Does Marketing and Sales Integration Always Pay Off? Evidence from a Social Capital Perspective

Dominique Rouzies (1) , John Hulland (2) , Donald W. Barclay (3)

1 GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC
2 Katz Business School
3 Richard Ivey School of business

Building on social capital theory, we view the marketing and sales interface as a set of inter-group ties and investigate how firms (1) generate value from inter-group relationships and (2) develop the social capital embedded in these relationships. Our findings suggest that social capital enhances -- but can also limit -- a firm's performance depending on the characteristics of its customers. Our results also demonstrate that managing the marketing and sales interface at different levels of customer concentration is critical to the success of a firm's performance.

Keywords: social capital theory; Marketing organization; sales organization; interface; social capital theory.

Dominique Rouzies, John Hulland, Donald W. Barclay. Does Marketing and Sales Integration Always Pay Off? Evidence from a Social Capital Perspective. 2010. ⟨hal-00540797⟩