Relationship Between Marketing and Project Management Success Through Cognitive Process Lens

Abstract

In recent decades, project management has become more permeable to influences from other areas of knowledge, such as marketing. This influence led to project-based companies becoming market-oriented in their projects to achieve more success. However, the convergence of project management and marketing is still controversial. In this context, this study aims to assess the relationship between the vision of marketing, through conscious and unconscious processes, and its influence on the success of projects. Conscious processes deal with controlled and deliberate cognitive evaluations of anything, while unconscious processes are those that occur without one’s control and awareness. These mechanisms occur in parallel and influence our beliefs and behavior. Forty-five professionals working on projects participated in the survey. We collected the data through a structured questionnaire, to the conscious process, and a computerized task for the unconscious data using an instrument called Project Marketing Implicit Association Test. Thus, the study presented analyzes on how project managers conceive their conscious and unconscious perception of how marketing and project management can reconcile into a theoretical and practical convergent concept. The results provide evidence of a positive and significant influence of conscious and unconscious processes on project success. It was also revealed that these processes act independently, enhancing the project’s success.