Research On The Effect Of Ambidextrous Marketing Capabilities On Firm Performance

Marketing capabilities are the foundation of building and maintaining a competitive advantage. Since the1990s, the researches of marketing capabilities develop rapidly, and gradually become the important issue of marketing strategy research, which received widespread attentions both in the academia and practice fields. Most of the existing expression about marketing capabilities emphasize the application of existing marketing resources and capabilities, but with the change of the technological changes and customer purchase patterns, the business industrial environment is undergoing tremendous change, the traditional marketing capabilities research gradually reveal the problem of shortage of explanatory power. Especially with the dramatic change in the market and the rapid development of new technology, firms are more urgent to improve and refresh their marketing capabilities to get the competitive advantage than any time before. Therefore, adopting the new perspective to explore the connotation, denotation of marketing capabilities and their effects on the performance in dynamic circumstance become a critical issue in marketing research. Based on an intensive study of strategic management theory, marketing theory and ambidextrous theory, this dissertation apply the ambidextrous capabilities perspective into the dynamic epistemology of marketing capabilities, put forward the concept of ambidextrous marketing capabilities and further explore their impact on firm performance. Theoretically, this dissertation enriches and deepens the dynamic epistemology of marketing capabilities, strengthens the theoretical basis of ambidextrous research in the marketing field, and further enriches the research about the conversion mechanism of the capabilities to performance both in the marketing and strategy management fields. Practically, this dissertation helps managers to allocate resources effectively, identifying and cultivating the marketing capabilities from the ambidextrous perspective, and enlightens managers to transform their focus of marketing decision from "trade-off’to "balance", provide a realistic path for the enterprise operation to build ambidextrous organization.The main focus of this dissertation lies in the ambidextrous marketing capabilities and their contributions to firm performance, research contents include:(1) the conceptualization of ambidextrous marketing capabilities and operationalization measurement of the corresponding components;(2) investigate the direct effect of the ambidextrous marketing capabilities and the boundary conditions;(3) reveals the influence path of ambidextrous marketing capabilities on firm performance. Based on the field interviews, literature review, theoretical derivation and empirical test, this research explored the research questions through three studies, and finally obtained the following research conclusions.Firstly, this dissertation develops the concept of ambidextrous marketing capabilities based on the combination of marketing capabilities, ambidextrous theory and dynamic capabilities research. It finds dynamic marketing capabilities are composed of two components including exploitative marketing capabilities and explorative marketing capabilities, which can be conceptualizing as ambidextrous marketing capabilities. Furthermore, this dissertation make further efforts to explore the connotation of the concept of ambidextrous marketing capabilities and the multi-dimension structure, based on the literature research and field review with managers. Beyond, it also develops a reliable and valid measurement scale of ambidextrous marketing capabilities with empirical research method and the sample data from firm level.Secondly, this dissertation examines the diversity situations of ambidextrous marketing capabilities’direct contributions on firm performance. Results show that exploitative marketing capabilities and explorative marketing capabilities both have a significant positive impact on firm performance. Moreover, the relationship are moderated by the external environment factors such as market turbulence and internal factors such as the cross functional coordination. Market turbulence negatively moderates the relationship between exploitative marketing capabilities and performance, positively moderates the relationship between explorative marketing capabilities and performance. On the other hand, the cross functional collaboration positively moderates the relationships between the two kinds of capabilities and performance. Furthermore, it reveals balance matching of two kinds of capabilities can control risks effectively and consequently promote performance, moreover, the interaction effect shows a negative impact on performance, but when adding cross functional collaboration as a moderator variable, the influence between interaction effects on firm performance become significantly positive, which illustrates the effective market information transfer and cooperation from different business functions throughout the enterprise are the important catalysts for the interaction effects of exploitative marketing capabilities and explorative marketing capabilities.Finally, with the foundation of strategic management theory and marketing theory, this dissertation introduces competitive strategy based on customer value into the research model, and empirically test the influence path from ambidextrous marketing capabilities to firm performance, and further clearly outline the transformation path from exploitative and explorative marketing capabilities to performance, through the mediation effect test of low cost strategy, product innovation strategy and brand strategy. Results show competitive strategies based on customer value are the key steps for translating ambidextrous marketing capabilities into excellent performance. Specifically, for exploitative marketing capabilities and performance, three kinds of strategy play partial mediating role; for explorative marketing capabilities and performance, product innovation strategy and brand strategy play partial mediating role. In addition, the balance effect of the two kinds of capabilities can help firm to carry out the strategy of product innovation; balance effect and interaction effect are both contribute to the implementation of brand strategy.The innovations of this dissertation are mainly reflected in the following three aspects. Firstly, based on the ambidextrous theory, this dissertation uncovers that the ambidextrous marketing capabilities are composed of two components including exploitative marketing capabilities and explorative marketing capabilities, and further develops a measurement scale comprised of three levels and six dimensions, through which this dissertation enriches and deepens the understanding of dynamic marketing capabilities and provides a measurement instrument to investigate marketing dynamic capabilities empirically. Secondly, based on contingency theory, this dissertation reveals the diversity situations of the effects of ambidextrous marketing capabilities and the ambidexterity on firm performance, partially resolves the theoretical controversy about the relationship between ambidextrous capabilities and firm performance in the literature, thereby, expands the theory of ambidextrous capability effectiveness. Thirdly, drawing on the endogenous and exogenous perspectives of the sources of competitive advantage from strategic management theory and the SPP(Source-Position advantage-Performance) framework from marketing strategy theory, this dissertation introduces competitive strategies based on customer value into the relationship chain, builds two stages of causal logic model for the effect of ambidextrous marketing capabilities on firm performance through three competitive strategies, enriches the theory of the relationship between competence and performance.