Marketing implementation, organizational change and internal marketing strategy 561
related units and structures. The develop-
ment of these internal marketing units and
co-ordinating them poses a management
challenge for the future.
Piercy, N. (1994) Marketing implementation:
analysing structure, information and process,
in Saunders, J. (ed.), The Marketing Initiative,
Prentice-Hall, Hemel Hempstead. This is an
attempt to integrate the theoretical and
empirical sources of the author’s approach to
the implementation question, examining
research works on the organization of
marketing in the UK, information and intelli-
gence systems characteristics, and the opera-
tion of budgeting and planning processes in
marketing, leading to central questions about
achieving the implementation of marketing
strategies and the potential role of internal
marketing.
Piercy, N. (1998) Marketing implementation: the
implications of marketing paradigm weak-
ness for the strategy execution process, Journal
of the Academy of Marketing Science, 26 (3),
222–236. A study of the implementation issue
as it is developing in modern organizations,
where the marketing concept competes for
management attention with other conflicting
paradigms like the lean enterprise, from an
increasingly weak organizational position.
Concludes that marketing in the future must
focus on organizational stretch and acquire a
new vocabulary to enumerate and defend
marketing capabilities.
Piercy, N. (2002) Market-Led Strategic Change:
A Guide To Transforming the Process of Going
to Market. This book, in its third edition in
2002, represents an attempt to put market-
ing into this context of the process of going
to market, rather than a marketing depart-
ment. This places the issue of strategy
implementation and strategic change in
marketing with the new context of cross-
functional and intra-organizational value-
creating processes, which underpin the
achievement of customer focus and devel-
oping superior customer value. The book
describes a strategic pathway comprising:
market sensing and customer focus, key
market choices, the development of a value
proposition, and the management of a
network of key relationships (with custom-
ers, collaborators, competitors and co-work-
ers). Accompanying material to the book
provides worksheets and diagnosis for
managers and students to use in confront-
ing the implementation and change prob-
lems that the companies face. The material
is supported by an extensive Tutor’s
Manual.
Walker, O. C. and Ruekert, R. W. (1987) Market-
ing’s role in the implementation of business
strategies: a critical review and conceptual
framework, Journal of Marketing, 51 , July,
15–33. An important, if somewhat theoret-
ical, treatment of the implementation issue in
marketing, which emphasizes different per-
spectives on the problem and develops pro-
positions about the organizational structures
and processes best suited for implementing
different types of strategy.