Co-marketing alliances: definitions and approaches. Insights from a literature review

Purpose - Co-marketing strategies play an important role in enabling firms to improve their competitive position. However, despite its increasing implementation, it remains a topic that is largely not researched. The purpose of this paper is to analyze existing contributions to the field of co-marketing research and the different perspectives scholars have adopted in analyzing the topic. Design/methodology/approach - A literature review has been developed, as its lack seems to be a major hindrance to the development of related studies. A specific focus has been made on the adopted approaches. Five approaches have been identified, and multidimensional scaling (MDS) has been used to analyze the differences among them. Findings - First, the analysis of the typologies of studies on co-marketing alliances is made. Also, the identified approaches are strategic-based, consumer-based, relational-based, specificity-based and evaluation-based. What emerges from the MDS is that there are two perspectives of analysis of the alliance that characterize them: the inside–outside and the wide–narrow points of view. Research limitations/implications - Limitations are mostly referred to the methodologies and the level of subjectivity they imply. For example, they are not only the choices made concerning keywords to be used and, consequently, the articles included in the analysis, but also the MDS that offers broad autonomy to the researchers in interpreting the data. Originality/value - The originality of this research is that it fills an emerged gap concerning a literature review on co-marketing alliances, supporting future research in this field of study. The identification of the approaches underlines what may be lacking, providing interesting insights on possible avenues for future research.