Re-discovering dual marketing: Internet’s contribution

Thirty years have passed since the publication of Quelch’s paper, titled “Why Not Exploit Dual Marketing?” (1987). The Dual Marketing (DM), a topic explored mainly in the context of business-to-business (B2B), is considered especially by practitioners as an approach typical of industrial marketing, to obtain numerous advantages (economies of scale and scope, management of warehouse’s surplus, amortization of R&D investments, risk reduction, brand awareness’s implementation to enter different markets, etc.) and develop more promptly the organization itself (Quelch, 1987; Biemans, 1998; Kotler, 1999; Hutt and Speh, 2001). In a strategic approach this orientation could be related to the Ansoff Matrix (Ansoff, 1965), considering the market development focused on the existing products and a new market. Moreover, it was highlighted that the practice of business products for consumer markets can be seen as an interesting alternative to new product development (Solomon, 1985). In order to improve performance, to strengthen profits and reduce costs, several organizations, particularly in the B2B market, sell the same product (good or service) or a similar one to final consumers and to intermediate customers (business customers). They try in this way to increase their share of market (Solomon, 1985; Harrigan, 1986). Being dual marketers seems easier for organizations belonging to the B2B sector than for the business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, as several innovations firstly adopted in the B2B are then considered as user-friendly applications, making possible at the same time the gradual reduction of prices (Hutt and Speh, 2001). These trends can make the final consumers more interested to buy a particular item and can push B2B organizations to be, at the same time, industrial and consumer marketers, creating a sort of business model reconfiguration (Calia et al., 2007). The main feature of this business model is the relational perspective that characterizes the industrial market and that is adopted in the consumer market in order to reach customer loyalty, retention and fidelization. DM offers to organizations that put it into practice good possibilities for building synergies (Kitchen et al., 2009). Thus, for several companies that decide to sell products in both markets, the distinction between consumer marketing and business-to-business marketing is not always clear (Biemans, 1998). B2B companies pay attention to reconsider their traditional model of business-to-business marketing communications (Gilliland and Johnston, 1997), focusing not only on B2B branding (Lamons, 2005) but also on the power of emotion (Lynch and De Chernatony, 2004). Simultaneously to the development of the business model’s reconfiguration, it is proposed a new model of integrated marketing communications in B2B and B2C Contexts (Kitchen et. al., 2009a; 2009b; Siano et al., 2009). The dual marketers who started in the business-to-business market learnt that it is different to communicate in B2C context from promoting themselves in the B2B scenario, particularly in terms of branding and selling strategies (Swani et al., 2014). This allow them to reinforce their brand orientation in order to gain business growth (Hirvonen et al., 2016). Business-to-business marketers are, actually, showing increased interest in the potential of branding (Mudambi, 2002). Corporate managers of these organizations are reconsidering their contributing activities to business-to-business brand value (Tarnovskaya and Biedenbach, 2016). Dual marketers, in fact, can count on profits gained in serving clients in both markets (business-to-business and business-to-consumer). Hence, it is easy to understand that these benefits are significant especially for B2B organizations that have to deal with high fixed costs in the creation of products. On the other hand, taking advantages of several information feedbacks coming from B2B and B2C sectors can entail that dual marketers are able to use ideas and inputs received from both markets and are capable to create new products, achieve market’s niches and implement their experience, reached in one sector, to improve in another sector.