Marketing relationships in Brazil: trends in value strategies and capabilities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of value strategies among international and national firms in Brazil by exploring the trends in value strategies for use in future marketing relationships and the capabilities necessary to implement those value strategies. Design/methodology/approach – The study uses a Delphi technique to elicit the opinions and perceptions from a group of B2B marketing experts. An iterative data collection with 30 senior executives of national and foreign, mid‐ and large size firms in Brazil was used to explore the strategies firms use, the types of key capabilities, and the capabilities that drive performance. Findings – The findings show that both national and international firms in Brazil expect to continue to use commodity strategies as their primary relational form, but move toward the higher value added strategies. Higher value added strategies are expected to account for 42 per cent of the respondent firms' relationships in the coming years. Firms rated “methods to identify and monitor” and “marketing intelligence” as the two most important capabilities for driving performance. An additional finding is the distinction between firms' self‐evaluations of capability competence and the capabilities that drive performance. Practical implications – The study provides insight into the links between value strategies practiced and the marketing capabilities required to support those strategies. Originality/value – The study provides practitioner insights into the practices and trends in the use of value‐driving and value‐creating strategies among firms in a big emerging market, Brazil.