Marketing implementation, organizational change and internal marketing strategy 535
technical service but be unable to provide
other components of the strategy like
customer service;
latent, in the sense that a company may actually
possess the technical and human resources
required by a marketing strategy but lack the
ability to deploy those resources through lack
of learning or management experience;
internally inconsistent, since some parts of a
company may be better suited to execute a
strategy than others;
strategy specific, because there may be specific
skills and competencies highly suited to a
particular strategy but not the flexibility to
change to meet new strategic imperatives; and
even
person specific, in the sense that
implementation capabilities may rely on a
specific manager, who exerts the abilities and
influence needed to achieve effective
implementation (Piercy, 1998b).
These characteristics pose severe difficulties in
understanding and evaluating implementation
capabilities as part of marketing strategy mod-
els, and more immediately for practitioners in
managing the execution of strategy.
Organizational stretch
A simple diagnostic may assist in addressing
the question of marketing strategy implementa-
tion capabilities with a company, using the
model of organizational stretch shown in Fig-
ure 21.1.
In this approach, conventional strategiesare a
continuation of the past – the company con-
tinues an old strategy that it is good at
implementing, while the obsolete strategyis one
where previous execution capacity no longer
exists (e.g. key personnel have left, resources
become unavailable). Perhaps the most impor-
tant distinction, however, is the difference
betweensynergistic strategy(a marketing strategy
that we assume the company will be good at
executing) and the stretch strategy(a new strategy
requiring substantial new capabilities in execu-
tion). The challenge to executives is to adopt a
process and organizational perspective to better
distinguish between synergy and stretch charac-
teristics of new marketing strategies.
For example, the major grocery retailers
Tesco and Sainsbury successfully pursued
growth by moving into petrol retailing, which
closely matched the skills and capabilities theyFigure 21.1 Organizational stretch and implementation capabilities