How Innovative Marketing Strategies Translate into Firm Performance: The Key Role of Firms' Strategy Implementation Capabilities

The research presented investigates strategy implementation (SI) as a mechanism that links innovative strategies and their performance outcomes. To this end, organizational learning (OL) theory is used to examine SI as a possible mediator of strategies’ performance effects and, in particular, to evaluate the role of firms’ SI capabilities for strategies’ performance outcomes. The paper proposes a conceptual model of innovative marketing strategies’ performance outcomes, with a firm’s SI capability as a key mediator and moderator of the strategies’ performance effects. The model is tested using data from 268 senior implementation managers. The results identify the mechanism that links marketing strategies to firm performance and show that a firm’s SI capability is central to understanding the implementation and performance outcomes of marketing strategies.