Ricerc@Sapienza

Purpose – Co-marketing strategies play an important role in enabling firms to improve their competitive
position. However, despite its increasing implementation, it remains a topic that is largely not researched. The
purpose of this paper is to analyze existing contributions to the field of co-marketing research and the
different perspectives scholars have adopted in analyzing the topic.
Design/methodology/approach – A literature review has been developed, as its lack seems to be a
major hindrance to the development of related studies. A specific focus has been made on the adopted
approaches. Five approaches have been identified, and multidimensional scaling (MDS) has been used to
analyze the differences among them.
Findings – First, the analysis of the typologies of studies on co-marketing alliances is made. Also, the
identified approaches are strategic-based, consumer-based, relational-based, specificity-based and evaluationbased.
What emerges from the MDS is that there are two perspectives of analysis of the alliance that
characterize them: the inside–outside and the wide–narrow points of view.
Research limitations/implications – Limitations are mostly referred to the methodologies and the
level of subjectivity they imply. For example, they are not only the choices made concerning keywords to be
used and, consequently, the articles included in the analysis, but also the MDS that offers broad autonomy to
the researchers in interpreting the data.
Originality/value – The originality of this research is that it fills an emerged gap concerning a literature
review on co-marketing alliances, supporting future research in this field of study. The identification of the
approaches underlines what may be lacking, providing interesting insights on possible avenues for future
research.