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1 Introduction
The interface between supply-chain management and marketing (SCM-M interface) has long interested academia and practitioners. The cause of this interest is twofold: on the one hand, the definition itself of SCM as integration of supply (e.g. logistics and operations) and demand (e.g. marketing) management within and across companies, encompasses many phenomena and practices common to the discipline and practice of marketing and marketing management ([44] Mentzer and Gundlach, 2010). On the other hand, as often SCM decision makers have a pre-eminent operations background, the SCM-M interface is affected by the same problems of the widely analysed manufacturing-marketing (M-M) interface: different prerogatives, management styles and culture ([64] Song et al. , 1997; [10] Crittenden et al. , 1993), generating frequent conflicts, often resulting in a diminished effectiveness, efficiency and/or flexibility.
Nonetheless, as [44] Mentzer and Gundlach (2010) note "despite [...] developments and benefits, the nature and implications of the interrelationships of marketing and SCM have not been explored at great length in [...] literature". But this dearth of literature is even more problematic observing how also practice still lacks a comprehensive set of tools for managing the SCM-M interface. As a result, companies have more often invested to create differential advantages in one but not both of the domains, often resulting in their suboptimal integration ([17] Esper et al. , 2010). This suboptimal integration is extremely detrimental both in a marketing and in a SCM perspective: on the marketing side, the lack of collaboration with the supply chain leads to suboptimal abilities to gather shared distribution-side and supply-side intelligence ([17] Esper et al. , 2010; [25] Gummesson, 2008), with a negative effect on the ability to adopt market- and customer-oriented practices ([12] Day, 1994; [40] Lamberti and Noci, 2010). On the SCM hand, the lack of coordination has been put at the core of diminished service levels and often stock-outs ([8] Campo et al. , 2000; [16] Emmelheinz et al. , 1991; [19] Fitzsimons, 2000; [24] Gruen and Corsten, 2007), leading to unsatisfying customer performance ([46] Mollenkopf et al. , 2007; [73] Van Woensel et al. , 2007).
These impacts are particularly relevant in processes in which marketing and SCM cooperate and in which it is harder to foresee the exact outcome of the...