Assessing relationships among strategic types, distinctive marketing competencies, and organizational performance

The multi-item scale developed by Conant, Mokwa, and Varadarajan (1990) for assessing Miles and Snow's (1978) strategic typology is applied in a multi -industry, cross-sectional study of 93 Finnish enterprises. To replicate an d extend the findings of previous reports, three principal hypotheses are e xamined: (I) prospector, analyzer, and defender strategic types more,often exhibit higher levels of distinctive marketing competencies than reactors, (2) distinctive marketing competencies due associated positively and strong ly with organizational performance; (3) a weak association exists among the strategic types and organizational performance. The results support al thr ee hypotheses. The importance of distinctive marketing competencies in serv ing ns intervening variables between strategic types and organizational per formance is illustrated. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved .