International dynamic marketing capabilities: developments and a research agenda

Purpose – In this paper, the authors aim to introduce international dynamic marketing capabilities (IDMCs) theoretically derived from marketing capabilities (MCs), dynamic marketing capabilities (DMCs) and international marketingcapabilities(IMCs)and providea novelconceptualization ofthe concept by applying a holistic view of the international enterprise. Design/methodology/approach – This is a literature review that maps the current research on MCs, DMCs andIMCsandservesasabasisforthe theoreticalconceptualizationofanovelIDMCsconceptaswellasforthe identification of research gaps and the development of future research directions on this phenomenon. Findings – Existing typologies of MCs, DMCs and IMCs are classified into four categories: strategic, operational, analytical and value creation capabilities. A new typology of IDMCs is proposed, consisting of digital MC and dynamic internationalization capability as strategic capabilities, agile IMC, IM excellence and absorptive capability in IM as operational capabilities, IM resilience capability, IM knowledge management capability, AI-enabled IDMC and Industry 4.0-enabled IDMC as analytical capabilities, and ambidextrous IM innovation capability as value creation capability. Finally, the authors identify research gaps and develop research questions that open future research avenues for the coming years. Originality/value – ThispaperoffersanovelviewofMCs,DMCsandIMCsandarguesthat,incontrasttothe majority of previous research, a comprehensive understanding of these is only possible if all levels are considered simultaneously: the strategic, the operational, the analytical and the value creation level. A new conceptualization and typology of IDMCs follows this logic.


Introduction
This Special Issue of International Marketing Review aims to answer how commercial, nonprofit and government organizations develop, maintain, manage and leverage dynamic international marketing capabilities.We view international dynamic marketing capabilities (IDMCs) as capabilities firms use to understand and fulfil foreign market customers expressed and latent needs better than its rivals (Mitre ˛ga, 2020; Morgan et al., 2018;Narver et al., 2004).International markets are more volatile and complex and so firms operating in them often are less familiar with and have limited access to necessary resources; these businesses require a unique bundle of knowledge, skills and routines that shape company resources labeled as IDMC (Gnizy, 2019).Similarly to other dynamic capabilities (DCs), dependent on the context in which they develop, IDMC may take the form of more or less complex organizational routines and managerial decision-making shaping company resources vis-a-vis changing international markets (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000;Peteraf et al., 2013;Schilke et al., 2018).The special issue aimed to attract researchers from a variety of disciplines, including international marketing, strategy and management research, organizational research, who are willing to combine strong theoretical foundations and world-class empirical evidence using quantitative or qualitative methods.
The core interest of this special issue is on capabilities, which are generally understood as "complex sets of skills and knowledge embedded in the organizational processes by which the available resources of an organization are transformed into valuable outputs" (Day, 1994, p. 37).If we add "international", "marketing" and "dynamic" dimensions to the concept of capabilities, we obtain a domain that spans different areas of research.If marketing capabilities (MCs) are defined as the ability of a company to use resources to perform marketing tasks in such a way that the desired marketing results are achieved (Morgan et al., 2012), then dynamic marketing capabilities (DMCs) focus on strategic changes in marketing assets and point the way to sustained market advantage (Barrales-Molina et al., 2014;Mitre ˛ga, 2020;Schilke et al., 2018).The international marketing literature identifies MCs specific/unique to international marketplaces (Morgan et al., 2018): MNC's product innovation capability, global brand management capability, international customer-support capability, global account management capability, local market competence, overseas market-related exploitative and explorative capabilities, etc.Since it is suggested that international MCs are frequently dynamic in nature (Morgan et al., 2018), this results in a field of research with numerous applications, e.g.DCs related to international marketing innovation, market entry, international diversification, international acquisitions and alliances, etc.
Despite the growing interest in MCs in the international marketing literature, research to date provides equivocal answers regarding the extent to which "the conceptual and empirical approaches to the study of marketing capabilities in the international context differ from those in the domestic market context" (Morgan et al., 2018, p. 61).This special issue called for contributions to fill this important knowledge gap regarding IDMC from a theoretical perspective (e.g.conceptualization and measurement of domestic vs international marketing capabilities, different theories for explaining IDMC), an industrial perspective (e.g.what types of international marketing capabilities should be focused on depending on the industry and company size) and an organizational perspective (e.g.what specific micro-building blocks lie behind IDMC in executive decision making).
This special issue attempts to further develop the theory of marketing capabilities and international marketing by promoting novel theoretical approaches.The vast majority of the marketing literature up to this point applied either the theory of the resource-based view or the theory of DCs to study marketing capabilities, while from the perspective of internal marketing, organizational learning and the knowledge-based view were applied (Morgan et al., 2018).However, it is still unclear which (this or any other) theory supports the conceptualization of marketing capabilities in international markets.For example, we observe a broader application of social psychological theories in marketingwould they also fit in with the development of IDMC?The other example is the recent expansion of the resource-based view focusing on the versatility of resources in the context of company growth (Nason and Wiklund, 2018) or theoretical framework for explaining the dynamic international growth of some companies, e.g. the successfully born global SMEs (Falahat et al., 2018;Weerawardena et al., 2019).In general, as marketing function changes nowadays (Rust, 2020) while some theories seem to dominate studies in marketing (Van der Merwe et al., 2007), other theories build potential for further investigation (Gligor et al., 2019), specifically in the context of international marketing capabilities.
The topic of this special issue is very relevant to business practice."Many companies fail not because they do something wrong or mediocre, but because they have been doing what was right in the past for too long" (Doz and Kosonen, 2010, p. 371).We explore this premise by examining the dynamic nature of international marketing capabilities that promote (constant) change.The special issue is also timely because, due to the global pandemic, companies were facing drastic changes in the way they work and the capabilities they need to succeed.As a result, companies may need to re-evaluate or even redevelop their international marketing capabilities as they face a different level of dynamism than ever before.This situation provides a unique opportunity to observe the process of agile development of international marketing capabilities by organizations in all kinds of industries.Answers to questions such as what kind of dynamic international marketing capabilities were developing during the pandemic, and how these capabilities can be built, maintained and used, could not only help business people to create and maintain their competitive advantage in international markets but also help researchers to understand the development of dynamic international marketing capabilities during dramatic shifts in business environment.
