Unleashing the importance of creativity, experience and intellectual capital in the adaptation of export marketing strategy and competitive position.

Salman Ali,Yousaf Latif,Guihua Li,J E Trinidad Segovia

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0241670

Abstract

Export marketing strategy has become an exciting research topic in strategic management literature because of its momentous role in sustainable competitive advantage and performance of firms. However, it is not yet recognized what factors enable top management team in adaptation of the export marketing strategy. This research aims to unleash how the intangible skills; creativity, business experience and intellectual capital facilitate marketing managers in adaptation of the expert marketing strategy (product, price, promotion and distribution) that can spur sustainable competitive performance. We collected data from 293 SMEs and used structural equation modeling for testing the hypotheses. The results indicate that the intangible skills; creativity, experience and intellectual capital do not directly contribute to sustainable competitive performance. However, creativity has a significant influence on product, price, promotion and distribution strategy, experience has a significant influence on product, price and promotion strategy and intellectual capital is only a significant predictor of product strategy. In the dimensions of export marketing strategy, product, price and distribution significantly while promotion does not significantly contribute to sustainable competitive performance. Moreover, export marketing strategy adaptation fully mediates the relationship between creativity and sustainable competitive performance as well as between experience and sustainable competitive performance while it does not mediate the path between intellectual capital and sustainable competitive performance. The findings recommend SMEs to emphasize highly skilled marketing staff who have competencies (experience, creative and intellectual) in order to build an effective export marketing strategy—resulting sustainable competitive performance. Further implications are discussed.

Highlights

The concept of an export marketing strategy has been recognized for more than fifty years by scholars and practitioners in the field of international business and international marketing [1, 2]
Considering the Resource Based View (RBV) theory [33] we argue that creativity, experience and intellectual capital of marketing managers are the key intangible resources—enabling them in the adaption of the best marketing strategy that results superior performance
The results indicate that our data is free of this issue because the tolerance and Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) of all the factors are found in the acceptable range as suggested by Jagpal [86]

Summary

Introduction

The concept of an export marketing strategy has been recognized for more than fifty years by scholars and practitioners in the field of international business and international marketing [1, 2]. The literature has highlighted the importance of different marketing assets in business success and competitiveness, it is still far from reaching a consolidated positon on the topic how intangible skills enables marketing managers in adaptation a suitable export marketing strategy that results high profitability. In other words, it is not yet known what kinds of skills and abilities enable marketers in building and adopting export marketing strategy (in terms of product, price, promotion and distribution) that might useful for sustainable competitive performance

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion