Hassan Sherwani ROLE OF SALES AND MARKETING IN ... - Oulu

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72 campaigns which are then passed on to the responsible sales manager. There is no interchange of personnel between the two functions though. Formal communication happens within the meetings and through communication systems and informal communication plays a very small role due to the separation of marketing and sales. This may create problem for knowledge management because, there is no real system to store knowledge. Moreover, there is not much importance is given to tacit knowledge as it might develop after sometime anyway. According to the interviewees, the goals and incentives for both functions are aligned. However, as came apparent from the interview, the functions still use different metrics for measuring success e.g. the ROI for gathered new leads is estimated based on different, sometimes misaligned methods. In the literature review, this was recognized as being a common issue in sales and marketing collaboration. The interviewees were able to specify the reward and incentive system used by sales department though they were not sure about marketing function, which makes it impossible for author to estimate the true alignment of the system. The interviewees did however believe that the incentives given to sales people exceed those of the marketing personnel, which is very common. The level of seniority also matters when it comes to knowledge sharing. According to Tuomi and Lehto (2013), “perhaps in the beginning of career, one would not get much of the information as much as seniors do”. The tacit knowledge has a great significance for Oulun Sähkönmyynti because this type of knowledge cannot be codified and hence it is almost impossible to imitate (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993). The interviewees regard the cultural differences between the marketing and sales function as small and mainly unobtrusive. They regard company culture very Finnish which is transparent and open and there hasn’t been perceived any major conflicts related to cultural differences. There might be interesting situation when company would initiate its international ventures and would move out of Finnish culture to other cultures. As conflicts have been rare and minor, there are no common policies on how to deal with them. Any conflicts that arise are solved through discussions when the need comes.
73 Customer satisfaction is considered to be the key. It is argued that customer satisfaction is the result of a customer’s perception of the value received in a transaction or relationship (Lam et. al, 2004). To measure customer satisfaction, Oulun Sähkönmyynti has two separate questionnaire based customer service evaluation systems, one for evaluating Oulun Sähkönmyynti’s marketing efforts and one for measuring the perceived quality of sales, support and service efforts. Customers are asked to tell their opinions regarding these efforts and the results are jointly discussed in the meetings between marketing and sales. This is important, as pointed earlier, Guenzi & Troilo (2007) note that perceptions play a critical role in the creation of superior customer value. The company’s marketing department makes it sure that customer is getting what actually they want, their satisfaction with suppliers' abilities to deliver that value, and how their perceptions of value are changing value. Theoretically, these perceptions of value directly impact customers' satisfaction with suppliers which, in turn, influences customer retention (Daniel and Sarah, 1997). The interviewees regard the benefits of the collaboration to materialize in the form of used marketing and sales materials, leads from different campaigns, enhanced measurement of success rates and as increased interest towards the company as a whole, which benefits both functions (Sutinen, 2013). Even though the interviewees are satisfied with the collaboration between marketing and sales regarding daily operation and routines, they also personally see room for improvement on this department, “there could be more frequent contacts with the marketing department” (Tuomi and Lehto, 2013). When comparing to the integration level scale presented by Kotler et al. (2006) it is easy to rule out the two extremes as being representative of Oulun Sähkönmyynti’s situation.
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OULU BUSINESS SCHOOL Hassan Sherwan
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3 CONTENTS Abstract Contents Figure
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5 Figures Figure 1: The scope of th
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7 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction a
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9 Electricity industry used to be c
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11 Monopoly: A market with a single
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13 2 RESEARCH CONTEXT This chapter
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15 produced but, resources to gener
Page 17 and 18:
17 through bioenergy largely in the
Page 19 and 20:
19 framework. There is a need to re
Page 21 and 22: 21 the companies make themselves en
Page 23 and 24: 23 Monopoly Traditional Model Value
Page 25 and 26: 25 once a company at local market a
Page 27 and 28: 27 It is vital to notice that these
Page 29 and 30: 29 In the global arena, companies m
Page 31 and 32: 31 known as Uppsala Model and is wi
Page 33 and 34: 33 vital part so the parties must a
Page 35 and 36: 35 provides to the company, in the
Page 37 and 38: 37 way of achieving this goal is to
Page 39 and 40: 39 Figure 7: The Emerging Concept o
Page 41 and 42: 41 who actually creates values and
Page 43 and 44: 43 value of the organization in its
Page 45 and 46: 45 being an extension to resource b
Page 47 and 48: 47 knowledge management process is
Page 49 and 50: 49 widely agreed on the negative ef
Page 51 and 52: 51 need to be coordinated and consi
Page 53 and 54: 53 responsibilities, and of the int
Page 55 and 56: 55 is equally important to manage i
Page 57 and 58: 57 All these four stages are follow
Page 59 and 60: 59 5 ANALYSIS As there was a brief
Page 61 and 62: 61 company’s individual needs irr
Page 63 and 64: 63 In other words, the market is fr
Page 65 and 66: 65 to seek more control in their en
Page 67 and 68: 67 themselves, who may be capable o
Page 69 and 70: 69 to enhance innovation (Pomeda &
Page 71: 71 Marketing is responsible for dev
Page 75 and 76: 75 clear picture of the role and co
Page 77 and 78: 77 more and more companies operatin
Page 79 and 80: 79 What level of integration betwee
Page 81 and 82: 81 There is a good opportunity to i
Page 83 and 84: 83 internationalization in Finnish
Page 85 and 86: 85 chaos within the company and man
Page 87 and 88: 87 In this thesis work, though the
Page 89 and 90: 89 described by Valocchi et al. (20
Page 91 and 92: 91 Cavusgil, S. T. (1980). On the I
Page 93 and 94: 93 Henry, A. (2008). Understanding
Page 95 and 96: 95 Metaxiotis K, Ergazakis K and Ps
Page 97 and 98: 97 Tykesson, D. and Alserud, M(2011
Page 99 and 100: 99 APPENDICES Interview Questions:
Page 101: 101 Are you familiar with va
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