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A marketing simulation represents a comprehensive and integrative business environment in which students actively manage firms that compete against each other. This article describes how marketing simulations harness digital disruption to enhance learning processes and outcomes and (ultimately) prepare students for their future careers. The article focuses on comprehensive marketing simulations, which have more decision variables and incorporate authentic competition, rather than "play against the machine" games. It defines digital disruption as the change that occurs when new digital technologies change customer experiences, business processes, and business models, thereby changing how value is cocreated. The article begins by describing how simulations capture digital disruption in the marketplace and harness it to improve students' learning experiences and outcomes. The description reflects the authors' experiences with the LINKS suite of simulations (www.LINKS-simulations.com), as well as the experiences of other instructors and students. The article then discusses pedagogical opportunities and class activities that enhance learning experiences connected with digital disruption in business ecosystems. It closes by emphasizing three best practices for marketing educators. The discussion applies to undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and programs targeted at other student groups (e.g., in-house corporate programs).

In the preceding article, Vargo and Lusch (V&L; 2004) observe that an evolution is underway toward a new dominant logic for marketing. The new dominant logic has important implications for marketing theory, practice, and pedagogy, as well as for general management and public policy. Thus, their observations are likely to resonate with a broad cross-section of the business community. With the goal of stimulating discussion and debate, I invited some distinguished scholars to write brief commentaries on different aspects of V&L's article. I was delighted to receive a thoughtful and diverse set of comments. The ideas expressed in the article and the commentaries will undoubtedly provoke a variety of reactions from readers of Journal of Marketing. I hope you will enjoy reading, and thinking, about these scholars' views on the fundamental premises of marketing as much as I did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses reports published within the issue including one about metrics, the measurement of the impact of marketing.

Most research in customer asset management has focused on specific aspects of the value of the customer to the company. The purpose of this article is to propose an integrated framework, called CUSAMS (customer asset management of services), that enables service organizations (1) to make a comprehensive assessment of the value of their customer assets and (2) to understand the influence of marketing instruments on them. The foundation of the CUSAMS framework is a careful specification of key customer behaviors that reflect the length, depth, and breadth of the customer-service organization relationship: duration, usage, and cross-buying. This framework is the starting point for a set of propositions regarding how marketing instruments influence customer behavior within the relationship, thereby influencing the value of the customer asset. The framework and propositions provide the impetus for a research agenda that identifies critical issues in customer asset management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a framework for assessing how marketing actions affect customers' lifetime value to the firm. The framework is organized around four critical actions that firms must take to effectively manage the asset value of the customer base: database creation, market segmentation, forecasting customer purchase behavior, and resource allocation. In this framework, customer lifetime value is treated as a dynamic construct, that is, it influences the eventual allocation of marketing resources but is also influenced by that allocation. By viewing customers as assets and systematically managing these assets, a firm can identify the most appropriate marketing actions to acquire, maintain, and enhance customer assets and thereby maximize financial returns. The article discusses in detail how to assess customer lifetime value and manage customers as assets. Then, it identifies key research challenges in studying customer asset management and the managerial challenges associated with implementing effective customer asset management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Companies that offer loyalty reward programs believe that their programs have a long-run positive effect on customer evaluations and behavior. However, if loyalty rewards programs increase relationship durations and usage levels, customers will be increasingly exposed to the complete spectrum of service experiences, including experiences that may cause customers to switch to another service provider. Using cross-sectional, time-series data from a worldwide financial services company that offers a loyalty reward program, this article investigates the conditions under which a loyalty rewards program will have a positive effect on customer evaluations, behavior, and repeat purchase intentions. The results show that members in the loyalty reward program overlook or discount negative evaluations of the company vis-a-vis competition. One possible reason could be that members of the loyalty rewards program perceive that they are getting better quality and service for their price or, in other words, "good value." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]