Amit Saini

Market-focused strategic flexibility: Conceptual advances and an integrative model

This article develops the concept of market-focused strategic flexibility. It begins with a review of the historical perspectives of strategic flexibility. To support the conceptualization, the authors offer a theoretical schema that considers market-focused strategic flexibility as conceptually rooted in capabilities theory, resource-based views of the firm, and options. With the conceptualization in place, the authors propose an integrative model that explicates the mediating role of market-focused strategic flexibility in marketing strategy frameworks. Propositions are developed relating market-driven and driving orientations to market-focused strategic flexibility with consideration for how turbulent macro environments modify the relationship. In addition, the authors offer propositions regarding outcomes of market-focused strategic flexibility under conditions of macro environmental turbulence.

Organizational Capabilities in E-Commerce: An Empirical Investigation of E-Brokerage Service Providers

E-commerce not only has tremendous potential for growth but also poses unique challenges for both incumbents and new entrants. By examining drivers of firm performance in e-commerce from a capabilities perspective, the authors conceptualize three firm capabilities that are critical for superior firm performance in e-commerce: information technology capability, strategic flexibility, and trust-building capability. The extent and nature of market orientation is conceptualized as a platform for leveraging e-commerce capabilities. The authors test the effects of e-commerce capabilities on performance (e.g., relative profits, sales, return on investment) using data from 122 e-brokerage service providers. The results indicate that information technology capability and strategic flexibility affect performance given the right market orientation.

Marketing Channels in Foreign Markets: Control Mechanisms and the Moderating Role of Multinational Corporation Headquarters–Subsidiary Relationship

To manage marketing channels, subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) must balance mandates from headquarters (HQ) with the local realities of the foreign markets. The performance implications of subsidiary–distributor relationship efforts thus are contingent on the HQ–subsidiary relationship. Drawing on marketing channels, economics, and organization theory literature streams, the authors (1) describe the complex performance properties of output and process control mechanisms that MNC subsidiaries deploy to manage foreign distributors and (2) conceptualize the HQ–subsidiary nexus along three attributes that should moderate the performance effects of control mechanisms: task coordination, or HQs central coordination of processes across subsidiaries; subsidiary decision involvement, or two-way communications and consensual decision making between HQ and the subsidiary; and relational disharmony, or the extent of the HQ–subsidiary conflict. The authors test the hypotheses using field data from German and Japanese MNCs in the United States and Bayesian models that account for measurement error, endogeneity in the control mechanisms, heterogeneity in country of origin, and nonlinear and interactive terms for the latent constructs. The results demonstrate the importance of the HQ–subsidiary relationship for managing the subsidiary–distributor relationship.

Marketing Channel Management by Multinational Corporations in Foreign Markets

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are adopting increasingly diverse and complex marketing channels to sell their products worldwide. They strive to manage channels that confront diverse demands from headquarters, foreign subsidiaries, and local partners as well as complex market environments. Because extant research on MNCs’ marketing channels is sparse, the authors propose an organizing framework to spur and guide research on MNC channel management. As a meta-theory that integrates economic and social elements of MNC channel management, the political economy perspective is used to propose two testable frameworks pertaining to determinants of (1) MNC marketing channel structures and processes and (2) MNC marketing channel outcomes. Building on these frameworks, the authors advance a research agenda to test substantive relationships, elaborate new constructs, and illustrate new contexts pertaining to MNC marketing channels. A set of propositions illustrates the applicability of these conceptual frameworks.