Call for Papers:
Marketing Resources, Performance, and Competitive advantage

A Journal of Business Research Special Issue
Paper submission deadline: October 1, 2015

Guest editors: Nebojsa Davcik (ISCTE Business School, Lisbon, Portugal) and Piyush Sharma (Curtin Business School, Perth, Australia)

Overview: Marketing resources are recognized as crucial drivers of a firm’s business strategy as they help the firms gain a competitive advantage over competition (direct or latent) and lead to better performance. Past research in this area uses diverse theoretical perspectives, including market-based assets and their effects on stakeholder value (Srivastava, Shervani and Fahey 1998), impact of brand equity and innovation on long-term marketing effectiveness (Slotegraaf and Pauwels 2008), resource-based theory (Srivastava, Fahey and Christensen 2001; Kozlenkova et al. 2014), and resource advantage theory of competition (Hunt & Morgan 2005), among others. However, there is still little systematic research on the theoretical foundations and empirical implications of marketing resources and competitive advantage.

Researchers using resource-based theory typically recognize the role of marketing resources such as brands and relationships (customer and distributional) in obtaining competitive advantage (e.g., Barney 1991, 2014; Combs and Ketchen 1999, Day 2014). However, the literature has generally ignored the fundamental processes by which resources are transformed into value to customer (cf. Srivastava et al. 2001). Therefore, any contemporary application of the Resource-based theory to marketing would require identification of marketing specific resources that are based on resource-based theory premises, namely rare, valuable, and imperfectly imitable (Srivastava et al. 2001; Kozlenkova et al. 2014). In other words, we need more research using resource-based theory as a contemporary framework to integrate a wide array of resources to provide a compelling explanation of a firm’s competitive advantage.

In contrast to resource-based theory, resource advantage theory of competition posits that a firm can achieve sustainable competitive advantage only if its internal resources are managed and manipulated in such a way that their consumption in a dynamic industry competition provides superior financial performance for a firm (Hunt 1997, 2011). The theory adopts a resource-based view of the firm by focusing on marketing resources in terms of their ability to obtain competitive advantage. Resource advantage theory considers resources as the tangible and intangible assets of a firm that can be used to produce a market offer that has a value for a specific segment of the market (Hunt & Morgan 2005). However, there is a need for further empirical research on the efficiency of stakeholder value and inward-looking strategy.

The literature in Strategic management has explored marketing competencies of organizations for a long time, starting with the pioneering work by Miles & Snow (1978) that was extended by Conant et al. (1990) and Woodside et al. (1999), among others. Conant et al. (1990) provide an understanding of strategic forces in marketing competencies and organizational performance; however they treat the 20 distinctive marketing competencies as separate factors, a weakness that Woodside et al. (1999) address. More recently, Barrales-Molina et al. (forthcoming) introduce an integrated framework for dynamic marketing capabilities. However, this stream of research is still limited with the lack of theoretical relationship to dynamic marketing capabilities and objective measures of market performance.

In terms of methodologies, most studies in this area continue to use symmetric data analysis (e.g., SEM, MRA) and as a result ignore the implicit complexity in the relationships among the various competencies and performance outcomes. In this context, Woodside (2013, 2014) recommends the use of algorithms and contrarian case analysis in order to model multiple realities that allow consideration of strategic types and distinct marketing competencies as recipes. In fact, several researchers have already successfully used this approach to provide fresh insights into well-researched phenomena such as the impact of innovative service bundles on competitive advantage (Ordanini et al. 2014) and customer experience-and-outcome assessments of professional services (Wu et al. 2014).

Despite a burgeoning literature in marketing, management and economics, on resources and their effects on performance and competitive advantage, many unchartered research avenues, open questions and issues occur that require further theoretical and empirical elaboration. The planned JBR special issue, “Marketing resources, performance and competitive advantage,” will examine how diverse marketing resources may enhance organizations’ competitive advantage and performance, using multiple theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches.

Topics: In view of the above, the proposed special issue aims to include the following (but not limited to) topics and questions of interest:

• Ambiguities and contradictions of marketing resources and performance in marketing research
• Role of innovation in facilitating firm resources
• Role of sustainable competitive advantage as a strategic goal for a firm
• Relationship between stakeholders, competition for resources and competitive advantage
• How resource-based theories can be a micro-foundation for marketing science?
• How internal competition for resources may induce strong brands and obtain the competitive advantage for a firm?
• How outside-in in contrast to inside-out approach may improve marketing strategy?
• What are the intra-firm capabilities that obtain the competitive advantage for a firm?
• How the intra-firm capabilities may provide superior firm performance?
• How the intra-firm competition for resources may affect the brand portfolio strategy?
• How internal manipulation with resources may provide value for brand and / or firm stakeholders?
• How various research approaches and theories on resource decision making can be employed and / or managed to gain new insights on performance paradigm?
• How resource decision making affect different market players (retailers, Small and medium enterprises and Multinational enterprises) in their quest of obtaining the stakeholder value?
• How different market players (retailers, Small and medium enterprises and Multinational enterprises) manipulate and integrate their heterogeneous resources in order to gain the superior firm performance?
• What is the theoretical delineation and potential extension among a brand, brand portfolio and firm in obtaining the competitive advantage?

