Abstracts Category : Other

TWO ESSAYS ON MARKETING CAPABILITIES

by Hamed Mehrabi

A critical decision for any firm involves allocating investment to different types of marketing activities. One argument is that firms should invest resources in both explorative and exploitative activities to develop ambidexterity. Considering the extensive theoretical and practical implications of ambidexterity, several research gaps exist in this area provide opportunities for both theoretical and practical contributions. In this dissertation, I identify and explore three important research opportunities.First, based on one argument regarding ambidexterity, firms should pursue exploration and exploitation in a balanced manner. This is even though there is little evidence confirming that being out of balance actually hurts performance. Recent research also suggests that the sum of exploration and exploitation might be more important than balance for performance advantage although evidence is inconclusive. The second research opportunity pertains specifically to the concept of imbalance. That is, if an imbalance in exploration relative to exploitation (or vice versa) has adverse effects, we have little knowledge as to how it can be mitigated. In other words, we know little about the organizational and environmental factors that might increase or reduce any imbalance between exploration and exploitation. Third, recent findings suggest that some firms could be less ambidextrous than others because they lack investment in exploration. To the best of my knowledge however, there is little understanding of the factors that lead firms to have more or less exploration than others.My dissertation addresses the above research opportunities by studying ambidexterity in the context of two important marketing capabilities: customer management (CM) and new product development (NPD).In Essay 1, I address the first research opportunity by studying how performance is affected by: 1) the sum of exploration and exploitation (annotated as SumE+E in this dissertation) for the firms CM capability; 2) the SumE+E for NPD capability; and 3) the imbalance between exploration and exploitation within each capability. My findings from a cross-industry sample of U.S. manufacturers show that a higher SumE+E for CM and also NPD improves customer relationship performance and new product performance, respectively. I also show that although an imbalance within CM capability has no impact on customer relationship performance, new product performance suffers if NPD is unbalanced towards exploration. The strong and consistent performance effects of the SumE+E for both capabilities- relative to effects of imbalance within them- provide support for the argument that SumE+E is more important for performance advantage.I also address the second research opportunity in Essay 1. I do so by arguing that a firms entrepreneurial orientation (EO) combined with environmental dynamism affects imbalance within CM and NPD capabilities. My findings show that although the SumE+E for both CM and NPD capabilities is positively impacted by a higher EO, the