On pluralistic scholarship: a comment on the research ...

Journal of Strategic Marketing Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2010, 103–111

On pluralistic scholarship: a comment on the research of P. Rajan Varadarajan Sundar Bharadwaj* Emory University, Atlanta, USA

Serving as a discussant for a Converse Award recipient is both an honor and a challenge. It is an honor to be invited to discuss the scholarship of a very productive and esteemed researcher, yet it is a challenge to capture in a short presentation and a few pages the breadth and scope of their research efforts. At the same time, examining the research scholarship of Professor P. Rajan Varadarajan in its entirety is simultaneously daunting and inspiring. A bonus in writing this comment has been a richer understanding of the landscape of marketing strategy research. Such an understanding might not have happened if Professor Varadarajan’s research to date had not spanned the panorama of marketing strategy research conducted over the past 30 years. The format of this examination of Professor Varadarajan’s research begins with an examination of raw indicators of performance using a set of new metrics. Next, I attempt to present the status of marketing strategy research when Professor Varadarajan became a marketing strategy scholar. Then, I describe how Professor Varadarajan’s research redresses all the key limitations of marketing strategy identified before his entry into the discipline. The essay concludes with an identification of Professor Varadarajan’s key traits as a research scholar in the field of marketing strategy.

Research impact using new metrics Professor Varadarajan’s research career spans a period of 30 years. His research has received a total of 3536 citations (as of April 2008), at an average of 126 citations per year. Of his top five papers, the citations range from a low of 184 to a high of 339. In fact, one of the two papers cited by the Converse committee (Ramanujam & Varadarajan, 1989) has the highest citation count of 339 (see Table 1). Recently, several new indexes have been developed to examine the scholarly impact of research (Harzing, 2007; Razzaque & Wilkinson, 2007). I used the Publish or Perish software to examine Professor Varadarajan’s research impact. His H-index, which is a single, robust measure of the cumulative impact of an author, is 26. This measure captures the quality and sustainability of the research output. The score of 26 implies that he has 26 articles with at least 26 citations each. This index is better than simple measures, such as

*Email: [email protected] Reprinted with permission from the 17th Paul D. Converse Symposium, published by the American Marketing Association. ISSN 0965-254X print/ISSN 1466-4488 online q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09652540903569355 http://www.informaworld.com

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Table 1. Top five papers. Top papers Ramanujam and Varadarajan (1989) Bharadwaj, Varadarajan, and Fahy (1993) Kerin, Varadarajan, and Peterson (1992) Conant, Mokwa, and Varadarajan (1990) Varadarajan and Cunningham (1995)

Total citations

Citations per year

339 297 293 243 184

16.95 18.56 17.24 12.79 13.14

publication counts, because it helps distinguish scholars who are truly influential from scholars who publish many but noninfluential papers. Even when these figures are adjusted for coauthorship, Professor Varadarajan’s Hi-norm index, which measures an author’s unique impact, is 21. This score of 21 is interpreted in a similar way to the H-index and implies that Professor Varadarajan has at least 21 articles with 21 citations each. While these two measures are unweighted, the G-index (Egghe, 2006) weights the most-cited articles more heavily. Consequently, it is an adjusted measure that more clearly captures impact. An examination of a sample of winners of the Converse Award shows Professor Varadarajan’s score on this index is in the top half of this distinguished group. Finally, using the norm that a classic article in social sciences is one that receives 10 citations per year for 10 years, it is evident that several of Professor Varadarajan’s articles qualify as classics. Marketing strategy research prior to 1980 Marketing strategy is a fairly young field. In 1981, Ralph Biggadike wrote an evaluative article on the contributions of marketing strategy to strategic management research for the Academy of Management Review. He built on the already-pessimistic review of 25 years of research (1952 – 1977) by the American Marketing Association’s Commission on the Effectiveness of Research and Development for Marketing Management (Myers, Greyser, & Massy, 1979, p. 27), which found that ‘general facts and laws were comparatively rare’ and that ‘marketing is still in a rather primitive state of development’. Biggadike (1981, p. 631) offered the following scathing assessment: Most research . . . is ad hoc, problem-oriented research, with little attempt to integrate and extend research to other situations . . . . Many marketers today are not scientists in the theory-building sense, but technological virtuosi at solving problems at the brand, and occasionally, product level . . . . I am pessimistic in doubting that this attack will lead to theory. . . . I am not convinced that many marketers are interested in raising their level of aggregation.

