Authors: Arianna Gianola; Renato Fiocca
There is a growing conviction in business studies that knowing about knowledge is critical to business success. The aim of this work-in-progress paper is to discuss the role and importance of knowledge in business markets focusing on the knowledge-intensive service firms. Starting from the assumption that knowledge can represent a source of sustainable competitive advantage in a market, we discuss in particular the role of marketing function in knowledge-intensive firms. The paper addresses the question: what is the role of marketing in a firm, where people, relationship, knowledge are the most important asset and where people are a crucial element of differentiation? We argue that within a firm in which people, their knowledge, their relationships, their experience and capabilities are the most important invisible assets, the marketing function shows some distinct properties and tends to change in a certain direction. The change seems to regard both the role of the marketing function within the company and with respect to the external context. We conclude that marketing function is in transition from a traditional vision to the one concerned mainly with developing and coping with, both internal and external, relationships.
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Publish Year: 2003
Conference: Lugano, Switzerland (2003)