文档介绍：Pravin Nath & Vijay Mahajan
Chief Marketing Officers: A Study of
Their Presence in Firms’Top
Management Teams
Not all firms choose to have a chief marketing officer (CMO) in their top management teams (TMTs). This research
investigates factors associated with this choice and whether CMO presence/absence in the face of these factors
affects firm performance. Findings based on a multi-industry sample of 167 firms over a five-year period
(2000–2004) show that innovation, differentiation, branding strategy, diversification, TMT functional experience in
marketing, and the chief executive officer being an outsider are associated with the likelihood of CMO presence in
the TMT. Furthermore, the authors find that CMO presence in the TMT has neither a positive nor a negative impact
on firm performance. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.
Keywords: chief marketing officer, top management team, complexity, power, structure
ver the past three decades, marketing academics chief financial officer (CFO) as recently as the year 2000
have voiced their concern with marketing’s decreas- (Zorn 2004). Little prior research has attempted to explore
Oing influence at the level of corporate strategy this phenomenon, a gap in the field that our research aims to
(Anderson1982; Day 1992; Varadarajan 1992; Webster, fill.
Malter, and Ganesan 2003; Wind and Robertson 1983). A Specifically, the research questions we address herein
firm’s corporate strategy, which includes major resource are, (1) What are the factors associated with the likelihood
allocations, organizational redesign, acquisitions, divest- of CMO presence in firms’ TMTs? and (2) What are the
ments, and the entering or exiting of major markets, is consequences of CMO presence for firm performance in the
largely driven by the top management team (TMT) (Cyert face of these factors? The conceptual model, which we
and March 1963; Hambrick and Mason 1984; Varadarajan d