Professor Varadarajan’s research career was in the beginning stages when this assessment came out. As elaborated subsequently, I would summarize his career as doing everything to remedy these and other deficiencies listed in the Biggadike (1981) critique. Theoretical orientation Professor Varadarajan has been instrumental in introducing and contributing significantly to the theoretical development of the field. His early research on two-factor classification introduced a Herzberg-type two-factor theory (Herzberg, 1968) to marketing strategy. Importantly, it helped identify theoretically the likely success providers and failure preventers among the strategic choice variables in a firm’s tool kit. With the recent emphasis on research in the marketing – finance interface, his early theoretical work could

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be used to relate success provider and failure preventer strategic marketing decisions to return and risk dimensions of firm performance. His work (Bharadwaj et al., 1993) on formally introducing the resource-based perspective to the marketing services discipline achieved the objectives of both introducing a new theoretical perspective to services marketing and pioneering a strategic focus in a subfield of marketing that was completely tactically oriented until that time. Notably, this research also introduced the concepts of sustenance and enhancement investments in firm resources, foreshadowing a dynamic perspective and the subsequent dynamic capabilities view that is now prevalent in strategy research. Perhaps addressing the level-of-aggregation concern expressed by Biggadike (1981), Professor Varadarajan’s work on multimarket competition and strategic deconglomeration has raised the theoretical context’s unit of analysis to the firm and market levels (Jayachandran, Gimeno, & Varadarajan, 1999; Varadarajan, Jayachandran, & White, 2001). The theoretical contribution was strong enough for the deconglomeration research to have been awarded the Maynard Award for theoretical contribution by the American Marketing Association. Unit of analysis The primary purpose of Biggadike’s (1981) review was to identify the contributions of marketing strategy to corporate strategy. He concludes that there are very few theoretical contributions. Moreover, on the unit of analysis, he notes: I am not convinced that many marketers are interested in raising their level of aggregation to the business-unit or industry-unit level and their time horizon to the long run. It is reasonably straightforward to apply a quantitative technique to a brand over the next twelve months. (Biggadike, 1981, p. 631)

Although it might have been true that the primary focus of the research in marketing was at the brand or product level of analysis – or as Don Lehmann subsequently labeled it, the ‘discipline that focuses on blue-light specials’ – Professor Varadarajan turned the discipline on its head. The primary focus of his research was on firm-level issues. The theoretical constructs he examined, such as sustainable competitive advantage, environmental management, first-mover advantage, or new product alliances, are illustrations of concepts that surmounted the brand and, in most cases, the product level of analysis. Indeed, both the articles cited for the Converse Award are at the firm and interfirm levels of analyses (Ramanujam & Varadarajan, 1989; Varadarajan & Cunningham, 1995). Integrative theory building Another major point of Biggadike’s (1981) criticism was the fragmented nature of marketing research. His aforementioned contention that ‘most of the reported research . . . is ad hoc, problem-oriented research with little attempt to integrate and extend relationships to other situations’ (1981, p. 631) is one of Professor Varadarajan’s key research strengths – that is, the ability to weave diverse viewpoints and theoretical perspectives into a single, consistent, and effective story. In some ways, Professor Varadarajan is like a master weaver, combining multiple streams of research into a coherent story. As Peggy Cunningham, his coauthor on one of the cited articles for the Converse Awards, attests, ‘Rajan’s power was first in his ability to synthesize, organize, and frame the vast amount of literature I had put together. He was also able to translate theoretical issues into tangible issues that applied directly to business’ (personal e-mail communication).

