Which marketing competency explains export performance

This paper provides useful insights to exporters on market orientation, focal dimensions of marketing effectiveness and marketing capabilities that would help them enhance their export performance. Using the resource-based view, this paper contributes to the explanation for export performance by assessing the role of export market orientation behaviour on marketing capabilities and marketing effectiveness. They also thank the blind reviewers whose suggestions and comments have been extremely helpful in improving the quality of our manuscripts.

Kayabasi, A. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Report bugs here. Please share your general feedback. You can join in the discussion by joining the community or logging in here. You can also find out more about Emerald Engage. Visit emeraldpublishing. Answers to the most commonly asked questions here.

To read the full version of this content please select one of the options below:. Other access options You may be able to access this content by logging in via your Emerald profile. Rent this content from DeepDyve. Rent from DeepDyve. If you think you should have access to this content, click to contact our support team.

Table 1 summarizes the findings of marketing competency and performance. Of the seven studies listed, only one study conducted in Asean countries Kim-Soon, He conducted a study in Malaysia found that out of the five marketing competency, only product differentiation; market segmentation and targeting are found to contribute significantly to overall export venture performance while the rests are not significant.

This study hopes to fill the gap by providing evidence from Indonesia. Hypothesis The literature seems to suggest that the development and implementation of effective marketing competency is particularly important in the manufacturing industry because the business environment within this sector is constantly changing.

Therefore, in this study, firms with high export marketing competency are hypothesized to have a superior export performance. Ha: Exporting firms with greater export marketing competency in terms of 1 export product competency, 2 export pricing competency, 3 export promotion competency, and 4 export distribution competency, will posses superior export performance.

Zou et al China There are four marketing Export financial Only pricing capability and capability: Pricing performance Sales communication capability have capability, distribution volume positively significant effects on export capability, communication financial performance. Woodside Finland There five variables of Organizational Distinctive marketing competencies are et al.

Profitability those of analyzer, defender, and reactor organizations, all three archetypes perform equally well in term of profitability and outperform reactors. The data collection spanned the period from April to October A total of 1. The firms were randomly selected from the listing of Indonesian Manufacturing Industry Directory, The unit of analysis is conducted at the organizational level.

A total of complete questionnaires were returned giving an overall response rate of Given the known difficulties of receiving a good response rate from Indonesian companies, the response rate of this study is similar to previous studies in Indonesian manufacturing firms Herianto, ; Herri, ; Suhairi, Twenty items measuring export marketing competency are derived from reviews of previews marketing competency measurement and other export marketing literature Conant et al.

This study proposed three dimensions to measure export performance. First, financial export performance that deals with export profitability and export sales growth adopted from Osman, Second, strategic export performance relates to what extent responding firms achieve their strategic goals in terms of positioning, knowledge acquisit ion, responded to competitive pressure in domestic market. Last, export satisfaction deals with the extant of satisfaction derived from export activities in terms of success and expectation the last two dimension adapted from Zou, Taylor and Osland, The Profile of responding firms The major export market of the participating firms is advanced developed countries such as USA Most of them are the textile and apparel sector In terms of export experience, slightly less than half of them are relatively new in exporting with six years export experience or less Majority of the participating companies are made up of large firms With regard to export entry, majority of the respondent firms are exporting directly to distributor in importing country Approximately Data Analysis There are at least two important methods to assess the goodness of measure namely: factor and reliability analyses Sekaran, The purpose of factor analysis is to achieve data reduction or to retain the nature and character of the original items, but reduce the number of items Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson and Tatham, In conducting factor analysis, this study followed the six assumptions that recommended by Hair et al.

They are 1 KMO measure of sampling adequacy greater than. To measure the inter nal consistency of the items, a reliability analysis was conducted on all factors. Reliability is an indication of the stability and consistency with which the instrument measures the concept and helps to assess the goodness of a measure Sekaran, A factor analysis on 20 items of export marketing competency construct resulted in four factors explaining The all assumptions in factor analysis mentioned above were met.

