Strategic marketing and operations relationships: the case of the lean enterprise

Abstract

Commentators are increasingly suggesting that marketing may be suffering a ‘mid‐life crisis’ and that marketing research and practice is stagnating and loosing corporate influence. In parallel, the management of operations is gaining increasing organisational attention and research prestige. One of the most influential of the new operational strategies is the lean enterprise, which proposes organisational design based around its own core principles, extending from raw materials to final consumer. In this paper, we investigate the short‐comings of the value definitions contained within the lean enterprise, and propose that an opportunity exists for the strategic integration of marketing activities and lean operations to provide marketers with access to a tool kit for quality and efficiency improvements, whilst at the same time resolving shortcomings in the lean enterprise to improve organisational effectiveness in the marketplace.

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