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Illustrative of this is the other article cited for the Converse Award on corporate diversification (Ramanujam & Varadarajan, 1989), which integrates the key concepts, theoretical relationships, and performance outcomes into a clear story of how and why and the consequences of corporate diversification. Similarly, his work on first-mover advantage (Kerin et al., 1992) is a tour de force on integrating concepts from several disciples, including economics, marketing, sociology, and strategy, to build a comprehensive model of the drivers and contextual moderators of pioneering advantage. I was fortunate to be a doctoral student during the time that Rajan was working on the aforementioned paper’s conceptual model over the winter of 1991. He worked for long hours and spent many days doing and redoing the model until it satisfied him. His use of Post-It notes to represent constructs that could be moved around (as antecedent or moderator or mediating or outcomes) was an incredible learning experience. I was exposed not only to the intellectual brilliance of the conceptual modeling exercise but also to the sheer tenacity and persistence required to capture a complex nomological net in such a parsimonious way. His other research efforts on multimarket competition, market information use, strategic alliances, and deconglomeration are also illustrative of the multidisciplinary and integrative research efforts. Indeed, several generations of doctoral students have even created an adjective to describe such big-picture integrative efforts: ‘Rajanesque’ work. It is important to note that his integrative efforts were not limited to conceptual efforts. He has a well-cited integrative meta-analysis (Szymanski, Bharadwaj, & Varadarajan, 1993) and other integrative reviews of the literature (e.g. Varadarajan & Jayachandran, 1999). Not surprisingly, several of Professor Varadarajan’s papers have been listed among the best exemplars of integrative research in a 60-year review of the marketing research (Kerin, 1996). Breadth and generalizability As fields mature, they attempt to develop theoretical, ‘law like’ generalizations. The presence of such generalizations is indicative of the extent of sophistication of any field of inquiry. Marketing’s inability to develop law like generalizations has been a long-term problem. As Biggadike (1981, p. 631) concluded, ‘The enormous and diverse array of research in marketing has not led to many ‘general facts and laws’ – either for marketing or strategic management issues.’ Other researchers in marketing have identified this limitation as an ongoing issue for marketing research. Although Professor Varadarajan’s research does not necessarily develop such law like generalizations, it takes marketing much closer to that elusive goal of all social science research. His research develops intermediatelevel theory; illustrative of this are the propositional inventories he has developed in his research on sustainable competitive advantage, corporate deconglomeration, interactivity in electronic markets, and standardization versus adaptation in electronic markets. Thematic research A fairly common criticism of marketing strategy research is its ad hoc nature. The research is not programmatic and thus fails to build on prior research or insights. Whereas some view the ad hoc nature of an individual’s or a discipline’s research as a weakness, others have argued that programmatic research is the hobgoblin of mediocre minds. Indeed, the Nobel Prize-winning writer Horace Walpole argued that ‘[t]he whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand things well’ (2010).


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At first glance Rajan’s research appears nonprogrammatic, but when examined systematically, common themes emerge. Beginning with his research on the two-factor theory, if there is one theme that permeates his research, it is the understanding of the strategic drivers of superior performance – in other words, the factors that enable sustainable competitive advantage. His research addresses this issue by exploring the role of corporate diversification (or deconglomeration), interorganizational relationships, pioneering advantage, information use, and so forth. Moreover, his research explores the potential contextual moderators of these strategic factors. His research also adopts a process orientation and identifies the mediators of the relationship between the strategic antecedents and firm performance. Knowledge transfer to the strategic management discipline A more recent evaluation of research in marketing management by Webster (2005, p. 122) reexamined part of the Biggadike critique of the marketing discipline: ‘Biggadike . . . concluded that it would be up to strategic management students to make the transfer of marketing concepts and methods to strategic issues. That appears to be what happened.’ However, an overview of Professor Varadarajan’s research indicates that this criticism is far from accurate. A key challenge he has faced from reviewers in marketing journals throughout his career is the need to answer the question that his research is indeed relevant to marketing researchers and not just to strategic management researchers. As Table 2 shows, his ability to publish in the major strategy journals has also provided him an opportunity to disseminate knowledge directly to the strategy audience. Moreover through his research published in the marketing journals, indirect transfer of knowledge to the strategic management discipline is also facilitated. The citations of his research published in the marketing journals by the strategy researchers is empirical evidence of this transfer. Table 2. Direct and indirect transfer of knowledge to strategic management. Direct knowledge dissemination to strategic management

Indirect knowledge dissemination to strategic management

‘The sustainable growth model’, in Strategic Management Journal (Varadarajan, 1983) ‘A two-factor classification of competitive strategy variables’, in Strategic Management Journal (Varadarajan, 1985) ‘Diversification and performance’, in Academy of Management Journal (Varadarajan & Ramanujam, 1987) ‘Diversification and measures of performance’, in Academy of Management Journal (Dubofsky & Varadarajan, 1987) ‘Strategic types, distinctive marketing Competencies, and organizational performance’, in Strategic Management Journal (Conant et al., 1990) ‘Asymmetric new product development alliances’, in Management Science (Kalaignanam, Shankar, & Varadarajan, 2007) ‘Research on corporate diversification’, in Strategic Management Journal (Ramanujam & Varadarajan, 1989)

