The Impact of Spanning Marketing Capabilities on Financial and Process Performance

Abstract

Marketing capabilities enable an organization to identify customer needs and respond to them through planning of marketing activities, investment and execution. Managers would see the results of their adopted strategies and decisions in terms of their performance criteria. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of spanning marketing capabilities on organizations’ financial performance and process performance (i.e. quality and efficiency). The study rests on a descriptive-survey design while being an applied work concerning its goals. All the presidents, vice presidents, and specialists of Melli Banks in metropolitan Tehran were considered as the study population. After dividing the city into five regions and conducting a cluster sampling process, 385 questionnaires were handed out with reference to Krejcie and Morgan Table. To assess boundary-spanning marketing capabilities, the questionnaire proposed by Santos-Vijande et al. (2012) was implemented, but financial performance and process performance were evaluated using the questionnaire developed by Nicolas and Cerdan (2011). The construct validity of the study was calculated by confirmatory factor analysis. Further, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for various constructs were higher than 0.7, which indicated their reliability. In order to analyze the obtained data, structural equations modeling and confirmatory factor analysis were performed by the LISREL software. The findings showed acceptable values after measuring the models’ variables. Further, the results of the path analysis procedure indicated that boundary-spanning marketing capabilities directly and positively affect financial performance and process performance.