بررسی نقش فناوری اطلاعات در پرورش قابلیت های پویای بازاریابی شرکت ها

Most prior research has investigated an organization's dynamic capabilities in general and overlooked their effect on critical business functions. Our study considered the role of IT in improving firm's dynamic marketing capabilities. We developed a model consisting of market orientation, IT infrastructure capabilities, and the use of IT in customer relationship management (CRM). With data collected from 135 manufacturing and service firms in Taiwan, our results supported most of our hypotheses. Our results showed important direct effects of a firm's market orientation, use of IT to support CRM, and the functionality of IT infrastructure capabilities on its dynamic marketing capabilities.

Business researchers have coined the term dynamic capabilities (DC) to capture the firm's ability to adapt to unpredictable, changing environments. They allow the firm to reconfigure its resources and respond to market changes effectively while responding to changing environments [10]. Considerable previous research has examined the key mechanisms or processes that contribute to a firm's DC [23]. The concept of DC is broad and involves different business aspects and processes [18]. Although IT literature provides some interesting strategic insights, few studies have analyzed DC specific to a business area. Firms vary in their relative strengths in business operations and may choose to focus on particular functional areas; it is therefore important to investigate DC at a finer-grained level, especially with respect to fundamental business aspects in which firms must cultivate DC [6]. Marketing is a critical area in which firms must develop DC. Thus marketing constitutes a crucial dimension in which analysts should assess a firm's capabilities in order to satisfy customers’ needs, wants, and preferences [13]. In the evolving marketplace, dynamic marketing capabilities (DMC) allow firms to identify important market signals, evaluate new processes or services, and design and execute effective responses to market change. They refer to a set of processes that a firm needs to be able to use while responding to market change. They directly influence a firm's product development, innovative service design, and long-term customer relationships, which jointly define its competitiveness [3]. We examined a firms’ DMC by focusing on the important marketing processes and activities, particularly those related to CRM. DMC, IT has been recognized as a major enabler of DMC by creating an arena in which competitive advantage can be exploited through process improvement, service excellence, and customer intimacy [16]. IT infrastructure capabilities and IT support of specific business aspects are crucial and deserve attention. We developed a parsimonious model that relates a firm's DMC with its market orientation, IT infrastructure capabilities, and IT support for CRM. We empirically tested this model and its associated hypotheses with data collected from a survey of major Taiwanese manufacturing and service firms.

DC offer a logical anchor for competitive advantage analysis. We studied DMC in firms by focusing on the central role of IT in supporting CRM and found empirical support for most of our hypotheses. Overall, our model offered appropriate utilities for explaining the DMC of the firm and the effects of IT in creating such capabilities. However, our study also had several limitations. First, our results derive from a single study involving a sample of voluntarily participating firms. We did not find evidence suggesting that these firms had specific characteristics correlated with the variables we examined. To respond to the questions in our survey, the informants did not need specialized knowledge or experience with a particular system. Overall, the respondents thus had no explicit, direct motives to self-select into our study. However, we cannot completely rule out such bias. Therefore, our findings should be generalized only cautiously. Second, measuring IT infrastructure capabilities and DMC is challenging. The measures we use were reasonable, but further conceptual development and empirical examination are needed. Third, the proposed model can explain a significant portion of the variance in DMC and IT support for CRM; but there may be other exogenous variables.