‘Product diversity and firm performance’, in Journal of Marketing (Varadarajan, 1986) ‘Strategic adaptability and market performance’, in Journal of Marketing (McKee, Varadarajan, & Pride, 1989) ‘Sustainable competitive advantage in service industries’, in Journal of Marketing (Bharadwaj et al., 1993) ‘Strategic alliances’, in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (Varadarajan & Cunningham, 1995) ‘Market situation interpretation and response’, in Journal of Marketing (White, Varadarajan, & Dacin, 2003) ‘Delineating the scope of corporate, business and marketing strategy’, in Journal of Business Research (Varadarajan & Clark, 1994) ‘Understanding product migration to the electronic marketplace’, in Journal of Retailing (Yadav & Varadarajan, 2005)

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Abstract descriptors of Professor Varadarajan’s research style While the focus of this comment so far has been on how Rajan’s work repudiates the Biggadike (1981) critique of marketing strategy research, it is also important to understand his research approach. Clearly, his work epitomizes the terms ‘novel’ and ‘interesting’ and ‘thorough’, but there are other important traits as well. I focus on such traits next. Pluralistic research Professor Varadarajan’s research is not wedded to a single paradigm or a single theory. He clearly understands that most social science phenomena have multiple explanations, mostly complementary and some substitutes as well, and that this leads to alternative explanations of phenomena. So his work is in the truest sense multidisciplinary and integrative. This enables him to provide much richer descriptions and more complete theoretical explanations of complex phenomena. Comprehensive and thorough Rajan paints both the big picture and the miniature. His research captures a broad spectrum of constructs and identifies the key moderators and mediators. An examination of the conceptual models in his work on corporate diversification (Ramanujam & Varadarajan, 1989), pioneering advantage (Kerin et al., 1992), and sustainable competitive advantage (Bharadwaj et al., 1993) provides examples of the comprehensiveness and rich details of the models. Inductive and deductive The pluralistic style of Rajan’s research is evident in his use of both deductive and inductive approaches to research. The deductive approach is well illustrated in the propositional inventories in his research. The use of examples from the real world to draw generalizable explanations is masterful. As one of his coauthors marvels, ‘[He has an] ability to see really cool research ideas in seemingly trivial stories in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, etc.’ (Terry Clark, personnel communication). Communication Rajan is an excellent writer. He takes great pains to write and rewrite his manuscripts. He is never satisfied and is persistent in trying to get a better explanation across. Nothing illustrates this more than his belief that it is the duty of the writer to take the reader by the hand and walk them through the manuscript. There is no sleight of hand in his work. He is transparently clear and rich in his descriptions. His use of examples further enables the reader’s understanding. Indeed, generations of doctoral students have expressed the admiration for his work and how it is a pleasure to read (a must-read for all scholars are two editorial statements – Varadarajan (1996) and Varadarajan (2003), which exemplify this philosophy). Giving Rajan is also very giving of his time. He provides detailed and constructive comments on papers of numerous scholars. His time spent as editor of Journal of Marketing and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science illustrates his commitment to the discipline.


