Assessing relationships among strategic types, distinctive marketing competencies, and organizational performance

Abstract The multi-item scale developed by Conant, Mokwa, and Varadarajan (1990) for assessing Miles and Snow’s (1978) strategic typology is applied in a multi-industry, cross-sectional study of 93 Finnish enterprises. To replicate and extend the findings of previous reports, three principal hypotheses are examined: (1) prospector, analyzer, and defender strategic types more often exhibit higher levels of distinctive marketing competencies than reactors; (2) distinctive marketing competencies are associated positively and strongly with organizational performance; (3) a weak association exists among the strategic types and organizational performance. The results support al three hypotheses. The importance of distinctive marketing competencies in serving as intervening variables between strategic types and organizational performance is illustrated.

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