Exploring the Traits of Marketing Strategy Approaches: The Latte Arborea Case Study

In the marketing literature there are three main approaches related to strategy: the outside-in, inside-out and mixed approach. Although many researchers have given their contributions to this field of research, there are no studies that fully identify and define the distinctive characteristics of these three perspectives. Moreover, there is a lack of empirical studies on firms marketing strategy approaches. For these reasons, this article has two different objectives: 1) identify and describe the main characteristics of the three approaches and hierarchically structure them in a theoretical framework; 2) provide an empirical qualitative contribution to the marketing strategy debate (Latte Arborea case study). In order to achieve the first objective, we used a conceptual matrix (Webster and Watson, 2002) to locate the most quoted characteristics by the literature. Then, we discarded the less frequently quoted characteristics and joined some other similar ones that can be used together. The result is a theoretical framework which shows the hierarchical relationship between characteristics and their affiliation to the three approaches. For the second objective, we used a qualitative in depth single case study (Yin 1994; Dubois & Gadde 2002). The firm we studied is Latte Arborea, which is a leading company in the dairy industry within the Sardinian market (Italy). Data were collected from three sources: semi-structured interviews, Latte Arborea’ social media and website (Dubé and Paré 2003). All the transcriptions coming from the data sources were uploaded and coded using the tools of Nvivo10. We based the semi-structured interview protocol on our theoretical framework and through the answers of the interviewees and the other data sources, we were able to identify Latte Arborea’s characteristics in developing its marketing strategies. The result of this research is a managerial diagnosis tool which allows firms to identify their marketing strategy approach and their eventual problems.