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Anyone who has received the editor’s cover letter from Rajan will remember its thoroughness and its thoughtfulness. He did not simply return it with the reviewer’s comments. He provided practical guidelines for the authors. Although all of this can be very time consuming, he never ever expressed his personal frustration. Functional conflict Rajan expresses his intellectual differences with existing views as well as anybody else. However, it is the approach that he takes that is consistent with his overall personality. In his own words, ‘For the good of the discipline, let us all resolve to air our disagreements in scholarly forums. Isn’t that why we have conferences, workshops, consortia, and the like?’ (private comment to Terry Clark). For example, he felt that the criticisms of marketing losing its relevance were unsubstantiated. His work with Terry Clark (Varadarajan & Clark, 1994) clearly illustrates his patent disagreement with that viewpoint. At the same time, Rajan is no apologist for marketing strategy research. He believes that though marketing strategy has made a lot of progress, there is still a long way to go as a field (Varadarajan & Jayachandran, 1999, p. 140): ‘[T]he field [of marketing strategy research] continues to run the risk of remaining a nebulous area of research that borrows ideas and theories from other disciplines, but whose value additions to these theories remain unrecognized.’ Conceptual The key attribute of Rajan’s research is its conceptual strength. He builds big models with strong, well-articulated concepts and theoretical links between concepts. As Peggy Cunningham put it, ‘Rajan’s contribution has been largely conceptual in a field that prides itself on empiricism and I think this makes his career and contribution even more remarkable’ (Peggy Cunningham, personal communication). On the one hand, Rajan’s views are certainly not as extreme as the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson, who paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, is reported to have said ‘those who can, do science; those who can’t, prattle about its methodology’ (1992, p. 240). On the other hand, Rajan believes in differentiation and expresses his view as such: ‘If you look at physics, they have theoretical physicists and empirical physicists. Why can’t I be a marketing theorist and let someone else do the empirical testing?’ (personal conversation). At the same time, I would be doing injustice if it is perceived that Rajan does not do any empirical work. All throughout his career, he has published good empirical research in major journals, mostly coauthored but some by himself as well (e.g. Kalaignanam et al., 2007; Szymanski et al., 1993; Varadarajan, 1986; Varadarajan & Ramanujam, 1987). Mentorship role Professor Varadarajan has played a long-standing role as a mentor to doctoral students. His pluralistic spirit is reflected in his openness to their work with whatever topic or approach the student takes to his or her research. Rajan instills in them the need to identify research topics about which they are passionate. Developing independence of thought as a scholar is important to him. In research conversations, he insists on the student developing their own idea, before offering his input. This is best reflected in the comment by one of his doctoral students: ‘His absolute comfort with silence – I remember in the Strategy Seminar, he would be perfectly happy to just sit there and say nothing for what seemed

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forever – way beyond everyone else’s comfort zone’ (Terry Clark, personal e-mail communication). Consequently, students who have worked with him begin their careers as self-starters. Rajan inspires his doctoral students by personal example. He works extremely hard and is very positive toward his students. As Peggy Cunningham puts it: His belief in the work also gave me the confidence to keep working on this (I had become discouraged by some initial negative reviews). Like you, I was so honored by being able to work with him and inspired by his intellect; it encouraged me to work harder to try and meet his expectations. (Peggy Cunningham, personal e-mail communication)

He is universally loved by his students. Chris White’s view speaks to this: He is extremely well read and has the ability to guide doctoral students in conducting original and imaginative research. He is a very conscientious advisor who imparts a rather difficult skill to his students – the ability to craft a scholarly manuscript. In doing so, he also instills in his students the need to link research to their teaching so that the original knowledge created can be disseminated widely. As each of his former doctoral students will attest, his patience and willingness to guide and support doctoral students through their intellectual journey is invaluable. He encourages students to find a topic they are passionate about. As a result, dissertations he has chaired have won several awards. In the field of marketing, there is no finer honor than to be known as ‘Rajan’s student’. (Chris White, personal e-mail communication)

Conclusion Professor P. Rajan Varadarajan’s work is an extremely important component of the marketing strategy research landscape. His research is foundational to the discipline and has opened up new fields and pathways for other researchers. The research has contributed significantly to redress the criticisms facing marketing strategy research for being theory impoverished, ad hoc, fragmented, and not contributing to the strategy dialogue. His work is well recognized by his peers. He has served as the editor of two major marketing journals. His work has won numerous awards, and he has been recognized for Career Contributions to the Marketing Strategy Literature by the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Strategy Special Interest Group. Given his continued productivity, I would not be surprised if he receives the Converse Award one more time during his career. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Terry Clark, Margaret (Peggy) Cunningham, and Chris White for suggestions and quotations that I used in this essay.

