The “Marketing Flexibility–Marketing Planning” Paradox and New Product’s Performance: An Abstract

It is no secret that in today’s dynamic business environment, new product development (NPD) is crucial for the firms’ performance as everywhere organizations are struggling to keep up with the accelerating pace of change. To deal with market changes and succeed in NPD, firms are expected to build on two distinct marketing capabilities, marketing flexibility and marketing planning capabilities. Based on the resource-based view and strategic flexibility literatures, the authors investigate the flexibility–planning paradox in achieving superior organizational responsiveness and successful NPD. Moreover, the authors’ research to what extent “strategic investment for future innovation” is antecedent to marketing flexibility and marketing planning capabilities. For marketing flexibility capability, the authors developed a new five-item scale based on Shimizu and Hitt (2004) theoretical paper which suggests specific decision-making activities for developing flexibility capability. Data from managers of Israeli exporters (multi-industry) are analyzed using structural equation modeling. While one can interpret the findings erroneously and conclude that marketing flexibility capability is the preferred route, a mediation analysis reveals a different perspective on the relative power of these two capabilities.