The role of marketing within companies and organisations has been discussed for a long time,
as well as its opportunities for influence – not least in times of financial constraints and
difficult economic contexts. Through in-depth interviews we investigated how nine Danish
top executives see the marketing department’s potential for influence within companies in
general and in their specific organisations. The objective was to gain deep insight into the
informants’ experiences with marketing and its position within Danish companies and to
relate this insight to the level of market orientation. We found strong similarities with other
research into the antecedents of marketing’s influence and established another key factor,
namely employee competencies and thereby the responsibility of human resource
management as well as a cultural moderator, namely creativity bias of marketing employees.