Guest Editors’ Policy

We seek profound and rigorous theoretical contributions that substantially advance and challenge existing theories used in business research on resources, performance and competitive advantage (e.g., Resource-Based View, Resource-Advantage Theory, and Industrial economics). We seek papers that will offer a new view and contribute to the debate among marketing, industrial economists and management scholars. We have no a priori preferences regarding the theoretical stance or methodological approach. We welcome papers using traditional methodologies such as econometric modeling, time-series analysis, analytical modeling (e.g., game theory applications and agency theory), survey experimentation, qualitative research as well as emerging innovative approaches including the use of algorithms, contrarian case analysis, and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

All manuscripts should apply the general author guidelines for the Journal of Business Research (www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-business-research/0148-2963/guide-for-authors#20100). Manuscripts should not have been previously published or be under consideration by other journals.

Please submit your paper electronically as an MSWORD file attached to: jbrsi2015@gmail.com. The guest editors will start processing early submissions from July 1, 2015

References

Barney, J. B. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage, Journal of Management, 17, pp. 99-120

Barney, J. B. (2014). How marketing scholars might help address issues in resource-based theory, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(1), 24-26

Barrales-Molina, V., Martinez-Lopez, F.J. and Gazquez-Abad, J.C. (forthcoming). Dynamic Marketing Capabilities: Toward an Integrative Framework, International Journal of Management Reviews. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijmr.12026/full)

Combs, J.G., and Ketchen, D.J. (1999). Explaining interfirm cooperation and performance: toward a reconciliation of predictions from the resource-based view and organizational economics. Strategic Management Journal, 20 (9), 867-888.

Conant, J., Mokwa M. P. and Varadarajan P. R. (1990). Strategic types, distinctive marketing competencies and organizational performance: A multiple measures-based study, Strategic Management Journal, 11, 365-338.

Day, G.S. (2014). An outside-in approach to resource-based theories, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(1), 27-28.

Hunt, S.D. (1997). Resource-Advantage Theory: An Evolutionary Theory of Competitive Firm Behavior? Journal of Economic Issues, 1 (March), 59-77.

Hunt, S.D. (2011). Developing successful theories in marketing: insights from resource-advantage theory, Academy of Marketing Science Review, 1, 72-84.

Hunt, S.D. and Morgan, R.M. (2005), The resource-advantage theory of competition: a review, in

Kozlenkova, I.V., Samaha, S.A., and Palmatier, R.W. (2014). Resource-based theory in marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(1), 1-21.

Miles, R. E. and Snow, C.C. (1978). Organizational Strategy Structure, and Process, McGraw-Hill, New York.

Ordanini, A., Parasuraman A. and Rubera, G. (2014). When the Recipe Is More Important Than the Ingredients: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of Service Innovation Configurations, Journal of Service Research, 17(2), 134-149

Slotegraaf, R. & Pauwels, K. (2008). The Impact of Brand Equity and Innovation on the Long-Term Effectiveness of Promotions. Journal of Marketing Research, XLV (June), 293-306.

Srivastava, R.K., Fahey, L., and Christensen, H. K. (2001). The resource-based view and marketing: The role of market-based assets in gaining competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 27 (6), pp. 777-802.

Srivastava, R.K., Shervani, T.A. and Fahey, L. (1998). Market-based Assets and Shareholder Value: A Framework for Analysis, Journal of Marketing, 62 (January), 2-18.

Woodside, A.G. (2013). Moving beyond multiple regression analysis to algorithms: Calling for a paradigm shift from symmetric to asymmetric thinking in data analysis, and crafting theory, Journal of Business Research, 66, 463-472.

Woodside, A.G. (2014). Embrace Complexity Theory, Perform Contrarian Case Analysis, and Model Multiple Realities, Journal of Business Research (Accepted July 2014).

Woodside, A.G., Sullivan, D. and Trappey III, R. (1999). Assessing Relationships among Strategic Types, Distinctive Marketing Competencies, and Organizational Performance, Journal of Business Research, 45, 135–146.

Wu, P.-L., Yeh, S.S, Huan, T.C., & Woodside, A.G. (2014). Applying complexity theory to deepen service dominant logic: Configural analysis of customer experience-and-outcome assessments of professional services for personal transformations, Journal of Business Research, 67, 1647–1670.

 

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