Strategic Alliances & Marketing Partnerships: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Collaboration and Partnering

by Gibbs, Richard; Humphries, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780749454845
• ISBN10: 0749454849
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-28
• Publisher: Kogan Page Ltd

Summary

Strategic Alliances and Marketing Partnershipswill help you to understand how partnerships function and how you can manage them more effectively and efficiently. Based on solid research and dealing with key topics such as supply chain management, marketing channels and relationship management, it identifies the key factors that determine partnering excellence. Whatever the nature of the relationship - whether outsourcing, strategic alliances or co-manufacturing, there are eight distinctive relationship types identified by the authors to help managers optimize their business to business partnerships.With case studies from prominent, global organizations such as Walmart, Toyota, General Motors and Dell, Strategic Alliances and Marketing Partnershipswill help you to understand the problems that affect partnering and how to make effective management decisions to improve both the relationship and productivity.

Author Biography

Richard Gibbs is an expert in relationship marketing.  He has held senior positions in major companies including Xerox and Novell Inc.

Andrew Humphries is currently CEO of SCCI Ltd which specializes in measuring commercial relationship performance. Following a career in UK Royal Air Force as Head of Defence Aviation Logistics, he gained a PhD from Cranfield School of Management and an MBA from the Open University.

Table of Contents

About the authors	p. ix
Foreword	p. xi
Introduction: Placing a value on your key commercial partnerships	p. 1
The business of partnering	p. 13
A crisis in management	p. 13
Diminishing sources of competitive advantage	p. 15
From product-base competition to knowledge-base advantage	p. 17
Extending the boundaries of the firm	p. 19
The strategic value of partnering	p. 22
Partnering and competing supply chains	p. 28
The problems of understanding your partners	p. 31
The evolution of partnership-driven business strategies	p. 37
Introduction	p. 37
The development of supply chain management	p. 38
Supply chain networks	p. 48
Strategic alliances	p. 50
Marketing channels	p. 52
Managing buy-sell relationships	p. 57
Conclusion	p. 63
The obstacles and drivers of successful partnerships	p. 65
Introduction	p. 65
Leveraging mutual investments	p. 66
Learning from each other	p. 71
Governance	p. 74
The influence of leadership and control mechanisms	p. 77
Understanding partnership performance	p. 79
Proactive relationship management	p. 85
Summary	p. 89
Relationship marketing: a 'new-old' theory of business relationships	p. 91
Marketing foundations	p. 91
Relationship marketing rediscovered	p. 92
Collaborate or fail	p. 94
From power management to relationship management	p. 97
The relationship business	p. 98
Modelling the marketing relationship	p. 100
Managing partnership value	p. 108
Building relationship management capabilities	p. 110
Summary	p. 111
Understanding partnership and alliance dynamics	p. 115
Introduction	p. 115
A 'new economic' view of partnerships	p. 116
Partnerships as spiral dynamics	p. 119
Finding the measure of partnership performance	p. 122
Conclusion	p. 141
Working hard at the 'soft' factors	p. 143
Introduction	p. 143
Evaluating partnership performance	p. 144
Opportunities and challenges created through collaborative innovation	p. 148
Opportunities and challenges created through partnership quality	p. 153
Opportunities and challenges of creating value	p. 157
The model of partnership performance	p. 161
Summary	p. 162
The Gibbs+Humphries Partnership Types	p. 165
Introduction	p. 165
Evangelists	p. 166
Stable Pragmatists	p. 171
Rebellious Teenagers	p. 176
Evolving Pessimists	p. 180
Captive Sharks	p. 184
Cherry Pickers	p. 188
No Can Dos	p. 192
Deserters	p. 196
Summary	p. 199
Making partnerships and alliances work for you	p. 203
Management implications	p. 203
Determining the right partnership type	p. 204
Partnership types and market development	p. 210
Relationship management and the Gibbs+Humphries Partnership Types	p. 211
The Gibbs+Humphries Partnership Types and marketing	p. 219
Conclusion	p. 223
Further reading	p. 227
Index	p. 229
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Foreword Introduction: Placing a Value on Your Key Commercial Partnerships 1. The Business of Partnering 2. The Evolution of Partnership-driven Business Strategies 3. The Obstacles and Drivers of Successful Partnerships 4. Relationship Marketing: A 'new-old' theory of business relationships 5. Understanding Partnership and Alliance Dynamics 6. Working Hard at the 'Soft' Factors 7. The Gibbs+Humphries Partnership Types 8. Making Partnerships and Alliances Work for You