Strategic marketing capability: Mobilizing technological resources for new product advantage

Although scholars have paid much attention to the conceptualization of marketing capability and its performance implications (e.g. Krasnikov & Jayachandran, 2008; Vorhies, Morgan, & Autry, 2009), there has been little research on the leading role of marketing capability in new product success. Especially, more research efforts are necessary to demonstrate how marketing capability initiates new product development and selectively articulates product advantage. This study presents a conceptual frame of new product–market success, emphasizing that strategic marketing capability (SMC) contributes to matching the revealed or potential market needs to the most appropriate technological resources. Such best-matched marketing and technological resources create either or both of new product advantages, differentiation or cost advantage, which finally lead to better new product performance. Using 209 survey data from the manufacturing and service industry firms in Korea, the current study validates the influence of a firm's SMC on the two different technological resource mobilization modes en route to product advantages and product-market performance.