توانایی بازاریابی استراتژیک: تجهیز منابع تکنولوژیکی برای مزیت جدید محصول  Strategic marketing capability: Mobilizing technological resources for new product advantage

1. Introduction Firms’ marketing capacity is considered to play a critical supporting role for a new product success as advertising and promotion are of no doubt affect awareness and initial trial of the new product, increasing the possibility of early survival of the new product (Vorhies et al., 2009). Nevertheless, this view overlooks a more comprehensive aspect of marketing capability that contributes to customer value creation in the entire new product-development process. A strong marketing capability of a firm not only provides communication and promotion of a new product in the commercialization, but also can play a leading role in developing a competitive new product. The main research question of the current study is: how do marketing capabilities contribute to creating competitive advantages of new product, which lead to eventual market success? Drawing on the seminal work by Day (1994) on strategic capabilities, this study proposes a framework in which strategic marketing capability plays a leading role in developing competitive advantages of a new product, that is, differentiation or cost advantage for new product success. Strategic marketing capability (SMC) for new products is accumulated marketing skills and knowledge that enable the firm to coordinate strategic activities for new products. Like other organizational capabilities, SMC is a firm-specific resource that is superior, rare, nontransferable, and idiosyncratic and its importance to strategic planning has been distinctive as it relates to acquiring and sustaining competitive advantages (e.g. Day, 1994; Greenley, Hooley, & Rudd, 2005; Krasnikov & Jayachandran, 2008). With a new conceptual framework, the current study asserts that SMC alone may not be able to develop a competitive new product, instead it takes a leading role in creating a competitive new product by mobilizing appropriate technological resources. In particular, this study proposes that two types of technological resources – dynamic and embedded technological resources – mediate firm’s marketing capability into the competitive advantages of new product. Furthermore, the current study demonstrates that the relative importance of utilizing different types of technological resources depends on the level of firms’ perceived environmental uncertainties (i.e., technological and market uncertainties). Using a large survey data from the manufacturing and service industry firms in Korea, this article empirically tests the influence of a firm’s SMC on the two different technological resource mobilization modes en route to product advantages and product–market performance. The empirical results show SMC indeed plays a significant leading role in creating both differentiation and cost advantages of new product only through the two types of technological resources. The proposed mediation links are even stronger when market and technological uncertainties are high, implying a greater role of SMC in those uncertain new product environments.