Marketing Capability in Strategy Research: Definitions, Operationalizations and a Research Agenda

Following the call for a demand-side perspective of strategic management (e.g., Priem et al., 2012), a firm’s marketing capability, i.e. its ability to interact with down-stream stakeholders, becomes a pivotal element in explaining a firm’s competitiveness. While marketing capability is recognized in the strategic management literature as an important driver of firm performance, our review of 86 articles reveals a lack of a generally accepted definition of marketing capability, a lack of a common conceptualization as well as differences in the measurement of marketing capability. In order to build a common ground for advancing marketing capability research and thus supporting the demand-side perspective in strategic management, we develop an integrative framework to explain the differences and propose a research agenda for developing the field.