538 The Marketing Book
The impact of process models on
marketing
As noted above, part of the new organizational
design concept is the trend to organize around
process instead of function, and the develop-
ment of new organizational forms like hollow
or network organizations.
For example, one view of the new market-
ing organization is shown in the model of value
processes in Figure 21.3. A process perspective
appears useful, although as yet largely unde-
veloped, in building insight into issues like
implementation in an organizational context.
However, there are various ways of under-
standing process for these purposes. Most
commonly, process is understood in terms of its
substantivecontent– the new product develop-
ment process, the planning process, for exam-
ple. In addition, processes may be usefully
conceived in terms of their purposes– value-
defining, value-developing and value-deliver-
ing processes, for instance (Webster, 1997).
Understanding a process perspective may
be critical to identifying and managing strategy
implementation capabilities in new organiza-
tional forms. For example, a number of studies
of key marketing decision-making processes
have proposed that such processes should be
analysed in terms of their organizational
dimensions. Studies of marketing budgeting
and resource allocation (Piercy, 1987), market-
ing planning (Piercy and Morgan, 1994) and
marketing control (Piercy and Morgan, 1996)
have shared a model that suggests that many
decision-making processes can usefully be
analysed in terms of analytic/technical dimen-
sions. We might, for example, consider value
processes in the way shown in Figure 21.3.
This suggests that to understand the capability
of value processes to deliver value, or to
implement a value-based marketing strategy,
it is useful to examine not simply the ana-
lytic/technical aspects of the process (the
information gathered, the operations systems,
and the logistics for value delivery), but also
the behavioural aspects of the process (in
terms of the abilities of individuals to interpret
information and develop market understand-
ing, and their motivation, commitment and
behaviour in developing and delivering value
to customers) and the organizational or con-
textual aspects of the process (the learning
capabilities and responsiveness of the organi-
zation, and its management’s strategic orienta-
tion). An important issue is the consistency
Figure 21.2 The process of going to market
Source: Piercy (2002).