This special issue acknowledges the over-focusing of international marketing literature on strategies of transnational corporations from the richest countries, including their expansion in emerging markets, which gives us only a very limited understanding of how companies from developing countries use their marketing capabilities to expand internationally (Caputo et al., 2016;Dikova et al., 2016;Kowalik et al., 2023;Kumar and Srivastava, 2020).Companies from developing countries operate in a more unstable environment than their competitors from industrialized countries because their domestic markets usually quickly became open to rivalry with transnational corporations and lack institutional support (Cie slik et al., 2012).In return, entry into foreign markets is sometimes seen by these companies as a way to diversify against unstable situations in their country markets (Cie slik et al., 2012).Such a context provides a favorable environment for the development and application of DCs (Teece et al., 1997;Fainshmidt et al., 2016).Although the literature provides evidence that marketing capabilities are useful for resource-constrained companies when entering foreign markets, it is difficult for them to build strong positions in international value chains, as these chains are asymmetric in terms of power structure, i.e. these chains are usually dominated by large multinational companies that protect their position (Siemieniako and Mitre ˛ga, 2018;Baraldi and Ratajczak-Mrozek, 2019;Pfajfar et al., 2019).It would therefore be interesting to explain theoretically the dynamic international expansion of companies from resource-limited developing regions such as Central Asia, Africa, Latin America and post-communist Europe.Furthermore, the conceptualization of dynamic international marketing capabilities will potentially need to change depending on whether the study is in developed vis-a-vis developing economies, in single or multi-unit businesses, in a corporate HQ vs its multinational subsidiaries.Since there has been a debate on the marketing department's loss of influence, with some arguing that its impact is declining (Homburg et al., 2015), while others call for protecting and increasing marketing investment (Hughes et al., 2019), it is a relevant question who should be responsible for the development and utilization of IDMC in a multinational corporation.
Last but not least, this special issue addresses increased volatility in the international markets resulting from tensions between regions and countries in the geopolitical area, which create the shift from unipolar to bipolar world order and creates potential instabilities such as enforced decoupling in international supply chains and increased protectionism in international trade (Handfield et al., 2020;Th€ urer et al., 2020).These tendencies are observable with increased intensity since the world economic crisis of 2008 and they are accelerated by the world pandemics of 2020.Rust (2020) proposes geopolitical changes as one of three main tendencies (together with technological and socioeconomic trends) driving how marketing practice and marketing theory need to be reshaped in the future.Therefore, international marketing research needs to address the question of how current marketing resources and capabilities may be reorganized by companies in international markets to keep up with increased geopolitical risks.

Toward the conceptualization of IDMCs
A core theoretical challenge for IDMCs lies in the conceptualization and operationalization of the phenomenon.While it is clear that its foundation lies in dynamic capabilities view (DCV), it is less clear whether its components are rooted more in marketing capabilities (MC), dynamic marketing capabilities (DMC) or international marketing capabilities (IMC).
DCs were initially defined as "the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments" (Teece et al., 1997, p. 516).The main reason for developing DCs is to enhance the firm's ability to provide more dynamic responses (by purposefully altering, renewing or reconfiguring its resources) to continuously changing environments that lead to superior performance and sustainable competitive advantage (Teece, 2018;Cataltepe et al., 2023).In these terms, IDMCs are DCs.
Since the seminal study of Teece et al. (1997), a large body of research helped to bring the debate on DCs view to a mature stage (Barrales-Molina et al., 2014).However, we cannot say this to be true for DMCs or IMCs, since the research on DMCs and IMCs remains fragmented, and still emerging and gaining impetus particularly due to heightened uncertainty and volatility in (international) marketing environment.Moreover, the extant literature offers equivocal understanding whether DMCs and IMCs stem from/are based on/are part of DCs and/or MCs.
DMCs are most often defined as extensions or a part of a broader set of DCs (Bruni and Verona, 2009;Barrales-Molina et al., 2014).On one hand, DCs refer to the firm's ability to change the way it solves its problems by modifying operational capabilities (Zahra et al., 2006) and enable the firm to alter how to do business by doing the right things (Teece, 2014).On the other hand, DMCs are affected by marketing (Fang and Zou, 2009;Barrales-Molina et al., 2014), depend on market knowledge (Menguc and Auh, 2006) and support firms to absorb it (Bruni and Verona, 2009;Kachouie et al., 2018).The literature also provides evidence for DMCs' interaction effects.For instance, interactions between market orientation and DMCs positively impact firm performance (Morgan et al., 2009b) and interactions between dynamic innovation capabilities and DMCs negatively impacts product expansion (Mitre ˛ga et al., 2021).
At the same time, DMCs are understood as "the adoption and deployment of market knowledge in cross-functional business processes through the organization's possession of higher-order marketing capabilities" (Hoque, 2017, p. 27).In the existing literature, MCs mostly refer to the firm's ability to manage the marketing mix (Kamboj and Rahman, 2015).Specifically, MC refers to a firm's ability to manage product offerings, business partners and distribution systems, as well as advertising and communication activities and pricing (Cavusgil and Zou, 1994).In other words, MCs refer to "a firm's ability to use available resources to perform marketing tasks in ways that achieve desired marketing outcomes" (Morgan et al., 2018, p. 61).Conceptualized this way, we could interpret DMCs as MCs.Similarly, as IMCs "facilitate customer knowledge, price adjustment, product/service development and manipulation of marketing tactics to target foreign customers with differentiated offerings" (Zahoor and Lew, 2023), we could treat IMCs as MCs.Even more, IMCs could theoretically be expected to enable a fit between MCs as a higher-order capability and foreign market opportunities (Zahoor and Lew, 2023).
However, the existing body of literature implies that there is more than just 1 MC (Mitre ˛ga, 2020) and not all hold equal value (Jaworski and Lurie, 2019), which raises questions about whether the significance and value of identical MCs may vary across different contexts (Morgan, 2019;Cortez and Hidalgo, 2022).This takes us to numerous conceptualizations of MCs (as well as DMCs and IMCs), discussed later, and the conclusion that there is no unified view on the phenomenon.For example, traditional ways of conceptualizing MCs in some fields of past research ignored within-firm variation in those capabilities, and tended to overlook the idea that their existence within firms evolves (e.g.Day, 1994).An example is market orientation (MO), which is rarely modeled as a DC, yet which most likely is, since longitudinal studies show that firms transform their MO in response to the competitive environment (e.g.see Kumar et al., 2011).The development of market orientation in firms' foreign markets itself acts as a catalyst for firms' MCs, enabling them to transform to be more dynamic in nature (Jaworski and Lurie, 2019;Cortez and Hidalgo, 2022).That is, the effectiveness of MCs relies on a company's strategic orientation and its capacity to allocate resources for the implementation of research and development and market diffusion efforts (Davcik et al., 2021).Consequently, viewing MCs only in terms of traditional marketing mix elements (e.g. the 4 Ps) is not sufficient.A broader view is required encompassing elements such as marketing planning, market research and selling (Vorhies and Morgan, 2005).
