Mastering the complementarity between marketing mix and customer-focused capabilities to enhance new product performance

Purpose – This study aims to address the extent that the deployment of and complementarity between marketing mix and customer-focused (brand management, and customer relationship management) capabilities provide firms the capacity to transform their market knowledge into effective responsive actions that help to achieve new product success. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was used as the primary means of data collection. Data from 160 large business-to-business firms across a variety of industries in Iran were analyzed using partial least squares regression to test the hypothesized paths. Findings – The results show that market-oriented firms are better at deploying marketing mix, brand management and customer relationship management capabilities, and these capabilities help to drive new product performance, and the complementarity between these marketing capabilities enhances the firm’s capacity to achieve new product success more than deploying each capability in isolation. Originality/value – In contrast to many existing studies, this study is the first to examine the role of marketing mix, brand management and customer relationship management capabilities and their complementarity as intervening mechanisms in the relationship between market orientation (MO) and new product performance. Further, this study extends the marketing literature by investigating the role of different forms of marketing capabilities in a complementary fashion in the context of a Middle Eastern economy.