References Bharadwaj, S.G., Varadarajan, R., & Fahy, J. (1993). Sustainable competitive advantage in service industries: A conceptual model and research propositions. Journal of Marketing, 57(October), 83 – 99. Biggadike, R.E. (1981). The contributions of marketing to strategic management. Academy of Management Review, 6, 621– 632. Conant, J.S., Mokwa, M.P., & Varadarajan, R. (1990). Strategic types, distinctive marketing competencies, and organizational performance: A multiple measures-based study. Strategic Management Journal, 11, 365– 383. Dubofsky, P., & Varadarajan, R. (1987). Diversification and measures of performance: Additional empirical evidence. Academy of Management Journal, 30(September), 597– 607. Egghe, L. (2006). Theory and practice of the g-index. Scientometrics, 69(1), 131– 152. Harzing, A.-W. (2007). Publish or Perish 2.0. Retrieved from www.harzing.com/pop.htm


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Herzberg, F. (1968). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review, 46(January – February), 53 – 62. Jayachandran, S., Gimeno, J., & Varadarajan, P.R. (1999). The theory of multimarket competition: A synthesis and implications for marketing strategy. Journal of Marketing, 63(July), 49 – 66. Kalaignanam, K., Shankar, V., & Varadarajan, R. (2007). Asymmetric new product development alliances: Win– win or win – lose partnerships? Management Science, 53, 357– 374. Kerin, R.A. (1996). In pursuit of an ideal: The editorial and literary history of the Journal of Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 60(January), 1 – 13. Kerin, R.A., Varadarajan, R., & Peterson, R.A. (1992). First-mover advantage: A synthesis, conceptual framework and research propositions. Journal of Marketing, 56(October), 33 – 52. McKee, D.O., Varadarajan, R., & Pride, W.M. (1989). Strategic adaptability and market performance: A market-contingent perspective. Journal of Marketing, 53(3), 21 – 35. Myers, J.G., Greyser, S.A., & Massy, W.F. (1979). The effectiveness of marketing’s ‘R&D’ for marketing management: An assessment. Journal of Marketing, 43(January), 17 – 29. Ramanujam, V., & Varadarajan, R. (1989). Research on corporate diversification: A synthesis. Strategic Management Journal, 10, 523– 551. Razzaque, M., & Wilkinson, I. (2007). Research performance of senior level marketing academics at Australian universities: An exploratory study based on citation analysis. Paper presented at the Australia New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference. Samuelson, P. (1992). My life philosophy: Policy credos and working way. In M. Szenberg (Ed.), Eminent economists: Their life philosophies (pp. 236– 247). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Szymanski, D.M., Bharadwaj, S.G., & Varadarajan, P.R. (1993). An analysis of the market share-profitability relationship. Journal of Marketing, 57(July), 1 – 18. Varadarajan, R. (1983). The sustainable growth model: A tool for evaluating the financial feasibility of market share strategies. Strategic Management Journal, 4(4), 353– 367. Varadarajan, R. (1985). A twofactor classification of competitive strategy variables. Strategic Management Journal, 6, 357–375. Varadarajan, R. (1986). Product diversity and firm performance: An empirical inquiry. Journal of Marketing, 50(July), 43 –57. Varadarajan, R. (1996). From the Editor: Reflections on research and publishing. Journal of Marketing, 60(October), 3 –6. Varadarajan, R. (2003). From the Editor: Musings on relevance and rigor of scholarly research in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(Fall), 368– 376. Varadarajan, R., & Clark, T. (1994). Delineating the scope of corporate, business and marketing strategy. Journal of Business Research, 31(October – November), 93 – 105. Varadarajan, R., & Cunningham, M.H. (1995). Strategic alliances: A synthesis of conceptual foundations. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 23(Fall), 282– 296. Varadarajan, R., & Jayachandran, S. (1999). Marketing strategy: An assessment of the state of the field and outlook. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 27(Spring), 120– 143. Varadarajan, R., Jayachandran, S., & White, J.C. (2001). Strategic interdependence in organizations: Deconglomeration and marketing strategy. Journal of Marketing, 65(January), 15 – 28. Varadarajan, R., & Ramanujam, V. (1987). Diversification and performance: A reexamination using a new two-dimensional conceptualization of diversity in firms. Academy of Management Journal, 30(June), 380– 393. Walpole, H. (2010). BrainyQuote.com, Xplore Inc. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from http://brainy quote.com/quotes/quotes/h/horacewalp101235.html Webster, F.E. (2005). A perspective on the evolution of marketing management. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 24(Spring), 121– 126. White, J.C., Varadarajan, R., & Dacin, P. (2003). Market situation interpretation and response: The role of cognitive style, organizational culture and information use. Journal of Marketing, 67(July), 63 – 79. Yadav, M.S., & Varadarajan, R. (2005). Understanding product migration to the electronic marketplace: A conceptual framework. Journal of Retailing, 81(2), 125– 140.

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