Enhancing marketing innovation through marketing knowledge transfer: An investigation of strategic alliances.

摘要

This dissertation investigates the outcome of marketing knowledge that firms acquired from their alliance partners, the mechanisms that firms use to transfer the knowledge, and factors that may affect the knowledge transfer process. The dissertation consists of two distinct parts. Part 1 examines these issues from the shareholder perspective and is an event study using secondary data. Part 2 explores the same issues in more detail from the management viewpoint and is based upon the analysis of primary survey data.;The results from Part 1 suggest that announcements of marketing knowledge acquisition through alliance formations enhance shareholder value as reflected in positive abnormal returns. This incremental shareholder value is, however, affected by the type of knowledge being acquired, industry relatedness between alliance and parent firm, and national differences between partners. Respectively, the results point to the effects of knowledge tacitness, absorptive capacity and cultural differences. All of these results are reexamined in Part 2.;The results from Part 2 suggest that incremental marketing knowledge also enhances marketing innovation of the parent firms. The process of gaining marketing knowledge, however, involves external knowledge transfer from alliance partners and internal knowledge transfer back to the parent. Partner-to-partner knowledge transfer requires coordination and cooperation between alliance partners as key learning mechanisms, whereas alliance-to-parent knowledge transfer requires rotation of marketing personnel. Results from Part 2 also suggest that trust between partners and a firm's absorptive capacity strengthen the relationships from coordination and cooperation to partner-to-partner knowledge transfer. However, absorptive capacity weakens the relationship between marketing knowledge and marketing innovation. Moderating effects of cultural differences and tacitness are not found in Part 2. These results and plausible explanations are discussed and future research directions are provided.