Research On The Impact Of E-Business Application On Marketing Performance

As the quick development of e-business (EB), firms are puzzlued with the elusive link between EB application and firm performance. While business value of EB application is an enduring research question, little is known about whether there are intermediate organizational variables through which EB application may influence firm performance or not and if there are, what they are; as to the methodologies the studies used, many were detective factor analysis, correlative analysis, or regression analysis, the results are therefore easy to be questioned for multicollinearity issues or ignoring measurement errors; and empirical studies on Chinese firms are insufficient on this field.The purpose of this research is to make up some of the shortfalls in the study of the relationship between EB application and firm performance. This study proposes that marketing capability is a critical organizational capability through which EB application influences firm performance, and uses structure euaqtion model as main statistical method to analyse data collected from Chinese firms.First, relative studies on EB application and its impact on firm performance, the relationship between firm capabilities /marketing capabilities and firm performance are reviewed. Besed on the review of theoretical foundations and detective interview, the EB application is specified as a higher-order construct that comprises three first-order function applications: internal administration, purchasing management, and marketing management; the marketing capability is specified as a higher-order construct that comprises three first-order marketing capabilities too: customer-related capability, marketing learning capability, and market development capability; the marketing performance is as well specified as a higher-order construct that comprises five first-order index categories: accounting effect; customer value; competence result; product innovation; brand equity. Then a research model involving EB application, marketing capability and marketing performance is proposed. This study collects data of 152 firms in China to test hypotheses with structural equation model.The results show that there is a positive relationship between EB application and marketing capability as well as marketing capability and marketing performance, marketing capability is a critical organizational capability through which EB application influences marketing performance. In addition to this, the hypotheses about the relationship between different dimensions have been tested.The main contributions are: (1) a scale has been developed for EB application in firms; (2) the relationship between EB application and marketing capability has been tested by structural equation model, however, prior studies do not pay their attention to it; (3) this study uncovers that marketing capability play an intermediate role between EB application and marketing performance; (4) this study has tested the relationship between marketing capability and marketing performance and the relationship between each dimension of marketing capability and each category of marketing performance by empirical study.