The factors and their corresponding items were labeled accordingly as presented in Table 3. The patterns of mean values shows that export pricing competency achieved the highest mean score 3. However, one item was dropped since it achieved low communalities. This factor was labeled as overall export performance. As shown in Table 3, the mean value score of overall export performance was 3. Table 3.

Table 4 displayed the results of regression of export marketing competency on overall export performance. In step 1, none of the control variables significantly influenced overall export performance and the coefficient of determination R2 was found 0.

However, the results revealed that only two dimensions of export marketing competency significantly affected the overall export performance. These results supported Ha 1 and 2 , while Ha 3 and Ha 4 were not supported. However, it was found that export promotion competency and export distribution competency are not as crucial as compared to export product competency and export ricing competency since they are not statistically significant related to overall export performance.

Overall, it can be concluded that the findings of this study are in line with Guan and Ma , Kim-Soon , Prasad et al. The insignificant finding on the relationship between export promotion competency and overall export performance can be perhaps resulted from the fact that the samples comprise a variety of business-to-business markets. Clearly, differences across business-to-business markets will have divergent influences on the relationship between export promotion and export performance.

For instance, the importance of brand building, upon which promotion is a tenet for export success, differs substantially across business-to-business markets and therefore may confound the results. The rationale for the result could be similar to that of Cavusgil and Zou , who found insignificant relationship between promotion adaptation and export performance.

They argue that simplistic adaptation without careful examination of the export market could account for insignificant findings. However, the finding of this study lends support other findings in developing countries Herianto, ; Kim-Soon, that distribution does not significantly influence performance. The logic behind the insignificant effect of export promotion competency and export distribution competency on export performance is that the tasks of distributing and promoting the products in Indonesian manufacturing exporting firms are often the domain of their importers.

This study concurs with the Wortzel and Wortzel model that the buyers in the context of developing country export often control promotion and distribution activities. Their studies found significant relationship between marketing competencies promotion and distribution channel and export performance in the developed countries.

Judging from this finding, it appears that Indonesian exporters are at a disadvantage. They may be competent in pricing and product, but they seem to be least competent on delivery. They must strive to build their competency in non-price and product-related factors for long-term survival. Conclusion This study investigates the impact of export marketing competency on export performance in Indonesian manufacturing firms.

The results suggest that export marketing competency in terms export product competency and export pricing competency significantly affect overall export performance. Export marketing competency in terms of export promotion competency and export distribution competency do not seem to have a significant impact on overall export performance.

If Indonesian manufacturing firms are to be successful in exporting, their managers need to devote their efforts to develop higher levels of export marketing competency compared to their competitors. This greater commitment and efforts may provide Indonesian manufacturing firms with an additional opportunity to enhance their sustainable competitive advantages as well as to achieve better performance.

Reference 1. Aaby, E. Management influence on export performance: A review of the empirical literature International Marketing Review, 6 4 , Cavusgil, S. Marketing strategy performance relationship: an investigation of empirical link in export ventures. Journal of Marketing. Conant, J. Strategic types, distinctive marketing competencies and organizational performance: a multiple measures-based study.

Strategic Management Journal, 11 5 , Day, G. The capabilities of market-driven organizations. Journal of Marketing, 58 October , Goldsmith, R. Characteristics of heavy users of fashion closing. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 8 4 , Guan, J. Innovative capability and export performance of Chinese firms. Technovation, 23, Hair, J. Multivariate Data Analysis.

Prentice Hall International, Inc. Herianto, P. Hubungan antara keusahawanan syarikat dengan perstasi syarikat: Peranan aktiviti pemasaran dan persekitaran perniagaan sebagai pembolehubah penyederhana. Unpublished Ph. Universiti Sains Malaysia. Ciri-ciri pengurus atasan, strategi, dan prestasi syarikat.

Manufacturing industry directory.