To resolve the complexity of conceptualizing and measuring MCs, DMCs and IMCs, we need to return to the common origin of the concepts under studynamely, capabilities.Extant literature defines a capability as "the ability of an organization to perform a coordinated set of tasks, utilizing organizational resources, for the purpose of achieving a particular end result" (Helfat and Peteraf, 2003, p. 999).Furthermore, capabilities are "complex bundles of skills and collective learning, exercised through organizational processes that ensure superior coordination of functional activities" (Day, 1994, p. 38).Capabilities have their own life cycles that are shaped by external and internal factors, which can lead to the renewal or decline of those capabilities (Helfat and Peteraf, 2003;Gliga and Evers, 2023).This is largely neglected by the extant literature.Teece (2007) suggests that a firm's capabilities can be categorized as either ordinary or dynamic.On one hand, ordinary capabilities represent the firm's capacity to carry out consistent operational functions, while DCs, on the other hand, encompass more advanced activities that come into play when managers strategically coordinate, refresh, adapt and reconfigure ordinary capabilities to gain a competitive edge (Teece, 2014).Following this distinction, ordinary MCs are marketing function-focused processes and routines, while DMCs enable the transformation of ordinary MCs through market-learning, resource configuration and capability enhancement (Morgan and Slotegraaf, 2012).The main differences between the (static) MC, DMC and IMC can be observed in their theoretical foundations, the role of the environment, aspect of strategic focus and key components (Guo et al., 2018).MCs are generally studied through a resource-based view lens, DMCs through a DCV view/theory and IMCs through multiple theories, usually DCs theory complemented with some other theory (e.g.institutional theory).The environment is relatively stable and predictable only when studying MCs, while it can be radically changing and hard to predict in the case of DMCs and IMCs.The strategic focus of firms developing MCs is typically exploiting, in case of DMCs it is usually exploring and reactive, and in case of IMCs it is proactive and adapting.
In addition to the differences between the MC, DMC and IMC concepts, the literature also offers insights into causal relationships and connections between the concepts.DCs positively directly influence MCs (Wilden and Gudergan, 2015), while MCs mediate the positive relationship between DC and firm performance (Cataltepe et al., 2023).Similarly, DCs (sensing ability, seizing ability and transforming ability) positively impact IMCs (Chatterjee et al., 2022a, b).These findings have led us to propose a conceptual model (Figure 1) that shows how these concepts are conceptually linked and how they might form a novel concept of IDMCs.In order to fully answer the question of how DMCs and IMCs can transform into IDMCs, we need to gain insight into the different typologies and categorizations of the three phenomena.
We observe several MC categorizations in the extant literature.Morgan and Slotegraaf (2012) differentiate between higher-order (learning processes that involve capability enhancement and resource reconfiguration), intermediate (orchestrating, coordinating and organizing processes) and lower-order (specialized skills and activities) MCs.Gliga and Evers (2023) identified three categories of MCs: (1) Specialized/functional capabilities pertain to routine marketing activities at an ordinary or lower level, focusing on traditional elements of the "marketing mix," such as market research, pricing strategies and marketing communications.(2) Cross-functional capabilities, positioned as a mid-level in marketing capabilities, integrating specialized marketing capabilities by incorporating inputs from various functions like brand management, customer relationship management and new product development.(3) DCs, at a higher echelon, can be applied within the marketing function to expand or adapt existing resources in various ways, such as modifying ordinary specialized and cross-functional capabilities.
Similarly, we observe multiple categorizations of IMCs.Morgan et al. (2012) split export marketing capabilities in three groups: (1) architectural marketing capabilities (learning about export venture market, planning-related processes involved in selecting export marketing strategy goals and formulating strategies to attain them), (2) specialized marketing capabilities (tactical marketing program-related processes needed to implement marketing strategy) and (3) marketing capability integration (dynamic capability).Architectural marketing capabilities consist of marketing planning, market information acquisition, market information interpretation and market information dissemination.Specialized marketing capabilities include pricing, product development, channel management, delivery management, post-sale service, marketing communication and selling capabilities.A recent study by Jie et al. (2023) distinguishes between two substantive capabilities (international market operation,  international market administration) and two DCs (international market resource acquisition and international market observation and evaluation capability).
Despite these multiple categorizations, there is little by way of evidence of MCs, DMCs and IMCs being studied at different levels.In this respect, a seminal study by Hooley et al. (1999) proposes a hierarchy of MCs in which outside-in, inside-out and spanning capabilities are rooted in marketing operations that shape marketing strategy and thus marketing culture.Similarly, Morgan and Slotegraaf (2012) claim MCs to be hierarchical in nature and propose a taxonomy of B2BMCs, distinguishing between higher-order, intermediate and lowerorder MCs.
2.2 A foundational platform: strategic, operational, analytical and value creation capabilities Our approach is different.We looked for a possible conceptualization of capabilities (as the common root of all three concepts, as explained earlier) outside the MCs and DCs literature that would provide a more comprehensive view of the enterprise.On this front, Elia and Margherita (2022) provide a novel approach that distinguishes between four pillars of the cognitive enterprise and the four distinct capabilities: strategic, operational, analytical and value creation capabilities.Strategic capabilities refer to firm's strategic positioning and consist of transformation drivers, transformation projects and network influence.Operational capabilities [1] refer to firm's operational excellence, which is rooted in process management, project management and governance algorithms.Analytical capabilities refer to firm's resilience embedded in emergency assets, learning and experimentation, autonomy and communication.Value creation capabilities refer to value creation and innovation and consist of performance dashboard, intangibles and openness.
We use this typology to distinguish between various operationalizations of MCs, DMCs and IMCs (see Table 1).The analysis reveals several interesting outcomes and points at the gaps in the extant literature.First, MCs, DMCs and IMCs are most often studied at the operational level, offering rich insights into diverse conceptualizations and typologies of corresponding capabilities.At the same time, there is a lack of studies at the value-creation level, where also the diversity of studied capabilities is not as rich as at other levels.Second, some capabilities studied as MCs are adapted also in DMCs and IMCs research.For example, networking capabilities are tested at the strategic level for all three types of capabilities, customer relationship management is conceptualized at the operational level for all three types of capabilities, marketing planning spans all three types of capabilities at the analytical level, and marketing innovation spans all three types of capabilities at the value creation level.Third, extant literature that would study MCs, DMCs and/or IMCs at all four levels is rare or practically non-existent.This implies that our understanding of MCs, DMCs and IMCs is limited and there is ample opportunity for future research to fill this gap.
Following this logic, IDMCs that are conceptualized and operationalized at all four levels can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon.Previous attempts have not given equal weight to the "international" and "dynamic" components in operationalizing IDMCs, prioritizing one at the expense of the other.For example, in a recent qualitative study by Kim and Lim (2022), entrepreneurial orientation, networking capability and versatile dynamic capability are suggested to form higher-order IDMCs, and some of these factors (if not all) can be applied equally to domestic and international markets.It has been shown that numerous companies failed on the global stage not because of any missteps, but because they adhered to international marketing strategies that were effective and feasible in the past.We believe that the dynamic nature of contemporary firm's external challenges from geopolitical conflicts, uncertainty and economic instability to the ongoing threats related to climate issue and digital transformation challenges (Deloitte IMR 41,1 engage with distinct customers, their international marketing managers face similar business decisions and would therefore benefit from a unified view on IDMCs.In line with the contemporary global marketing trends, we propose a novel typology of IDMCs along four previously discussed levels in the firm (see Table 1).
