Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
Digitalization, or the integration of digital media into a firm's practices, involves digitizing work processes and integrating phone, Internet, mobile technologies to transform the communication interface with customers, suppliers and channel partners (Coreynen et al., 2017; Yoo et al., 2012). According to the World Development Report on Digital Dividends (World Bank, 2016) organizations are lagging behind consumers in digital adoption, despite recognizing digitalization as a major trend. Deterrents to digitalization include the lack of digital maturity and capabilities (Day, 2011; Kane et al., 2015), unclear performance benefits to digitalization (Leeflang et al., 2014), and the need for transformations in organizational functioning and international business (IB) processes to support digitalization (Overby and Min, 2001; Sinkovics et al., 2013; Yoo et al., 2012). These challenges call for further research on digital marketing capabilities (DMCs) and performance.
In this paper, DMCs refer to relational competencies that are required to leverage the benefits of digitalization. As business opportunities in a digitally enabled world rely on real-time and seamless communication between actors (Kane et al., 2015), a key focus for DMCs is to enhance linkages with customers, suppliers and channel partners. Previous IB studies have explored the Internet, information systems (ISs) and digital technology in a piecemeal fashion. They focus either on customers (e.g. Alarcón-del-Amo et al., 2018; Mathews et al., 2016) or suppliers and channel partners (e.g. Gregory et al., 2019; Rai et al., 2006). This may be reflective of firms’ tendency to adopt a conservative stance or a piecemeal approach toward digitalization (Davila et al., 2003). Investing in a piecemeal fashion may be the reason why companies face lower-than-expected returns on digitalization efforts (Leeflang et al., 2014). This paper takes the opportunity to gather further empirical evidence to address the question of whether a more holistic approach to DMCs – one that brings together different actors – improves international business performance.
Moreover, there is increasing interest by academics to explore the innovativeness in both entrepreneurship and digitalization. For example, Jelonek (2015) and Nambisan (2017) propose “digital entrepreneurship” and “e-entrepreneurship” concepts to highlight the role that entrepreneurship plays in the digital age. Reuber et al. (2018) identify potential resources for international entrepreneurship in...