IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bushor/v57y2014i1p49-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

It's a secret: Marketing value and the denial of availability

Author

Listed:
  • Hannah, David
  • Parent, Michael
  • Pitt, Leyland
  • Berthon, Pierre

Abstract

Marketing thrives on secrets, yet surprisingly little formal attention has been paid to how the marketing of secrecy and the secrecy of marketing can play a significant role in contemporary organizations. We draw upon the fields of organizational studies, psychology, and marketing to develop a typology of secrets that reflects their marketing value and their knowledge value. Marketing secrets can have value to the firm (strategic value), to the customer (marketing value), or to both parties. Based on these two dimensions, we identify four different types of marketing secrets: (1) appealing secrets have high strategic value, as well as high marketing value; (2) mythical secrets mean little to the firm but a lot to the customer; (3) plain secrets are critical to the firm but are irrelevant to customers; and (4) weak secrets have neither strategic value nor marketing value. Our typology enables academics to formulate research questions regarding secrecy in marketing, and serves as a guide for practitioners in the construction of strategies that can exploit the strategic value of secrets by ‘romancing’ them, and increase their knowledge value by ‘educating’ the secrets.

Suggested Citation

  • Hannah, David & Parent, Michael & Pitt, Leyland & Berthon, Pierre, 2014. "It's a secret: Marketing value and the denial of availability," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 49-59.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:57:y:2014:i:1:p:49-59
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2013.09.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681313001365
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bushor.2013.09.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David R. Hannah, 2007. "An Examination of the Factors that Influence Whether Newcomers Protect or Share Secrets of their Former Employers," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 465-487, June.
    2. David R. Hannah, 2005. "Should I Keep a Secret? The Effects of Trade Secret Protection Procedures on Employees' Obligations to Protect Trade Secrets," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(1), pages 71-84, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hannah, David R. & McCarthy, Ian P. & Kietzmann, Jan, 2015. "We’re leaking, and everything's fine: How and why companies deliberately leak secrets," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 659-667.
    2. Mills, Adam J., 2015. "Everyone loves a secret: Why consumers value marketing secrets," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 643-649.
    3. Plangger, Kirk & Watson, Richard T., 2015. "Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 625-633.
    4. Mazlan Maskor & Niklas K Steffens & Kim Peters & S Alexander Haslam, 2022. "Discovering the secrets of leadership success: Comparing commercial and academic preoccupations," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 47(1), pages 79-104, February.
    5. Campbell, Colin & Marks, Lawrence J., 2015. "Good native advertising isn’t a secret," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 599-606.
    6. Fedorenko, Ivan & Berthon, Pierre & Edelman, Linda, 2023. "Top secret: Integrating 20 years of research on secrecy," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    7. Allen, Alexis M. & Peloza, John, 2015. "Someone to watch over me: The integration of privacy and corporate social responsibility," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 635-642.
    8. Crittenden, William F. & Crittenden, Victoria L. & Pierpont, Allison, 2015. "Trade secrets: Managerial guidance for competitive advantage," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 607-613.
    9. Hall, Daniel & Pitt, Leyland & Wallstrom, Asa, 2015. "The secrets of secret societies: The case of wine," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 651-658.
    10. Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, Pia & Yang, Jialei, 2022. "Distinguishing between appropriability and appropriation: A systematic review and a renewed conceptual framing," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(1).
    11. Robertson, Kirsten M. & Hannah, David R. & Lautsch, Brenda A., 2015. "The secret to protecting trade secrets: How to create positive secrecy climates in organizations," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 669-677.
    12. Yang, Jialei & Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, Pia, 2022. "Evolving appropriability – Variation in the relevance of appropriability mechanisms across industries," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bos, Brenda & Broekhuizen, Thijs L.J. & de Faria, Pedro, 2015. "A dynamic view on secrecy management," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(12), pages 2619-2627.
    2. Fedorenko, Ivan & Berthon, Pierre & Edelman, Linda, 2023. "Top secret: Integrating 20 years of research on secrecy," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    3. Delerue, Hélène & Lejeune, Albert, 2011. "Managerial secrecy and intellectual asset protection in SMEs: The role of institutional environment," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 130-142, June.
    4. Hannah, David R. & McCarthy, Ian P. & Kietzmann, Jan, 2015. "We’re leaking, and everything's fine: How and why companies deliberately leak secrets," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 659-667.
    5. Robertson, Kirsten M. & Hannah, David R. & Lautsch, Brenda A., 2015. "The secret to protecting trade secrets: How to create positive secrecy climates in organizations," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 669-677.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5246 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Zobel, Ann-Kristin & Lokshin, Boris & Hagedoorn, John, 2017. "Formal and informal appropriation mechanisms: The role of openness and innovativeness," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 44-54.
    8. Barros, Henrique M., 2021. "Neither at the cutting edge nor in a patent-friendly environment: Appropriating the returns from innovation in a less developed economy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(1).
    9. Langlois, Jonathan & BenMahmoud-Jouini, Sihem & Servajean-Hilst, Romaric, 2023. "Practicing secrecy in open innovation – The case of a military firm," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    10. Dai, Yanke & Du, Ting & Gao, Huasheng & Gu, Yan & Wang, Yongqin, 2024. "Patent pledgeability, trade secrecy, and corporate patenting," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    11. Kannan Srikanth & Anand Nandkumar & Deepa Mani & Prashant Kale, 2020. "How Firms Build Isolating Mechanisms for Knowledge: A Study in Offshore Research and Development Captives," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(2), pages 98-116, June.
    12. Müller, Dirk, 2010. "Alliance Coordination, Dysfunctions, and the Protection of Idiosyncratic Knowledge in Strategic Learning Alliances," EconStor Preprints 41039, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    13. Gallié, Emilie-Pauline & Legros, Diégo, 2012. "French firms’ strategies for protecting their intellectual property," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 780-794.
    14. Sofka, Wolfgang & de Faria, Pedro & Shehu, Edlira, 2018. "Protecting knowledge: How legal requirements to reveal information affect the importance of secrecy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 558-572.
    15. Seip, Marcel & Castaldi, Carolina & Flikkema, Meindert & De Man, Ard-Pieter, 2018. "The timing of trademark application in innovation processes," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 72, pages 34-45.
    16. David R. Hannah & Kirsten Robertson, 2015. "Why and How Do Employees Break and Bend Confidential Information Protection Rules?," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 381-413, May.
    17. Mills, Adam J., 2015. "Everyone loves a secret: Why consumers value marketing secrets," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 643-649.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:57:y:2014:i:1:p:49-59. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.