Editorial

Citation

Simintiras, A.C. (2000), "Editorial", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 7 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/bij.2000.13107eaa.001

Editorial

About the Guest EditorDr Antonis C. Simintiras is Professor of Marketing and Head of the European Business Management School at the University of Wales Swansea. He has had many years of work experience in industry and held managerial positions in various companies. He holds visiting professorial appointments at several universities in Europe and the USA and his research interests are in the areas of cross-cultural sales negotiations, sales management, industrial and consumer marketing and cross-cultural research methodology. He has published more than 50 articles in refereed marketing journals and conference proceedings.

This special issue on "Benchmarking in marketing" emerged from the need to bring together two fundamental and complementary business philosophies: benchmarking and marketing. On the one hand, benchmarking, from merely being a technical term that signified a reference point, has been advanced to a continuous process of measuring virtually every aspect of business functioning against best practices realised by industry leaders. As such, benchmarking necessitates a constant search for best practices that produce superior performance for the purpose of meeting and surpassing the best-in-the class. Best practice benchmarking which applies to both strategic and operational levels within an organisation helps companies in their attempt to change in a way that will significantly increase their overall performance.

On the other hand, marketing, as a vital management process for ensuring that an organisation is market driven and focuses on customer relationships, helps companies to recognise that ongoing and satisfying relationships with customers are their most important asset. Given the complex and dynamic nature of the business environment, delivering superior value to customers, establishing good and lasting relationships with stakeholders and achieving superior performance necessitates a continuous search for industry best practices and fast learning. Fast learning, in turn, when it is supported by a synergistic organisational culture, can become a unique organisational competence. To this end, learning from best practice benchmarking can prove an indispensable input in marketing decision making.

This special issue has successfully attempted to pull together knowledge that spans both disciplines and opens avenues for more research in that area. There are five articles and one research note in this issue. The first article by Scott Dacko addresses the very important question of "how long does – and should – it take a follower firm to become aware and complete the process of responding to a pioneering new product introduction?". Follower firm responses to pioneering new product introductions were empirically examined and the discussion of the managerial implications of benchmarking such competitive responses is very illuminating. The second article by Nina Reynolds examines the methodology that is adopted by commercial market research agencies when they conduct international marketing research. The study concludes that no single agency can be used as a best practice benchmark for the entire process of international marketing research. Such findings point out some possible neglected opportunities in the marketplace and reveal the existing gap between marketing research theoreticians and practitioners.

The third article by Constantine Andriopoulos and Manto Gotsi identifies benchmarks relevant to brand management practices in the creative industry. Using case studies as an analytical tool, the authors found recognition of employees' creative output to be the key asset toward successful brand building. In the light of their findings, they concluded that companies should aim to provide their employees with the appropriate environment for enhancing their creativity. The fourth article by Anne Smith examines the potential for generating and evaluating consumer focused benchmarking criteria. Using a sample of consumers in three separate service sectors, the findings indicate that information derived from consumers can provide a valuable input into a comprehensive external benchmarking programme involving both competitive and generic measures.

"New product launch 'mix' in growth and mature product-markets" is the title of the article contributed by Susan Hart and Nikolaos Tzokas. The authors examine whether the marketing mix decisions for new product launch change over the product-market life cycle. Using a sample of 293 firms, the study failed to provide support for widely held beliefs such as that high prices, limited distribution and high promotion are the key success factors for a new product in the introductory and growth stages. The authors in light of their multifaceted findings lay down very clearly important theoretical and managerial implications. Lastly, the research note contributed by Liana Kourteli offers a challenging view pertaining to the scanning process. Given the importance of environmental scanning for both benchmarking and marketing, the author suggests that "the level of complexity of the environment, imposes on the organisation a specific or analogous scanning process, and in turn, an analogous communication system, which is in effect the structure of the organisation itself". Although the proposition remains to be empirically tested, it could be argued that the perceived complexity of the environment is inextricably linked to "how fast" learning occurs and "how quickly" an organisation adapts. Two processes contributing largely to building a unique organisational competence.

Antonis C. SimintirasGuest Editor