Developing marketing capabilities for customer value creation through Marketing-Sales integration

The capacity to create superior customer value stems from the marketing capabilities a company possesses. A considerable body of research has indicated that market oriented companies have distinctive marketing capabilities which lead to superior organizational performance. Although it has been widely recognized that the development of marketing capabilities requires the joint effort of Marketing and Sales departments, almost no attention has been devoted to investigating the integration of these two functions. This study reports on an exploratory effort to use the means-end theory in explaining Marketing-Sales integration. Findings show that Marketing-Sales integration is a multi-faceted construct made up of different components that impact different marketing capabilities and highlight its antecedents and consequences. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.