Marketing management is a lot more than merely communication or promotion.
The main role for the marketing function is to generate sustainable profits for the company over a longer period of time. This is the objective the company’s marketing strategy serves, informed by such theories as relationship marketing, customer loyalty and life-time value or the resource-based view of the firm, and more broadly organisational behaviour.
Delivering on this objective is an unrelenting challenge for most companies. They are competing in markets where new channels for distribution and/or communication emerge, competition lines become blur, development, diffusion and adoption of innovations sustains a rapid pace and competitive pressure on profits and profit margins remains intense.
The focus of our cluster and our aim is to identify new insights to help companies successfully navigate through such straits following a sensible and effective marketing strategy for sustainable long-term profitability. We seek to fulfil this aim through rigorous but also relevant and impactful research.
Hence, we passionately seek to engage with companies from all sectors, of different sizes and with a wide palette of problems or challenges they face to inform our research while at the same time contribute in their search for:
- a better understanding of their market environment and its dynamics
- an answer to different yet pressing questions they may have
- a stronger and sustainable competitive advantage
- a marketing approach and strategy that can relate to specific key performance indicators
In this regard, our research covers a wide variety of topics including (but not limited to):
- the management of new product/service development & innovation efforts
- the management of profitable customer relationships
- the management of customer experiences
- the allocation of resources across different channels and the implementation of a multichannel strategy
- the identification of attractive market opportunities at home & abroad
- the use of Web 2.0, social networks & new media
- the management of the branding in terms of product, price, distribution and communication policies across all three main business sections: consumer, B2B & services
- the management of the sales force
Our key themes
These include:
- marketing strategy and policies
- branding
- relationship marketing
- consumer loyalty and life time value
- digital marketing
- b2b marketing
- sales management
- marketing structure, skills and capabilities
- international marketing and entrepreneurship
Recent publications
Karampela, M., Lacka, E., & MacLean, G. (2020) "‘Just Be There’: Social Media Presence, Interactivity, and Responsiveness, and their Impact on B2B Relationships", European Journal of Marketing, Vol 54, Issue 6, p. 1281
Gounaris S, Chryssochoidis G. and Boukis A. (2020), “Internal market orientation adoption and new service development (NSD): gearing up the internal performance of NSD teams”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol54 no.7, pp.1641-1674
Chung, S. & Karampela, M. (2020) "Larger Screen, Inaccurate Perceptions: Investigating Visual Framing Effects on Online Shoppers’ Product-size Estimation", Advance.s in Consumer Research (forthcoming)
Kaminakis K., Koritos C., Karadinou K. and Gounaris S. (2019; forthcoming) “Hospitality servicescape effects on customer-employee interactions. A multilevel study”, Tourism Management (ABS 4), vol. 72, pp. 130-144
Gounaris S., Chatzipanagiotou, K., Boukis, A. & Perks, H (2016) 'Unfolding the Recipes for Conflict Resolution during the New Service Development Effort'. Journal of Business Research, Vol. 69 No. 10, pp. 4042-4055
Tzempelikos N. and Gounaris S. (2015) 'Linking Key Account Management Practices to Performance Outcomes', Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 45 pp. 22-34
Karampela, M., Tregear, A. & Ansell, J. (2014) 'When opposites attract: incorporating trait complementarity into the measurement of self-brand personality alignment', Advances in Consumer Research, Vol 42, p. 539
Take a look at more of our publications.
Editorial roles
Members of the group are on the editorial boards and associate editors of the following internationally recognised Marketing journals:
- Journal of Service Research
- Industrial Marketing Management
- European Journal of Marketing
Journal editing
Prof. S. Gounaris, European Journal of Marketing; Associate Editor
Editorial Boards
Prof. S. Gounaris, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Service Research.
Knowledge exchange
Prof. S. Gounaris, Malin Court, Marketing Strategy Assessment and Review (2019); NJR Procurement, Measuring Marketing Performance app development (ongoing)
International conferences
Prof. S. Gounaris (Chair), Dr. M. Karampela (Member of the Organising Committee) European Marketing Academy, 47th Annual Conference, 2018