribute to performance improvement (White & Dieckman,2005). However, a supplier's deployment of marketing and sales channels can significantly improve its strategy and can even lead to a structural transformation in channels (Wilson & Daniel, 2007). Contents lists available atScienceDirect Industrial Marketing Management transformation, dealers play a critical role for complex product sales by creating customer knowledge of the products; working with the customer to discover the best solution and providing after-sales support (Sharma & LaPlaca, 2005). So, measuring outcomes from marketing activities in a dealer distribution channel is becoming increasingly important in a competitive environment and benchmarking offers the opportunity to recognize good performance and expose poor performance for remedial action
我们在对被在文献中提到的基准营销能力的三个理论层面上研究。这些都是基于资源观点的公司市场定位,组织学习。我们的目标是在b2b标杆管理的理论视角下演示的相关性，特别是在这项研究的经销商网络。商业市场的特征包括,一个小数量的客户,长期的业务关系,和高
供应商和顾客成员之间的互动程度(Homburg & Fürst, 2005)。有几个为本研究选择一个B2B概念的原因。公司在在B2B环境下，对他们的营销环境市场范围狭窄,一般关注费用,这些很少导致性能改进(white& Dieckman2005)。然而,供应商的部署和销售渠道可以显著改善其战略,甚至可以导致渠道结构转变(Wilson & Daniel, 2007)。在这转换中,经销商通过创建客户对产品的知识为复杂产品销售起着至关重要的作用;与客户一起发现最好的解决方案,并提供售后服务支持(Sharma & LaPlaca,2005)。所以,从经销商分销渠道获得市场活动额测量结果变得在竞争环境下与往来越重要，并且标杆管理提供为补救行动识别好性能和揭露差性能的机会。

Based on the three theoretical perspectives and the B2B context indicated above, this study will be conducted in two parts. In thefirst part, we introduce our conceptual model adopted from Dutta,
Narasimhan, and Rajiv (1999), which offers a resource-based perspective on a firm's marketing capabilities and the impact of these capabilities on financial performance. In the second part, we
have an integrated benchmarking model adopted fromRoss and Droge (2002), in which nonparametric approaches are incorporated into the model to benchmark the temporal performance of dealers.According toVorhies and Morgan (2005), there are two benchmarking alternatives; functional and integrative benchmarking. In functional benchmarking, individual capabilities are assessed separately whereas in integrative benchmarking a set of related capabilities is assessed collectively (Fawcett & Cooper, 2001). In this study, we implement integrated benchmarking, in which the existence of interdependencies between individual capabilities can be a source of competitive advantage (e.g.,Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). Our data set has a panel setting, which includes four-year time period data of forty-five dealers of a leading B2B supplier, and we employ stochastic frontier estimation and recent extensions of data envelopment analysis to analyze the functional forms
基于上述的三个理论视角和B2B概念,本研究将分为两个部分。在第一部分中,我们介绍我们的概念模型，采用DuttaNarasimhan, and Rajiv (1999),它提供了一个基于资源视角稳固的营销能力和所带来的影响在财务上的表现。在第二部分,我们有一个采用Vorhies and Morgan (2005)的集成的基准模型,非参数方法被合并到模型的来测试经销商时间序列的表现。根据Vorhies and Morgan (2005),有两个基准选择;功能和综合标杆管理。在功能测试中,个人能力评估被认为是分离的，然而在综合基准是一组相关的功能的评估集体(Fawcett & Cooper, 2001).。在本研究中,我们实现集成的标杆管理,使相互依赖关系的存在在个人能力中可以成为一项竞争优势的来源(Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997)。我们的数据有面板设置，其中包括四年时间的数据45领先的B2B供应商的经销商,我们采用随机前沿分析估计和数据包络的延伸分析分析的功能形式。

We explore three research questions in this paper. First, we examine how efficiently the dealers utilize marketing capabilities to transform marketing resources to superior financial performance.
Second, we explore whether there exists any efficiency trends in the observed ranking order of dealer performance over time. Third, we look at whether there has been a shift in the efficiency frontier of dealers across time, specifically we analyze whether each dealer maintains its relative position i.e. efficiency ranking in comparison to other dealers during the four-year time period. Related with the second research question, we also conduct additional window analysis to identify the role model of inefficient dealers in the network
我们在本文中探索三个研究问题。首先,我们检查经销商如何有效利用营销能力来把好的营销资源转变为财务报表。第二,在观察到的经销商表现排名顺序随着时间的推移中，我们探讨是否存在效率的趋势。第三,我们在不同时间内观察经销商看是否存在效率边界转移，特别是我们分析在四年时间内是否每个经销商相比其他经销商保持其相对位置即效率排名。与第二个研究问题相关,我们也进行更多的分析窗口识别网络中低效的经销商的样例。

There are several expected contributions of this study. First, by using analytical techniques, we attempt to understand and analyze the complex phenomenon of the impact of marketing capabilities on firm performance that is underserved by statistical procedures.Second, we take an applied economics view and show that organizational marketing efforts make some firms more competitive than others. Third, the introduction of efficiency methods to examine the impact of marketing capabilities in a B2B context proves the value of benchmarking as a tool, empirically
这项研究有几个研究的预期贡献。首先,通过使用分析技术,我们试图理解和分析营销能力的复杂现象对公司业绩缺少统计程序的影响。第二,我们应用经济学的观点,表明组织营销努力使一些公司更具竞争力。第三,引入效率研究方法在B2B环境中证明标杆管理作为一种工具对营销能力影响的价值。

