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The loss of the marketing department’s influence: is it really happening? And why worry?

  • Original Empirical Research
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Abstract

Although research and managerial practice have demonstrated great interest in the role of marketing departments within firms and have raised repeated concerns that their influence is in sharp decline, prior research has not analyzed whether marketing departments are truly losing ground. To do so, we build on the work of Homburg et al. (1999), which assessed the influence of the marketing department two decades ago. Drawing on structurally equivalent data, the results demonstrate that the marketing department has indeed lost significant influence. Additionally, we analyze which department has benefited from this loss of influence. Interestingly, it is the sales department that has gained influence, rather than the finance department, as one might assume. We also study the performance consequences of the intraorganizational distribution of influence among the marketing, sales, R&D, operations, and finance departments. Our results are alarming because an influential marketing department makes the greatest contribution to company performance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marketing and Sales Department, University of Mannheim, L5, 1, 68131, Mannheim, Germany

    Christian Homburg & Arnd Vomberg

  2. Department of Marketing and International Trade, Freiberg University of Technology, Freiberg, Germany

    Margit Enke & Philipp H. Grimm

  3. Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

    Christian Homburg

Authors
  1. Christian Homburg
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  2. Arnd Vomberg
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  3. Margit Enke
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  4. Philipp H. Grimm
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Homburg.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 Measures, items, measurement, item reliabilities (IR), composite reliability (CR), average variance extracted (AVE), and Cronbach’s alpha (CA)
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Homburg, C., Vomberg, A., Enke, M. et al. The loss of the marketing department’s influence: is it really happening? And why worry?. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 43, 1–13 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-014-0416-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-014-0416-3

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