Firms need sufficient resources (tangible and intangible) and capabilities to build unique products due to customers' demands and choices, market competition and globalization. Despite sufficient resources, many firms cannot build new products according to the customers' preferences and market trends due to lack of marketing capabilities, lack of skilled marketing staff and lack of experienced managers. However, studies have not yet examined what types of intangible skills of marketing managers are prominent for building new products. This study examines the importance of the intangible skills; intellectual captial, financial literacy and business experience in new product development that results in sustainable competitive performance. We used a mixed-method approach; questionnaire (283) and interviews (16) for data collection and then applied structural equation modelling for testing the hypotheses. The results revealed that all the three intangible skills; intellectual captial, financial literacy and business experience significant influence new product development and sustainable competitive performance. However, considering the relative importance, financial literacy and intellectual capital are the most significant predictors of sustainable competitive performance and new product development respectively. Moreover, new product development fully mediates the path between intellectual capital and sustainable competitive performance while it partially mediates the link between financial literacy, business experience and sustainable competitive performance. Considering the importance of tangible resources, our study scrutinized that financial resources have a significant influence on new product development and sustainable competitive performance while technological resources do not play a significant role. This research recommends firms to emphasize on the improvement of intangible skills of the managers in order to build new products that result in sustainable competitive position. This study also recommends marketing managers to improve their financial skills and experience by participating in various seminars and workshops that can spur their new idea generation and new product development capabilities.
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.
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