Marketing strategies of Port Authorities: A multi-dimensional theorisation

The study advances an innovative conceptualization of the marketing strategies developed byPort Authorities (PAs), framing a relevant case of hybrid organisation into a business marketingperspective. PAs have transformed to hybrid organizations mostly disassociated from operationalactivities and port services provision. Still, they maintain a key role as managing bodies ad-vancing the prospects of respective port and associate clusters. Marketing is among the functionsworking towards this end. Aiming to advance theoretical constructs and related empirical re-search, the paper employs business marketing perspectives and their applications in hybrid or-ganisations to introduce a novel conceptualization of PA marketing strategies. Within this the-oretical angle, the study builds a multi-dimensional framework on PA strategic positioning thatcombines (a) PAs’marketing objectives in various Strategic Business Areas (SBAs), (b) the multi-faceted geography of the targeted salient stakeholders, and (c) the induced portfolio of marketingactions, whose ramifications unveil virtuous cross-fertilization effects (CFEs) and fuel the successof PA marketing strategies. This model enables to identifyfive different patterns of marketcoverage across diverse SBAs