E-commerce Capability,Marketing Flexibility,and Corporate Competitive Advantage

From a macro perspective,2021 coincides with the start of China’s 14 th Five-Year Plan,which advocates “accelerating digital development and building a digital China”.In the era of the digital economy,enterprises must undergo digital transformation,and as an important part of the digital economy,e-commerce is destined to attract more extensive attention and research.From a meso perspective,the ongoing impact of the new coronavirus pandemic and the pressure to survive the economic downturn have intensified competition among businesses,making improving e-commerce capability and emphasizing competitive advantages in the market topics that every enterprise needs to consider.However,at the micro level,due to differences in their marketing strategies and capabilities,not all enterprises can promote marketing and gain competitive advantage through digital transformation.Existing literature pointed out that the essence of marketing flexibility is the enterprises’ rapid response to the changing competitive environment and the external manifestation of enterprises’ e-commerce capability.On the other hand,market learning is the internal key factor to achieving marketing flexibility and enhancing an enterprise’s competitive advantage.However,there is currently insufficient theoretical and empirical basis for how e-commerce capability,market learning,and marketing flexibility affect competitive advantage.At present,there are many studies on e-commerce capability and competitive advantages in China and abroad,but the conclusions are inconsistent.Exactly how and under what circumstances e-commerce capability plays a positive role in competitive advantage has not been thoroughly studied.This study first identified the shortcomings of existing research by reviewing the literature of relevant variables and their relationships.On this basis,and in the context of digitalization,this paper put forward questions as follows: In an increasingly tough competitive environment,how should China’s traditional manufacturing enterprises improve their competitive advantage through e-commerce capability? How can the pain points and challenges of online and offline marketing integration be resolved? Based on the marketing flexibility derived from the concept of dynamic capabilities,a basic model that integrates e-commerce capability,marketing flexibility,and competitive advantages was constructed in this paper.At the same time,internal market learning and external market competition were added as manipulated variables to explore the boundary conditions of the relationship between different variables by integrating internal and external influences.On this basis,the primary data from 346 relevant enterprises were collected through questionnaire survey,and the software SPSS was used to conduct descriptive analysis,correlation analysis,and regression analysis to individually test six research hypotheses.This paper arrived at conclusions as follows:(1)E-commerce capability has a positive impact on marketing flexibility and competitive advantage;(2)Marketing flexibility plays a full intermediary role in e-commerce capability and competitive advantage;(3)Market learning positively regulates the relationship between e-commerce capability and marketing flexibility;(4)Market competition negatively regulates the relationship between e-commerce capability and marketing flexibility.The above conclusions reveal the mechanism and path of e-commerce capability to competitive advantage,and also clarify the boundary conditions of the process of market learning and market competition to play a role in e-commerce capability,which expanded the existing research on e-commerce capability,and deepened the understanding of how enterprises improve their competitive advantage from the perspective of marketing flexibility in the digital background.