Assessing the Alignment Between IT/IS and Marketing: An Exploratory Study

This study explores the alignment between IT/IS and marketing from a strategic perspective. The heads of IT and marketing of eighteen large New Zealand companies were interviewed, and their assessments of alignment rated according to two constructs: strategic orientation, and market orientation. The strategic orientation dimensions were aggressiveness, analysis, defensiveness, futurity, proactiveness, innovativeness and risk aversion. The market orientation dimensions were customer analysis, customer responsiveness, competitor analysis, competitor responsiveness, interfunctional coordination, and environmental responsiveness. The companies’ measures for marketing performance and business performance were also recorded. Findings indicate that IT and marketing are more closely aligned with regard to market orientation than strategic orientation; and that IT tends to have a higher assessment of the alignment than marketing – on average and according to individual components of both constructs. Apart from some company-specific measures, there were strong overlaps between the measures of marketing performance and business performance. Future research will focus on quantitative verification of the findings of this exploratory study.