Digital Marketing Outsourcing Relationships Between SMEs and Service Providers: An Agency Theory Perspective

Karen Sutherland; Rory Mulcahy; Jacqueline Burgess; Meredith Lawley; David Fox

doi:10.1177/14413582241303978

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Digital Marketing Outsourcing Relationships Between SMEs and Service Providers: An Agency Theory Perspective

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Digital Marketing Outsourcing Relationships Between SMEs and Service Providers: An Agency Theory Perspective

Karen Sutherland, Rory Mulcahy, Jacqueline Burgess, Meredith Lawley and David Fox

Australasian Marketing Journal, Vol.33(3), pp.231-243

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14413582241303978

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Abstract

Marketing

B2B relationships

digital marketing

outsourcing

SME

Digital marketing has become a necessity for small to medium enterprises (SME), exacerbated by the pandemic. Given the sometimes-limited knowledge and resources for digital marketing, SMEs often outsource digital marketing to service providers. A review of B2B literature demonstrates a predominant focus on how businesses internally adopt and use digital marketing with limited insight as to how digital marketing has been outsourced nor the subsequent relationship between client and service provider. This is a gap in scholarly and practitioner knowledge with increasing disputes in the SME and digital marketing service provider (DMSP) relationship. To address this gap the current research, informed by agency theory, adopts an exploratory research design utilising interviews with both SME owners (n = 13) and DMSPs (n = 7). Results uncover the importance of considering relationship expectations, transparency and organisational compatibility and how they relate to goal conflict or convergence in the SME and DMSP relationship.

Details

Title: Digital Marketing Outsourcing Relationships Between SMEs and Service Providers: An Agency Theory Perspective
Authors: Karen Sutherland (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Rory Mulcahy (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Jacqueline Burgess (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Meredith Lawley (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
David Fox (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Publication details: Australasian Marketing Journal, Vol.33(3), pp.231-243
Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd.
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.1177/14413582241303978
ISSN: 1839-3349
Copyright note: © 2024 Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Grant note: This research received funding from: The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO).
Organisation Unit: School of Business and Creative Industries
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991091398902621
Output Type: Journal article

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