At the strategic level we propose IDMCs to include digital international marketing capability (Wielgos et al., 2021;Homburg and Wielgos, 2022) and dynamic internationalization capability (Peng et al., 2023).Digital marketing capabilities are defined as "a firm's ability to use digital technology-enabled processes to interact with customers and partners in a targeted, measurable, and integrated way to create new forms of value without regard for distance or time" (Homburg and Wielgos, 2022, p. 666).These capabilities add value by effectively managing the digital business transformation that companies are forced to do today to remain competitive (Wielgos et al., 2021).
Since digital marketing capabilities are highly scalable, measurable, interconnected and adaptable, as opposed to low to moderate levels in the case of MCs, it is no surprise that digital marketing capabilities contribute significantly to business profitability beyond the impact of MCs (Homburg and Wielgos, 2022).Moreover, as the business landscape changes and evolves with advancing technology, digital international marketing capabilities will maintain their significance in the years ahead (Wang, 2020).Thus, we believe that digital marketing capabilities developed for international markets should constitute IDMCs to achieve superior export performance.Similarly, dynamic internationalization capability refers to dynamic organizational learning by matching international exploration (i.e.knowledge gained from international markets) and international exploitation (i.e.developing new marketing technologies, strengthening international marketing resilience, acquiring new international marketing capabilities) that enables firms a clear strategic position and improves their international performance (Peng et al., 2023).In other words, these capabilities refer to how to gain expertise in applying novel capabilities and generating fresh value propositions to facilitate improved integration upon entry into a foreign market.We believe that this could be a key to the company's long-term survival in dynamic international markets.
At the operational level we propose IDMCs to consist of agile international marketing capability (Asseraf et al., 2019;Gomes et al., 2020;Moi and Cabiddu, 2021;Shams et al., 2021), international marketing excellence (Homburg et al., 2020) and absorptive capacity/capability in international marketing (Zahra and George, 2002;Chatterjee et al., 2022a, b;Cho et al., 2023a).Marketing agility refers to "a firm's capability to proactively anticipate and sense marketing opportunities, and to react quickly and flexibly to these opportunities to better satisfy customer needs" (Zhou et al., 2019, p. 3).Consequently, international marketing agility (see the special issue of International Marketing Review on international marketing agility, 2019, vol.36, no. 2) describes firm's ability to respond fast to shifts in international markets (Asseraf et al., 2019;Gomes et al., 2020).Agility is crucial especially for multinational firms operating in culturally different host countries (Shams et al., 2021) and was found to create customer value and increase firm's international competitive advantage through leading digital transformation (Moi and Cabiddu, 2021).As international marketing agility contributes to new products advantage and international market performance (Asseraf et al., 2019), we consider it as important IDMC.Marketing agility priority, together with enduser priority and marketing eco-system priority form marketing excellence (Homburg et al., 2020), another proposed sub-dimension of IDMCs.
Building on international marketing agility, Homburg et al. (2020) re-conceptualize marketing excellence, which rests on three pillars: marketing ecosystem priority, end-user priority and marketing agility priority.Marketing excellence is recognized in the literature as a "superior ability to perform essential customer-centric activities that improve customer, financial, stock market and societal outcomes" (Moorman and Day, 2016, p. 6).Building on this definition, Homburg et al. (2020, p. 3) define marketing excellence as "a type of firm strategy that focuses on achieving organic growth by implementing the marketing ecosystem priority, the end-user priority, and the marketing agility priority".The focus of marketing excellence, then, is on the integration of marketing skills and accumulated knowledge operationalized through organizational processes, with this synergy enabling a company to effectively execute its marketing activities (Moorman and Day, 2016).In this sense, marketing excellence is a marketing capability.For instance, there is a recurring discussion, particularly in the international business literature, that in developing DCs, organizations should go beyond dyadic relationships or even a network of relationships to include the entire ecosystem of the organization (Teece, 2014).Consequently, prioritizing the marketing ecosystem is an important marketing capability as building and maintaining excellent customer relationships should lead to better results (Homburg et al., 2020).In summary, marketing activities that lead to marketing excellence enable the organization to anticipate market changes, adapt strategies to outperform competitors, synchronize the organization with both strategy and market dynamics, implement strategies effectively, ensure accountability for outcomes, attract resources and proficiently manage marketing assets (Moorman and Day, 2016).Consequently, marketing excellence should represent IDMCs at the operational level.
Absorptive capability in international marketing could be defined as a set of international marketing routines and processes by which international firms systematically acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit knowledge producing a dynamic international marketing capability (Zahra and George, 2002).In other terms, absorptive capability refers to firm's ability to recognize the value of new information in international markets, assimilate it and apply it to commercial ends (Chatterjee et al., 2022a, b).Originally, this capability appears in two forms (Zahra and George, 2002): potential absorptive capacity (i.e.acquisition and assimilation of knowledge) and realized absorptive capacity (i.e.transformation and exploitation of knowledge).Firms with greater potential absorptive capacity can seize emerging international marketing opportunities better than their competitors, while firms with greater realized absorptive capacity can refine their grasp of innovation and commercialization potential, leading to fresh perspectives on foreign market opportunities, thereby strengthening their sensing capabilities (Cho et al., 2023a).Absorptive capacity seems to share a lot with market orientation as described by Hunt and Morgan (1995, p. 11): "we propose that a market orientation is (1) the systematic gathering of information on customers and competitors, both present and potential, (2) the systematic analysis of the information for the purpose of developing market knowledge, and (3) the systematic use of such knowledge to guide strategy recognition, understanding, creation, selection, implementation, and modification."Following the argumentation in the literature that export market orientation is a set of capabilities that involves acquiring, and responding to (exploiting) export market knowledge (Cadogan et al., 2009), we explicitly link international absorptive capacity and international market orientation.Thus, we believe they are important part of IDMCs.
At the analytical level we propose IDMCs to embrace international marketing resilience capability (G€ olgeci and Kuivalainen, 2020; Wulandhari et al., 2022;Nguyen et al., 2023), international marketing knowledge management capability (Scuotto et al., 2022), AI-enabled IDMCs (Manis and Madhavaram, 2023) and other industry 4.0-enabled IDMCs (Nayal et al., 2023).Firm's resilience can be defined as "an ability to absorb shocks in the form of extreme events and an adaptive capability to adjust to new circumstances" (Johnson et al., 2013, p. 325).In the context of global supply chains, the term cooperative resilience recently emerged that can be defined as "the organizations' ability to recover from disruptions, maintain dynamic integrity in the presence of ongoing stress, and exploit opportunities that pivot on achieving economic and social goals" (Wulandhari et al., 2022).International marketing resilience capability follows this logic and relates to firm's ability to adapt, survive and bounce back to international unpredictable event in global value chains beyond firm's control (Nguyen et al., 2023).As building international marketing resilience as a pivotal capability to respond to challenges and uncertainties in international markets, as well as embrace the complexity to create sustainable customer value, particularly in international environments where companies and their competitive advantages have a tendency to be short-lived (G€ olgeci and Kuivalainen, 2020), we treat international marketing resilience capability as one of the key IDMCs.
