Marketing-Specific Structural Capital, Marketing Innovation and Market Performance

Organization's capability to innovate is closely tied to its intellectual capital; yet, studies addressing this issue have neglected marketing innovation and have mostly focused on technological innovation. However, marketing innovation (i.e., innovation in pricing, product/service design and packaging, placement and promotion) can help attract customers and increase the demand of a firm's products with a relatively smaller investment than technological innovation. In this paper, we test how knowledge generated by means of marketing-specific IT solutions (i.e., marketing-specific IT capital) and other forms of organizational memory in the marketing domain (i.e., marketing-specific organizational memory) can contribute to marketing innovation and subsequent market performance. Using marketing directors-reported data, we empirically test research hypotheses by means of structural equation modelling based on partial least squares. Results reveal that while marketing innovation fully mediates the relationship between organizational memory and market performance, it partially mediates the relationship between IT capital and market performance. Moreover, the study identifies which are the most relevant knowledge resources within marketing-specific IT capital and organizational memory to boost both marketing innovation and market performance. This encourages marketing managers to carefully assess marketing-specific knowledge resources residing in the firm to benefit their businesses.