Symbiosis of marketing and quality: Antecedents and consequences

The management of quality and development of effective cross-functional cooperation have assumed a new strategic importance over the past two decades. However, many companies have reported that quality strategies have failed to deliver anticipated performance benefits. This study explores marketing-quality interfunctional relationships as a potential source of quality strategy implementation failure. This study focuses on interdepartment connectedness, communication and conflict between marketing and quality, and the antecedents and consequences of these dimensions of interfunctional interaction. Using data from mail survey, the results suggest that marketing-quality interactions are associated with senior management quality leadership, strategic quality planning process, and control system characteristics. Interfunctional interactions between marketing and quality are found to be only weakly related to relative quality, market performance, and financial performance outcomes.