We believe that international marketing resilience can be enhanced by building dynamic capabilities for international marketing knowledge management, which occurs particularly when employees in the international marketing department have the capacity to solve problems, adapt and change (Scuotto et al., 2022).Although individual employees in international marketing are the primary source of knowledge that cannot be easily copied, today's marketers rely more and more on the technologies to conduct international marketing activities.There are some, who even claim that all MCs can be enabled by technology (Manis and Madhavaram, 2023).Thus, international marketing knowledge management capabilities need to be complemented by recently introduced industry 4.0-enabled IDMCs (Nayal et al., 2023).The term Industry 4.0 refers to a variety of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, biotechnology, new computing technologies like cloud computing, etc. (Cho et al., 2023a).On one hand, these technologies collect and analyze real-time data, thus they provide valuable information in predicting customer needs and international marketing mix customization, as well as play important role in customer relationship management (Nayal et al., 2023).On the other hand, these technologies disrupt the industries structures and the competitive environment, introducing firms to novel competitive forces in global markets, which adds complexity to their efforts in addressing concerns related to value creation and capture, reevaluating relationships with traditional business partners and managing the vast amount of new data generated (Cho et al., 2023b).Thus, these capabilities as part of IDMCs will be critical for firms to understand international (global) markets.
As not all these dimensions of IDMCs are equally applied in a given international context, we believe AI-enabled international marketing capabilities need to be added to IDMCs analytical level portfolio.AI-enabled international marketing capabilities are connected with the concept of hierarchical capabilities and refer to "one or more AI operations that can enablefacilitate or reinforcehigher-order capabilities by combining or integrating with other resources, in turn, helping a firm progress up the hierarchy of capabilities" (Manis and Madhavaram, 2023, p. 7).There is not much known about these capabilities in extant literature, thus future research may fill this gap.
At the value creation level we propose IDMCs to develop ambidextrous international marketing innovation capability (Buccieri et al., 2020;van Lieshout et al., 2021).Ambidextrous innovation refers to a company's capability to engage in both exploitative (i.e.refinement or incremental product improvement) and exploratory (i.e. generation of advanced product design through disruption) innovation simultaneously (Buccieri et al., 2020).In other words, exploration refers to inbound open innovation and exploitation refers to outbound open innovation, both of which can be explained by the micro-foundations of DCs (van Lieshout et al., 2021): (1) exploration refers to firm's capability in using local and foreign resources, assets, sources of knowledge and innovation (sensing), firm's capability to capitalize on external knowledge and innovation from external sources (seizing) and firm's ability to invest and maintain its RandD capability; (2) exploitation refers to firm's capability to commercialize internal knowledge out of the firm's core business and market (sensing); firm's capability to evolve through efficient orchestration of assets and resources (seizing), and firm's ability to firm's ability to achieve fit between the firm and culture, which enables integration of external knowledge and innovation to internal ones.Exploitation as a market-driven orientation is often described as less risky, more certain and efficient, while exploration as a market-driving orientation may create unexpected value for customers and thereby driving the firm's future (Tolstoy et al., 2022).In international marketing, a successful international firm will emphasize both market exploration and market exploitation knowledge-based resource accumulation through international learning processes in order to deal with uncertainty and competitive pressures in export markets (Hoque et al., 2022a).Dual international marketing ambidextrous innovation capabilities are expected to complement each other in a way to enable the international firm to strengthen its competitiveness in foreign markets and overcome any resource constraints (Buccieri et al., 2020).Ambidexterity was suggested for future researchers as an important factor to be studied in relation to IDMCs influencing internationalization strategies (Garcia Ortiz et al., 2021) and superior export performance (Cho et al., 2023a, b).Thus, we treat ambidextrous international marketing innovation capability as future oriented value-creation IDMC.

Articles in this special issue
The purpose of this Special Issue is to advance our understanding of IDMCs by conducting conceptual studies, literature reviews and empirical research focused on related contemporary issues that have relevance for various types of businesses and markets.In response to the call for papers, nine papers took the journey through the reviewing process till the end and now form the special issue.Table 2 is intended to provide an overview how papers in this special issue contribute to the conceptualization and measurement of IDMCs.
We briefly present the main findings of the nine papers in this special issue below in alphabetical order of the first author.Figure 2 provides an overview of the empirical results related to IDMCs.This figure can serve as a synthesis of main empirical findings in this special issue.
First paper by Akter et al. addresses the research void related to how global B2B service companies incorporate DCs into their omnichannel management strategies to impact favorable word of mouth (WOM), customer engagement and customer equity.The authors are among pioneers who view omnichannel management in the context of international marketing as a DMC and contribute to the extant literature by addressing content and concerns across international channels through DCs theory.The study adds knowledge to the specific channel management capabilities and their overall effects on customer-based performance outcomes.Specifically, based on data collected from 312 service-oriented global firms in Australia analyzed using structural equation modeling the authors confirm content management and concern management capabilities to be key significant contributors to positive WOM within B2B omnichannel setting in international marketing, while suggesting customer engagement to mediate the relationship between positive WOM and customer equity.In other words, this is one of the first studies suggesting that distribution channel's integration and agility should be utilized as strategic capability to manage the dynamic global service market environment to derive to positive customer-based performance outcomes.
Second paper by Bargoni et al. is a conceptual study that proposes how firms can build and nurture IDMCs by implementing growth hacking strategies, a novel phenomenon observed mainly in managerial practice.The paper builds on the premise that an increased number of endogenous or exogenous market events (e.g.global COVID-19 pandemic, increased market competition, geopolitical tensions) force firms to find new business, organizational or decision-making models that would enable them to adapt to higher degree of volatility and uncertainty in the international markets.In authors' view, IDMCs can address these challenges in dynamically changing international markets by shaping company resources through growth hacking, a data-driven mind-set in marketing decision-

International dynamic marketing capabilities
making that combines big-data analysis and continuous learning.The authors develop a comprehensive framework of four phases of growth hacking and related capabilities and routines developed by companies to cope with dynamically changing international markets.These include ensuring product-market fit through international demand management capability, finding growth hack by creating international marketing knowledge capabilities, going viral as an affordance perspective to develop IDMCs, and retention and optimization through absorption capabilities in the context of IDMCs.In addition, research propositions with rich future research directions are developed for three critical components of growth hacking: coding and automation, digital marketing and big data analytics.
