Managing Marketing: The Elevated View of Marketing within Firms

Abstract The interest in marketing strategic management within firms has given rise to numerous studies. While marketing remains a central driver of business performance and despite its managerial importance, studies fail to capture key developments in firm profiles (e.g. globalization and shifts in marketing’s organizational role), particularly the interplay between marketing’s functional and processual dimensions across domestic and international contexts. Notably, becoming a market-based organization requires marketing to diffuse various facets. This gap may result in model misspecification, limited generalizability, and an incomplete understanding of how marketing is managed within modern organizations. To address these issues, this study articulates the rationale for an elevated ambidextrous view of marketing by introducing a holistic, integrative framework grounded in the realities of 21st-century business. The study proposes a novel multivariate model that combines multiple facets of marketing (functional and processual dimensions, and domestic and international contexts), which have not been examined together in prior research. To illustrate this approach, the study investigates the fundamental issue of the position of marketing within firms using a mixed-method design (qualitative pretest, quantitative pretest, and main study) with firm-data drawn from both subjective and objective sources. Our additive findings reveal that marketing facets interact in complex ways and influence performance differently. Moreover, performance consequences are dependent on contingencies. These results offer new theoretical insights and practical implications by highlighting the need for an elevated, ambidextrous view in marketing management. The study contributes a multi-lens perspective that enhances a more integrative management of marketing and broadens the dialogue on marketing’s strategic role in contemporary firms.