Experiential and Informational Knowledge, Architectural Marketing Capabilities, and the Adaptive Performance of Export Ventures: A Cross-National Study

Decision Sciences, Spring 2003 by Morgan, Neil A, Zou, Shaoming, Vorhies, Douglas W, Katsikeas, Constantine S

H4: Export venture marketing planning capabilities are positively related to the venture's marketing implementation capabilities.

Our fieldwork indicated that while managers expected marketing planning capabilities to be related to marketing implementation capabilities, there was a recognition that the ability to formulate appropriate marketing strategy is a necessary but insufficient condition for enabling export ventures to successfully adapt to their market environments. This is consistent with the marketing literature indicating that successful firms are distinguished not only by well-conceived marketing strategies, but also by their ability to execute them (e.g., Day & Wensley, 1988; Kerin et al., 1990). Managers in our fieldwork consistently suggested that marketing planning capabilities were indirectly related to the venture's success in adapting to its market environment, with the venture's ability to successfully implement marketing strategy decisions being the key mediator. These literature and fieldwork viewpoints are consistent with the concept of "realized" strategy in the management literature, which recognizes that while "intended" strategy decisions guide subsequent behavior, it is only the enacted strategy that is actually "realized" that impacts the firm's ability to achieve its goals (e.g., Mintzberg, 1994; Pascale, 1984). We therefore expect that

H5: Export venture marketing implementation capabilities are positively related to the venture's adaptive performance.

METHODOLOGY

Research Design

To enhance variability and generalizability in the data used for hypothesis testing, we adopted a multicountry cross-sectional research design using data from export manufacturers located in the United Kingdom and China. Exporting firms from these two countries generated over $540 billion in export merchandise sales in 2001, making the United Kingdom and China two of the largest exporting nations in the world (Economist, 2002). In addition, the United Kingdom and China have been identified as having significantly different national cultures that impact how managers in those countries do business (e.g., Brouthers & Brouthers, 2001; Hofstede & Bond, 1988). Collecting data from two such different cultures should enhance the generalizability of the findings of our study (e.g., Hofstede, 1991). Service firms were excluded because of their idiosyncratic international expansion patterns and performance characteristics (Berthon, Pitt, Katsikeas, & Berthon, 1999). Since exporting is a stage of internationalization that is particularly appropriate for small and medium-sized business, and the overwhelming majority of global export trade is in manufacturing (e.g., World Bank, 2001), the target population in each country consisted of manufacturing firms ranging in size from 50 to 500 employees.

Measurement

In developing measures of export ventures' knowledge bases, architectural marketing capabilities, and adaptive performance, we synthesized perspectives from the KBV, exporting, and marketing literature, insights from our fieldwork interviews, and insights obtained from discussions with a number of academic researchers in the areas of knowledge management, international business, and marketing. Our initial measures were refined and pretested using face-to-face contexts to enhance face validity and were further refined through two quantitative data collection exercises. The Appendix contains the measures and their respective sources. In addition to measures of each of the constructs contained in our hypotheses, we collected data on competitive intensity to control for differences between the export markets served by each export venture.