The impact of Porter's strategy types on the role of market research and customer relationship management

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate the influence of Porter’s strategy types on the use of customer relationship management (CRM) techniques and traditional market research, against theoretical and empirical evidence that differences in strategy types may result in variation in favoured marketing information sources and procedure.

Design/methodology/approach – Depth interviews generated a series of scale items, which were combined with others derived from the literature in a questionnaire measuring strategy types, the roles of market research, and the characteristics of CRM systems. Responses were obtained from 240 senior marketing managers in Australia, and applied to the testing of five research propositions.

Findings – ANOVA found no differences in CRM usage among the strategy types. Variation was widespread, however, in four roles of traditional market research: enhancing strategic decision making, increasing usability of existing data, presenting plans to senior management, and achieving productivity and political outcomes.

Research limitations/implications – Future researchers using the Porter strategic types should separate “marketing differentiators” from “product differentiators” because they function and compete differently.

Practical implications – All organisations can benefit from CRM systems, but “marketing differentiators” exhibit a relatively higher usage of traditional market research. This is likely to be because they compete by creating softer product differences, while others do so on harder characteristics such as price or product functionality.

Originality/value – This is the first study to use the Porter types to explain differences between the roles and uses of market research and CRM within organisations.