Is the Marketing Function Influential or Not? We Should Really Be the Ones to Know!

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, an increasingly significant amount of research has emerged concerning the state of marketing’s influence within the firm. However, the results have been surprisingly inconsistent. For example, Homburg et al. (2015), benchmarking Homburg et al. (2009), show that marketing’s influence has in fact decreased over the last two decades. This result appears to contradict research showing that the marketing function contributes to shareholder value (e.g., Gupta et al. 2004; Kumar and Shah 2009). Again, another recent work by Feng et al. (2015) suggests that marketing’s influence has increased in the last 15 years and that it is also a driver of firm performance. To complicate the picture even more, Nath and Mahajan (2008) make the case that the presence of a CMO has no effect on firm performance. Given the amount of rigorous, yet contrary research findings, it is surprising (read: unsettling) that the results may in fact be dependent on methodology and/or sample. How does this impact strategic marketing theory? How does this information impact practitioners, marketing spend, hiring practices, Ph.D. programs, etc.?