Maximising performance gains from cooperative marketing: understanding the role of environmental contexts

Abstract

Cooperative marketing strategies have the potential to make an enduring contribution to business performance and are among the strategic responses that a firm could consider when faced with environmental challenges. The focus of this study is to determine the effect of cooperative marketing strategies on organisational performance. Such organisational performance is investigated as being contingent on the use of cooperative marketing under given internal and external environmental contexts. That is, this study focuses on the performance outcomes associated with cooperative marketing strategies and attempts to identify environmental contexts under which cooperative marketing strategies are best implemented. Based on empirical analysis, results indicate that the higher the incidence of cooperative marketing strategy implementation, the higher perceived alliance performance outcomes. The perceived alliance performance benefits however were increased in given environmental contexts. Performance was positive as a result of co-marketing where there were regional and industry factors at play. That is, performance outcomes resulted when there were higher levels of co-marketing and when there was good quality infrastructure and under industry conditions when there was high entry requirements, high competitive intensity and high levels of environmental capacity. Managerial implications and future directions for research are also provided in the paper.