Exploring organizational propensity toward inbound–outbound marketing techniques adoption: The case of pure players and click and mortar companies

This research seeks to explore which configurations of causal conditions can predict inbound–outbound marketing techniques adoption. The study uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) approach to examine the pure player's (PP) propensity to inbound marketing and the propensity of click and mortar (C&M) to outbound marketing. The explanatory factors’ architecture consists of ten constructs; five reflect PP propensity to inbound marketing and five reflect C&M propensity to outbound marketing. The preliminary findings of the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on an Italian sample of PP and C&M confirm the validity of the conceptual framework. Furthermore, the study proposes the test of the framework to a Romanian sample of PP and C&M. The originality of the conceptual approach is relying mainly upon its revealing force based on untrained recipes to approach the complexity of organizational client interaction, enriching marketing theory and understanding new practices as actionable knowledge. The main contribution of this study is to propose new configurations of organizational propensity toward inbound–outbound marketing techniques, through learning the new meanings of complex outcomes.