The Development of Influencing Factors on the Integration of Marketing and Sales

  • Christina Reich

    Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

    Abstract

    The purpose of the study THE DEVELOPMENT OF INFLUENCING FACTORS ON THE INTEGRATION OF MARKETING AND SALES is to investigate which factors contribute to the Integration of Marketing and Sales in the business-to-business context and to examine if the Integration favours the creation of Customer Value.Numerous studies deal with the Integration of business departments, but there is no consensus either on the content of the term Integration or on the factors influencing it. For this reason, this study derives influencing factors based on literature for Integration and the term Integration is delimited and defined. In contrast, the Customer Value concept still receives very little attention in research at present. There is also no uniform understanding of the term Customer Value and there is only a very limited number of empirical studies on this subject,which is why this study carries out a delimitation and definition of the term Customer Value. Subsequently, a previously not extensively empirically investigated connection between the two concepts Integration and Customer Value is established by this study where Customer Value represents one possible outcome of Integration. It is explained that Customer Value represents a possibility for differentiation from the competition whereby a competitive advantage can be achieved what in turn represents a success factor for companies. In order to examine the factors influencing Integration and the influence of Integration on Customer Value, a study consisting of two parts (Part A & B) is conducted. The examination included 464 valid questionnaires for the study (Part A) and 848 for the study (Part B).The study (Part A) took into account the perception of Marketing, Sales, and Key Account Management with regard to their relationship. The most important finding from the study (Part A) is that Marketing, Sales, and Key Account Management do not have a significant different perception of the influencing and target variables examined. This allows a uniform examination of the departments in the study (Part B). To reduce the scope and complexity of the study (Part B), a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is performed from which the content of the final questionnaire of the study (Part B) is derived. The investigation of the study (Part B) is conducted by a partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS3. The results of the study (Part B) indicate that the influencing factors Communication, Strategy and Common Goals, Leadership, and Culture contribute significantly to the Integration of Marketing and Sales. Furthermore, the result shows that Integration has a strong influence on the creation of Customer Value, but cannot sufficiently explain it. Thus, it can be concluded that this study provides an empirically supported new and broader perspective to key factors influencing Marketing and Sales Integration with regard to the creation of Customer Value. Therefore, a research gap is closed by the investigation of the combination of the constructs Integration and Customer Value since there are no comparable empirical studies in this context with regard to the large sample used here and the associated significance of the results as well as the multitude of examined influencing factors on Integration.
    Date of Award16 Jun 2020
    Original languageEnglish
    SupervisorHefin Rowlands (Supervisor) & Richard Hofmaier (Supervisor)

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