Authors: Elina Pernu; Tuula Lehtimaki
Abstract
This paper explores how corporate level marketing communications can be coordinated in a dispersed marketing organization. Specifically, the coordination of promotional marketing communications is examined in this study to reveal the connections between the different units at several levels of the organization, forming the internal marketing network. MNCs often perform their marketing operations at several levels and units, but under one corporate brand. This makes MNCs an interesting context for examining simultaneously the dispersion and the coordinative mechanisms of marketing organization, which still are scarcely addressed in empirical research on industrial marketing organization. This paper utilizes data from 17 interviews done inside a dispersed MNC with the managers and coordinators involved in marketing activities. The empirical findings from a qualitative case study show how the centralized and dispersed marketing organization solutions are coexisting. Marketing network actors are identified at three main levels of the organization, namely corporate communications, business unit, and regional levels. The study discusses also the related challenges, which originate from the contradictory requirements set by diverse BUs and the corporate level brand. Finally, managerial implications and ideas for further studies are presented.
Keywords: Industrial marketing organization, multinational company, marketing communications, coordination
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Conference: Glasgow, Scotland (2011)