Third paper by Behl et al. is an empirical study that aims to answer two research questions: (1) what is organizational culture's effect on firm's innovation capability to improve sustainability and organizational marketing performance and (2) how can gamification improve firm's technological and environmental innovation capability, leading firms to achieve environmental sustainability.In particular, this paper contributes to better understanding of gamification-based and non-gamification based organizational culture influence on international marketing innovation capability, environmental sustainability and organizational marketing performance viewed through the lens of theory of administrative behavior and theory of organizational creativity.International marketing innovation capability is used as a proxy for IDMCs conceptualized as technological and environmental innovation capability.A structured survey of 384 climate-conscious firms that abide by the ISO 14091 (adaptation to climate change) certification revealed that organizational culture has positive influence on environmental and technological innovation capabilities.Moreover, technological innovation capabilities yielded positive effects on environmental sustainability, with a significant correlation between the two concepts.Environmental innovation capabilities were found to positively influence on both environmental sustainability and organizational marketing performance.Finally, there  is evidence of gamification action as a moderating factor in the interaction between organizational culture and international DCs in the form of environmental innovation capabilities.In sum, this paper shows how IDMCs can be a useful theoretical framework for understanding how can various capabilities be converted into small business assets.

Source(s): Authors own creation
Fourth paper by Chatterjee, Chaudhuri and Vrontis presents a unique DCs theory-based model studying the relationship between dynamic abilities (sensing, seizing and transforming ability), IDMCs (conceptualized as international marketing operational capability, international marketing knowledge management capability and international strategic marketing capability) and international marketing performance.This paper also investigates how much could marketing leadership support influence the relationships between international marketing performance and its IDMCs predictors.A structural equation model on a sample of 455 respondents from Indian multinational firms supports positive relationship between firm's dynamic ability factors and its IDMCs.In addition, multigroup analysis confirms that firm's marketing leadership team has a significant positive moderating impact on improving its international marketing performance.Besides these important empirical findings, this study contributes to the extant literature with its unique conceptualization of IDMCs with three aforementioned components and its empirical test in relation to international marketing performance.It is also one of the first studies to perceive IDMCs with valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable (VRIN) characteristics that could help companies outperform their competitors in today's international markets.In addition to investigation of different characteristics of IDMCs, this study contributes to and extends the application of dynamic capabilities theory in the context of international marketing by showing how and why firms successfully adapt to rapid changes in the dynamic business environments.
Fifth paper by Ciszewska-Mlinaric, Siemieniako and Wojcik provides a novel conceptualization of IDMCs and a rich argumentation how these are theoretically derived from DMC and DC respectively.The authors develop a new scale for IDMCs consisting of nine items that correspond to original Teece's conceptualization of DCs (sensing, seizing and reconfiguring), and also empirically validate it.The aim of the paper was to test the relationship between newly conceptualized IDMCs and international performance, mediated by adaptation to foreign markets and product development capability.In addition, extreme environmental dynamism (context of COVID-19 pandemic) is used as a moderator of this relationship.Hierarchical multiple regression analysis of 277 surveyed exporting manufacturers from the post-transition economy of Poland show a strong support for IDMCs influence on international performance, where this relationship is mediated by adaptation to foreign markets and product development capability.This paper reveals also a significant and positive indirect effect of IDMCs on international performance through both mediators, which is weakened under conditions of extreme environmental dynamism.This empirical study offers recommendations for managers on fostering resilience in global markets amidst periods of instability.These strategies encompass investments in IDMCs that facilitate endeavors focused on enhancing product development and adjusting to international market conditions.These findings could also be valuable for policymakers when creating efficient support measures for exporters from post-transitional economies when facing sudden environmental disruptions or unconventional crises.
Sixth paper by Mostafiz et al. explores the mediating role of IDMCs in the relationship between international entrepreneurial firms' innovation (explorative and exploitative) and commercialization of innovative products/services internationally.This study assesses also the moderating role of breadth and depth of international networks in the exploration of IDMCs effects on commercialization.Time-lagged survey data were collected from 201 Malaysian international entrepreneurial firms and structural equation modeling was applied to test the conceptual model fit, as well as additional robustness test and endogeneity analyses were provided.The results indicate that the IDMCs play a mediating role in the relationship between exploratory and exploitative innovation and the process of commercialization.Moreover, the findings show that the effect of IDMC on commercialization becomes much stronger when the breadth and depth of international networks are considered, which indicates that international entrepreneurial firms are embedded in strong external networks and actively utilize them to enhance their resources and knowledge.These findings extend the logic of DCs theory by prioritizing IDMCs over any other form of DCs in relation to the commercialization of innovation.As the authors conceptualized IDMCs as functional DCs linked to three cross-border operational processes, their findings suggest that IDMCs need to be specifically crafted for entrepreneurial firms operating globally opposed to just simply adopting general marketing capabilities.
Seventh paper by Pfajfar, Mitre ˛ga and Shoham is a systematic literature review of IMCs in DCV and aims at calibrating research on IDMCs, thereby increasing the chances for more conceptual and terminological rigor in future research on the phenomenon.A multilevel analytical approach, combining inductive coding with deductive coding and following antecedents-phenomenon-consequences logic revealed 20 empirical studies on IMC applying DCV.Synthesis of the extant literature revealed frequent antecedents to IDMCs (interorganizational capabilities, responsive market orientation, resource availability, international culture), frequent consequences (financial performance, export performance, innovation performance), as well as infrequent antecedents (e.g.proactive market orientation, ambidextrous innovation) and infrequent consequences (e.g.internationalization, competitive advantage).The review shows that there is little knowledge of moderators of these links, especially with regard to consequences, while the extant research lacks consistency and how key constructs are defined and measured.Only 3 studies out of 20 measured focal capabilities aligned with DCV premises.This study makes an important contribution by providing guidelines for future conceptualization and measurement of IDMCs.In addition, rich future research directions are provided using a structured approach along Theory, Context and Methods framework.Recommendations for theory include (1) making research consistent with the theoretical boundaries and developments of DCV, (2) aligning the research with specific angles of analysis in international marketing literature, (3) investigating links with relevant theoretical perspectives in the literature and (4) call for conceptual and terminological rigor.Recommendations for context consist of: (1) more studies on specific micro building blocks of focal capabilities in specific markets and industries, (2) call for studies on IDMCs from middle-and low-income countries, especially transforming economies, (3) need for international comparative research on IDMCs and (4) more studies on the unboxing mechanism how focal capabilities affect international performance.Finally, recommendations for methods embrace (1) a more qualitative and indepth approach to exploring the forms and dimensions of focal capabilities, (2) call for nontautological measurement within theoretical boundaries and (3) call for process-oriented research approaches.
