The Role of Firm Resources in Returns to Market Deployment

Abstract

Researchers in marketing tend to adopt one of two approaches to examining competitive advantage: a focus on a firm's resources or a focus on a firm's strategic or tactical actions. The authors suggest that neither of these approaches by itself fully captures the drivers of competitive advantage. Focusing on marketing-specific actions referred to as market deployment, the authors investigate the roles of both resources and action by examining how the nature and level of a firm's resources influence the success of the firm's marketing actions. The results, based on a secondary data approach and a series of sequentially estimated hierarchical regression models, indicate that resource possession influences returns to market deployment. Specifically, higher levels of intangible marketing resources and intangible technological resources increase the effectiveness of market deployment related to distribution and coupon activity, whereas higher levels of financial resources decrease the effectiveness of these types of market deployment.