Marketing capabilities: do they matter in INVs?

Abstract

This paper examines the influence that marketing capabilities developed in international new ventures can have on their international performance and international geographical diversification. Rapid entry in foreign markets is also highlighted as a factor contributing to the development of marketing capabilities in international new ventures. The central concept advanced in the paper is that international new ventures generate competitive advantages associated with early internationalisation that derive from their influence on the development of marketing capabilities in these firms. The study's conclusions provide new keys for the literature on entrepreneurship and marketing, and will contribute to improve our understanding of how new international ventures behave.

International Market Orientation and Management Capabilities as Determinants of the New Ventures’ International Behaviour

“…Taken together, our results seem to voice one common message: the management capabilities developed by INVs help to explain the international behavior of these companies [26]. Concretely INVs adopt an international market orientation characterized by a global scope to the different markets that allow these companies to generate valuable information in order to identify new business opportunities.…”

“…International market orientation develops behaviors that tend to improve the INV's internal and external information flow in such a way that the INV can explore changes in its international environment more rapidly and adapt its actions to the specific needs of each market. Thus, international market orientation can play a determining role in explaining not only how an INV acquires foreign business, institutional and international information, but also how these firms manage this information to develop new knowledge [26,30,38].…”

“…Previous research has shown that the possession of certain competences can facilitate the development of a company's internationalization strategy, especially in the earlier stages of the process [23,24]. In fact, according to Gabrielsson et al [25] and Blesa et al [26], what makes it possible to distinguish between different types of international behaviors in new firms are the commitment of resources in the foreign markets where the new firm operates and the geographical diversification of their foreign markets. However, a comprehensive explanation of the strategic antecedents of INVs' international behavior is still not adequately addressed in extant models of internationalization [27].…”

“…Thus, firms can use their international market orientation to overcome cultural distance problems, especially information asymmetry, opportunistic behavior, and uncertainty. Market-oriented behaviors facilitate acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and responsiveness to this intelligence about foreign markets what is especially important when the firm has no international experience [9,26,[28][29][30]. In this sense, international market orientation can be represented as an antecedent of the internationalization process of INVs because it fosters and facilitates the learning process in foreign markets and develops stronger management capabilities that allow the acquisition of foreign market knowledge, as well as designing a proper market response [30], which will determine their choice of entry modes in foreign markets and on the geographical diversification of their markets.…”

Dynamic Bundle of Capabilities and Firm’s International Performance: A Configurational Analysis

“…Previous scholars highlight that the international market knowledge and how efficient such knowledge is obtained critically influence entrepreneurial firms' international performance (Autio, Sapienza, & Almeida, 2000;Knight & Cavusgil, 2004). In IE literature, dynamic marketing capabilities benefit venture performance by operating business with higher efficiency (Blesa, Ripollés, & Monferrer, 2010), addressing rapidly changing markets and facilitate entering international market early (Zhou et al, 2012), and identifying and selecting the appropriate intended value propositions for target customers (Martin & Javalgi, 2016). (Slater & Narver, 2000), which contribute to firms' market expansion and revenue growth.…”