Eighth paper by Rivero-Gutierrez et al. aims to answer how firms manage their DMCs to adapt their business to new international environment, and what is the role of DMCs in generating organizational legitimacy that helps firms to overcome all possible disadvantages of being a new firm in a foreign country.Addressing these research questions, the paper aids in elucidating the methods by which marketing managers cultivate their DMCs, and in turn, offers a potential framework for implementing DMC strategies aimed at enhancing legitimacy within international markets.This is a qualitative study.16 in-depth interviews with manufacturing company managers are analyzed to derive to novel findings suggesting 5 DMCs, which could improve firms' legitimacy in foreign markets: local market sensitivity, relationship management, anticipation, flexibility and exemplariness.The authors suggest international firms to combine these capabilities, but alert also that these capabilities will play a different role depending on the implementation phase.In addition, authors emphasize credibility, engagement, alliances, adaptability and proximity as part of integrating resource allocation and capability development to reach differentiation in the foreign markets.This study makes an important contribution to IDMCs field of research by applying institutional theory and showing IDMCs and legitimacy to coexist, where the development of DMCs would provide the necessary differentiation for multinational firms to obtain legitimacy.Consequently, legitimacy can be viewed as important differentiation factor and enables multinationals to offer credible and clear value proposition in the international markets.
Ninth paper by Vardarsuyu et al. aims to uncover the significance of managerial process thinking skills in nurturing the dynamic capabilities required to cater to international clients and thrive in export markets.The authors collected cross-sectional data from export managers working in 204 small-and medium-sized Turkish exporters.The results of the path analysis show that in case when export managers' prove orientation is high, learning and avoid orientations are low and export venture experience (duration and scope) increases, the positive effect of export managers' process thinking skills on dynamic capabilities increases.Moreover, export venture dynamic capabilities serve as a mediator between export managers' process thinking skills and export performance.This study contributes to the conceptualization and operationalization of DCs that form the foundation of a company's export operations.Specifically, the authors conceptualize export venture DCs as a higherlevel construct composed of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring elements related to the firm's export market operations and empirically validate it.Furthermore, this study utilizes microfoundations approach of competitive advantage to study export managers' process thinking skills and addresses the question how these contribute to DCs development in export ventures.Finally, this study deepens the understanding of managers' goal orientation within the context of export marketing and its role in the impact of process thinking skills on development of DCs in export ventures.

Research gaps and future research agenda
Each of the papers in this special issue identifies research gaps in the current research on IDMCs and provides avenues for future research, thereby contributing to the further development of IDMCs phenomenon.We would like to point particularly at Pfajfar, Mitre ˛ga and Shoham paper which maps the current research on IDMCs and provides rich avenues for future research along Theory, Context and Methods framework.At this point, we would not like to repeat any future research proposition that are listed in the papers in this special issue, but would like to go back to the origin of IDMCs (see Figure 1) and source for research gaps and future research directions in the contemporary literature on MCs, DMCs and IMCs that could be applicable to IDMCs.The result of the analysis is Table 3, which highlights research gaps and challenges and outlines research questions that can help researchers advance the discussion of IDMCs.

Antecedents to the IDMC
We call future research to tap into antecedents to IDMC phenomenon, which we observe are much less frequently applied in the research models than outcomes.In fact, looking at the leading empirical papers in the field of MC, DMC and IMC up to this date gives us a surprising resultmany did not include any antecedent to the capabilities phenomenon.
When looking at the extant MC research, we could split most frequently used antecedents into two groups: knowledge and other resources.Knowledge type of antecedents includes marketing information (Vorhies, 1998) RQ3.3.What differences in IDMCs development exist between firms that focus their sensing processes on current (most prominent) markets compared with underserved or new markets?
Tan and Sousa (2015) RQ8.5.When the resulting reconfigurations of international marketing knowledge base from the interaction of IDMCs with other capabilities (e.g.technological capabilities) and resources becomes counterproductive?
Wilden and Gudergan ( 2015) Expanding the set of drivers and motivations The literature needs to expand the set of drivers and motivations that make companies develop IDMC RQ9.1.What is the effect of different levels of strategic goal aspirations on IDMC and are there inflection points beyond which goal aspiration levels have negative effect?(Vorhies et al., 2011), branding and retailing knowledge (Irfan et al., 2023), experiential knowledge (Morgan et al., 2003), and ethical/social compliance knowledge (Irfan et al., 2023) among others.Most often studied other resources as antecedents to MC were marketing resources (e.g.Yalcinkaya et al., 2007;Nath et al., 2010) and technological resources (e.g.Yalcinkaya et al., 2007).Other antecedents consist of brand reputation and marketing planning (da Fonseca et al., 2023), environmental turbulence, business strategy, organizational structure and task routinization (Vorhies, 1998).Finally, DCs were studied as antecedent to MCs as well (Wilden and Gudergan, 2015;Cataltepe et al., 2023).
When looking at extant DMC literature, we observe knowledge and other resources related antecedents to repeat, only in a different, more dynamic form.For instance, knowledge antecedents consist of knowledge integration, breadth and depth (Zhang and Xu, 2019), while other resources antecedents include resource magnitude and complexity (Fang and Zou, 2009).We observe a strong presence of business-relationship related antecedents like customer relationship management (Barrales-Molina et al., 2014), vertical and horizontal relationship quality (Xu et al., 2018) and human capital (Elsharnouby and Elbanna, 2021).Other antecedents include marketing vision and marketing readiness (Sukdej and Ussahawanitchakit, 2015), market orientation and entrepreneurship orientation (Tsai, 2015), supply chain management, social media and network competence (Barrales-Molina et al., 2014), and sustainable human resource management (Nayal et al., 2023) among others.Finally, operational MCs influence DMCs (Perez-Cabanero et al., 2015) as well.

Moderators
We encourage future research to explore the factors that moderate the relationship of IDMCs with its antecedents and outcomes.Majority of the extant research on MC, DMC and IMC used the moderators on the outcomes side, so there is a paucity of boundary conditions that would explain how and when the effect of antecedents on IDMCs occurs.We call for contemporary factors that would provide more nuanced insights into the underlying mechanisms behind IDMCs development.
Studies on DMCs provide for even more versatile moderators.These are mostly internal to the organization: innovative climate (Sukdej and Ussahawanitchakit, 2015), customization norm (Mitre ˛ga, 2020), organizational structure (departmentalization, formalization) and organizational culture (goal congruency, learning culture) (Fang and Zou, 2009), formalization, learning culture and institutional distance (Zhang and Xu, 2019), entrepreneurship orientation and ownership (domestic vs foreign) (Xu et al., 2018).Most often external factor used in the extant studies on DMCs is market/environmental dynamism (e.g.Buccieri et al., 2020;Elsharnouby and Elbanna, 2021).Finally, when selecting exclusively among capabilities, market-sensing capabilities and CRM capabilities (Morgan et al., 2009a) were also used as a moderator between DMCs and firm's revenue and margin growth rate.