The organization of the paper is as follows. In the next section, we introduce the industry background of this study. Next, we explain the conceptual model, first by emphasizing the different theoretical perspectives of benchmarking marketing capabilities in the literature, then by identifying the marketing capabilities that are going to be used in our empirical analysis. In the method section, we describe the data set, input and output factors, and also the procedures of parametric and nonparametric analyses. After we give the results of our analyses, we discuss their theoretical, empirical, and managerial implications. Limitations and suggestions for future research conclude the paper.
本文的组织如下。在下一节中,我们介绍本研究的行业背景。接下来,我们解释了概念模型,首先通过强调在文学的角度不同的理论基准营销能力,然后通过确定的营销能力用于我们的实证分析。方法部分中,我们描述了数据集,输入和输出因素,同样的程序参数和非参数分析。在我们给出结果之后，我们的分析,讨论他们的理论、经验和管理影响。局限性和未来研究的建议也包含在文章中。

2. Industry background
2.行业背景
This study examines North American office furniture industry dealers that target large to middle-size installations in the commercial, medical, and government sectors. The context is an interesting for two reasons. First, nearly all organizations buy or rent office furniture; second, over 70 percent of this buying process happens through independent dealerships that sell products from multiple manufacturers and offer various services within a geographical area. Therefore,findings from intensive studies in office furniture purchasing highlight the importance of dealers to provide design, inventory, credit, and related services to customers during the buying process(Woodside, 2003).
本研究考察了北美办公家具行业经销商,目标是大,中型商业设施,医疗,和政府部门。文章是有趣的，原因有两个。首先,几乎所有的组织购买或租用办公室家具;第二,这个购买过程的70%以上一个地理区域通过从多个独立经销商销售产品制造商和提供各种服务。因此,从密集的研究发现办公家具采购强调经销商提供设计,库存,信贷和相关服务对客户的重要性。

In our study, the dealers are full service furniture dealerships offering premier products at competitive prices, a full range of furniture services, and great customer service. They operate in a
competitive environment for two important reasons; demand fluctuations and industry rivalry. Sales of office furniture in the United States declined from a high of $14.8 billion in 2000 to just over $10 billion in 2003, increasing slightly to $11.9 billion in 2005. Along with thefluctuation in the U.S. demand, imported products competing with the U.S. manufacturers have grown from less than $1 billion dollars in 1996 to $2.28 billion in 2005 (BIFMA, 2006). Most of what a dealership sells is manufactured by someone else and distribution agreements with the leading manufacturers are not exclusive to a geographical area. So, competition involves not only dealers for other
manufacturers, but also dealers offering identical products (Woodside, 2003). In an article byZimmerman (1990), a leading design firm executive stresses that major projects gravitate to larger dealerships with a vastfinancial base that offer consistent service. The current strategies of dealers for reacting to competitive pressures focus on reducing operating expenses while diversifying product and service offerings (Epperson, 2005).
在我们的研究中，全方位服务的家具经销经销商提供领先的产品竞争力的价格，齐全的家具服务，以及卓越的客户服务。他们工作在两个重要的原因，一个竞争的环境;需求波动和行业竞争。销售办公家具在美国由达14.8十亿高，2000年，2003年下降到只有10美元十亿，略增加至119十亿在2005年随着美国需求的波动，进口的产品符合美国制造商的竞争有从不到超过十亿美元美元，2005年增长在1996年至2.28十亿(BIFMA, 2006).大多数的什么是经销商卖的通过与领先厂商别人和分销协议生产的不是独家的地理区域。所以，竞争涉及的不仅是其他厂商的经销商也是提供相同的产品的经销商(Woodside,2003)。在一篇文章中来自Zimmerman (1990)，一家领先的设计公司高管强调，大项目吸引到了巨大的财政基础来提供一致的服务大经销商。经销商的反应，竞争压力目前的战略重点放在降低运营开支，同时多样化的产品和服务(Epperson, 2005)。

Another reason for this competitive environment is, unlike most retail distribution organizations, the process of sales and marketing practices is relatively complex. The complexity of sales and related services in office furniture industry is mainly due to the prevalence of modular office systems (i.e. cubicles) and new technology demands from telecommunication and computer innovations. When customers start to look at furnishing a completely new office or restructuring
existing office space for new purposes, dealers enter in a bidding process requiring months of investment in preparing a solution for customer needs (Woodside, 2003). One of the most important components of this customized solution is the design services offered by dealerships to customers to ensure accurate plans and specifications, conformance to client's requirements, customer satisfaction, and project implementation (OFDA, 2004b). The design group helps to increase sales by providing the customer with creative solutions for the facility needs and offering advice that goes beyond just product use.Woodside (2003)finds that a superior design may result in a contract even when the dealer is not the lowest bidder.
另一个原因是这个竞争激烈的环境中，不像大多数的零售分销机构，销售和营销实践的过程比较复杂。该办公家具行业的销售及相关服务的复杂性主要是由于模块化办公系统，并从电信和计算机创新的新技术的需求普遍存在。当客户开始关注一种全新的办公室装修或新方法来重组现有的办公空间，经销商需要投入几个月准备在投标的过程中来