Prior research on marketing principles focuses mainly on the benefits of using a relatively small set of high-level principles. However, based on 38 in-depth interviews with marketing professionals across firms and industries, the authors find that principles are far more widespread and hierarchically layered. Informed by these insights, the present research complements prior research by introducing the ABC (articulating, bridging, calibrating) framework of marketing principles: a principles-based system of marketing alignment and adaptation based on the processes of articulating, bridging, and calibrating principles throughout an organization. Articulating highlights the trade-offs of varying a principle's specificity. Less specific principles offer decision-making flexibility that fosters adaptation but increases misalignment costs (i.e., increased marketing resource misallocation, marketer mental burden, and marketing sprawl). More specific principles offer decision-making clarity that fosters alignment but increases maladaptation costs (i.e., increased marketing staleness, reduced marketer professional development, and increased opportunity costs). To address these tensions, this research identifies two key cost-mitigation processes: bridging, which involves translating less specific principles into more contextualized guidance, and calibrating, which involves evaluating and refining more specific principles to ensure they fit with changing conditions. Collectively, these insights underscore a new prescriptive framework for executing the ABC framework to achieve aligned and adaptive marketing strategy execution.

Knowledge is a key resource in marketing, and an assumption across literatures is that a firm must prevent valuable knowledge from leaking to competitors. This research develops a theoretical framework that calls for rethinking this view by offering a fresh perspective on when and how a firm should protect marketing knowledge to minimize the likelihood of harm to the firm. This framework integrates research across disciplines and interviews with executives to provide a more accurate analysis of the payoffs of knowledge protection. This is accomplished, first, by introducing a set of unintended hidden costs of the most commonly used knowledge-protection strategy-leakage prevention-that harm a firm's competitive advantage. Firm and industry moderators that influence the magnitude and consequences of these hidden costs are outlined. Second, the framework suggests that the benefits of knowledge protection may be more limited than previously recognized. It does so by delineating the knowledge "leakage-to-harm" process and identifying competitor and industry moderators that can impede the process. Third, the framework offers a typology of alternative protection strategies firms can use to preserve their knowledge-based competitive advantage. Across these contributions, the framework calls for substantial rethinking of marketing knowledge protection with important implications for marketing practice and future research.

The successful implementation of planned marketing strategy is widely held to be an important driver of firm performance. For managers, however, implementing marketing strategy is a time- consuming, problem-ridden process, with frequent failures. Yet, despite past research attention we still have little understanding of why this continues to be the case. This study synthesizes insights from fieldwork interviews, the marketing and strategic management literature, and focus groups with managers to enhance understanding of why implementing marketing strategy is so hard. In delineating important components of marketing strategy implementation, mapping the strategy implementation process, and identifying new causes of common problems inherent in the resulting understanding of the marketing strategy implementation phenomenon, our study offers an explanation for frequently observed gaps between "intended" and "realized" marketing strategy. Strategy implementation is revealed as a complex phenomenon that involves inherent trade-offs between different aspects and stages of implementation, making "silver bullet" solutions to commonly observed marketing strategy implementation problems unlikely. This offers a rich foundation for a new generation of marketing strategy implementation research. We also offer some guidance-with associated downside trade-offs highlighted-for managers to consider in efforts to enhance marketing strategy implementation effectiveness.

Since the early work in the 1980s, interest in the concept of market driving or market shaping has now begun to accelerate. We begin with a brief overview of the development of research on the topic. Following this we discuss several directions for future research. In particular, we suggest the field could benefit from a deeper understanding of questions that are categorized into: (1) vision and visioning (vision characteristics, visioning process), (2) implementing visions (implementation typologies, reducing incumbent industry attractiveness, risk management), (3) leadership in driving markets (CEO, firm and collective leadership), and (4) drivers and barriers of success in driving markets (market readiness to be driven, obstructors, competing ecosystems, incumbent defensive strategies).

There is very little research on talent management in the marketing discipline. This is despite the significant time and effort that firms allocate the to the entire marketing talent pipeline—including recruitment, selection, training, development, rewards, and promotion within the firm. Michael Farrington serves as the senior vice president, people and culture at Nuvasive and is responsible for the company’s human resources, talent, and total rewards, as well as the corporate marketing, brand and communication functions. This interview sheds light on the nature of how firms manage the end-to-end talent pipeline in marketing.