Outcomes of the IDMC
Analyzing the results of the studies on MCs, DMCs, and IMCs, we find that business performance and competitive advantage are the most frequently used outcome factors.The low diversity of outcome factors prompts future researchers to reconsider their contributions in this area.
4.4 Context, methodology, measures and conceptualization of the IDMC Majority of the extant research on DMCs and IMCs, as a field of research from which IDMCs could source, is conducted in developed economies.Replicating the studies among international firms based in different cultural and institutional environments, particularly fast growing economies and/or emerging countries would shed a different light on IDMCs (Kaleka and Morgan, 2019).Interestingly, research on MCs is growing in the context of Chinese and Indian firms, while it is almost nonexistent in other emerging countries (Cortez and Hidalgo, 2022).We strongly suggest future researchers to collect data from multiple countries to further contextualize their studies, as initial evidence suggests that MCinternational performance relationship seems to withhold country differences (Weerawardena et al., 2015).Expanding the scope of studies could also help researchers uncover and understand country-specific phenomena (Jie et al., 2023) like for small and open economies being a test-ground for new marketing approaches.Finally, researchers could investigate the institutional distance between home and host countries, as resource dependence on the firm's local partners when developing IDMCs would be significantly decreased when regulations in the home country are similar to those in the host country, and firms would find it easy to adapt to the host countries (Xu et al., 2018).
Majority of the extant research on MCs, DMCs and IMCs is based on cross-sectional data collected at a certain point in time (Cortez and Hidalgo, 2022).Consequently, one cannot generalize the studied causal relationships between the resources, capabilities and international performance (Hazzam and Wilkins, 2022).We encourage researchers to resolve this limitation by adopting a longitudinal design, which could unravel the dynamics of crossvergence over time and validate the directions of the relationships between the studied variables (Cortez and Hidalgo, 2022;Hazzam and Wilkins, 2022).In the context of IDMCs, assessing international performance outcomes over time may be particularly worthwhile (Morgan et al., 2003), as it may reveal novel antecedents and moderators in IDMCsinternational performance relationship.Future studies could use both perceptual and objective measures of performance to attest the validity of relationship between IDMCs and export performance (Reimann et al., 2022).How IDMCs develop over time might be especially beneficial to managers and entrepreneurs, who shift from managerial positions in firms owned by others to managing their own firms (Gliga and Evers, 2023).As we conceptualized IDMCs including the international marketing resilience capability, future research could shed extra light it by surveying international managers before and after and important change of key factors in the international marketing environment (e.g.geopolitical tensions, social event, extreme event like pandemic, etc.) (Kaleka and Morgan, 2019).
This study presents a novel conceptualization of IDMCs.We encourage researchers to develop and test the measures for the novel conceptualization of IDMCs.Even if the research follow their own conceptualizations and measurement, we strongly suggest to combine marketing and technology driven capabilities (Bruni and Verona, 2009) as part of higherorder IDMCs.As technology, in particularly AI, can enable firms to progress from basic to interconnected capabilities, such IDMCs can strengthen the sustainable competitive advantages of international firm (Manis and Madhavaram, 2023).In addition, it can lead to innovative practices (e.g.digital co-creation of products and services) and enables international managers to experiment and create new ways of engaging with customers, suppliers and other channel members (Wang, 2020).At the same time we call for more rigor in the capability research as some researchers claim to have analyzed capabilities, whereas in fact they analyze antecedents or consequences of capabilities, creating content-validity problems (Jie et al., 2023).At the same time, most of the extant research views capabilities as given, rarely researchers are interested how international firms derived to those capabilities.How the IDMCs process (e.g.international pricing process, international communication process) is developed can be considered a capability (Tan and Sousa, 2015), but the extant literature is rather silent on that question.
Future researchers could expand the research beyond IDMCs.DCs were identified as important determinant of eco-innovation that contributes to sustainable transition of the economy and society toward the circular economy (Kiefer et al., 2019).Including sustainability, circular economy, sharing economy and regenerative economy in future research on IDMCs could contribute to better understanding of IDMCs social impact and its contribution to eco-innovation from various stakeholders' perspective, being domestic or international.

Conclusion
This paper provides multiple theoretical contributions.First, it provides theoretical and conceptual differences between DCs, MCs, DMCs and IMCs.This brings higher clarity for the understanding of these concepts and provides for contemporary conceptualizations, pointing at the historical evolution of these concepts.Second, this study proposes a conceptual model of causal effects between DCs, MCs, DMCs and IMCs, as well as their relationship to the novel IDMCs construct.Despite rapidly growing research on some of the concepts (e.g.DCs and DMCs) over the last years, the extant literature offers little evidence how these concepts are interrelated and which one precedes the other.This is particularly important for the novel IDMCs construct conceptualization and understanding of its theoretical origin.Third, this study maps the conceptualizations and measurements of MCs, DMCs and IMCs in the extant literature at the four distinct levels of capabilities development: strategic, operational, analytical and value-creation.This categorization provides for a novel and a more complete approach to understand capabilities development in the contemporary international firm.It also points at the measurement gaps that future researchers need to fill to enhance comprehension of MCs, DMCs and IMCs in the contemporary international firms.Fourth, this study proposes a novel conceptualization and measurement of IDMCs that is in line with the contemporary international business and marketing trends.This novel approach to IDMCs opens several future research avenues, including empirical testing of the proposed measurement.In addition, our approach to IDMCs may serve researchers to rethink their future conceptualizations of DCs, MCs, DMCs and IMCs as well.Finally, this paper identifies numerous research gaps in the extant literature and develops corresponding research questions that can serve researchers for years to come.
This paper offers several practical contributions as well.As the international marketing managers are navigating through the times of uncertainty, we are certain that developing IDMCs may ease this volatility and direct them toward improved competitiveness and performance in international markets.We recommend that international marketing managers need to develop IDMCs geared toward sensing new international marketing trends and the same time manage their global value chains.Specifically, we propose them to develop digital marketing capability and dynamic internationalization capability as strategic capabilities, agile international marketing capability, international marketing excellence and absorptive capability in international marketing as operational capabilities, international marketing resilience capability, international marketing knowledge management capability, AI-enabled IDMC and industry 4.0-enabled IDMCs as analytical capabilities, and ambidextrous international marketing innovation capability as a value creation capability.Each paper in this special issue uncovers a piece of a puzzle that has not been touched upon before and contributes significantly to the theoretical and practical understanding of IDMCs.As we navigate through the dynamic international marketing landscape, the empirical findings in this special issue and the future research avenues identified can serve as a foundation for research innovation for the foreseeable future.
Authors own creation

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.IDMCs and its origin in DCs, MCs, DMCs and IMCs Figure 2. Summary of empirical findings in this special issue