Marketing Management
and Innovations: Challenges
and Opportunities in the Marketplace;
Guest Editor's Introduction
to the Thematic Issue
tina vukasovic
International School of Social and Business Studies, Slovenia and University of Primorska, Slovenia tina.vukasovic@mfdps.si
The increasingly changing business environment in the twenty first century, which is characterized by the consequences of demanding customers with complex value requirements, aggressive global competition, turbulent markets, rapid technological changes, and escalating globalization, has forced many firms to be innovative in all areas of business activity. Markets have become increasingly complex and hypercompetitive. Globalization and rapidly increasing innovation are drastically altering opportunities and the competitive space.
Innovation, as part of the process of marketing management in enterprises, is a prerequisite for maintaining competitiveness because it can lead to the creation of an offer, which represents added value in the eyes of the customer. Innovations are not always strictly focused on products but can also be applied to processes. Companies can create competitive advantage through new ways of implementing activities on the market, that for the customer means added value, or in other words, innovation.
Today, new ideas can completely transform any aspect of the value chain. Thus, the marketing function within companies is increasingly of strategic importance, as it can contribute significantly to a company's competitive edge. The role of marketing in strategic management is linked to entrepreneurship within the organization through innovation. Companies that own marketing knowledge and skills can develop unique products or services not offered by the competition. They can create a successful brand and help enhance the profitability of the company.
We have to realize that innovations in products and services are just the tip of the innovation iceberg. Consequently, the efforts and resources that enterprises dedicate to introducing new sales meth-
management 11 (3): 191-192
Tina Vukasovic
ods into their business are currently regarded as marketing innovations and as being just as important as technological innovations when it comes to boosting companies' competitiveness. Innovations such as the ability to generate and implement new ideas in the process of marketing management in modern social and economic conditions is one of the most effective ways to generate competitive advantages to maintain position in the industry and increase market share.
This thematic issue explores the links between marketing management and innovations and their challenges and opportunities in the Marketplace. It begins with a paper written by John L. Stanton who presents a quantitative measurement of the success or failure rates of new products from various food groups and examines three scenarios that might explain the lack of 'breakthrough innovation.' In the second paper, Joanna Paliszkiewicz and Magdalena Madra-Sawicka present a critical literature review of the concept of impression management and describes the strategy of self-presentation in Linkedln. In the third paper, Radoslaw Mapk describes the implementation of the concept of extended consumer decision-making styles in explaining consumer choices made in a product comparison site environment in the context of a trust-based information technology acceptance model. In the fourth paper, Gregor Jagodic looks at how which information-communication technology (ict) tools students use to help and establish their own business depends on different factors, such as their level of basics knowledge and skills, their ideas, the ease of using ict tools and also the availability of the tools (especially if they are free of charge). In the last - fifth paper, Adrienne Schaefer and Julia Klammer draw on a case study of the Swiss Federal Railways (sfr), exploring how 'value-in-context' and 'co-creation' can be put into practice.
We are grateful to the organizers of the MakeLearn & tiim 2016 International Conference, which was held in Timisoara, Romania, between 25 and 27 of May 2016. All papers were put through a double-blind peer review process and the five papers that were mentioned have been accepted for this thematic issue. A special thanks go to the writers of these papers.
management • volume 11