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This paper has two objectives in the area of industrialised small- and medium-sized industrial company (SME) export activity. First, it responds to the gap in the literature on the role of market intelligence in the interrelations between perceived psychic distance, marketing mix decisions and export performance. The second objective concerns the influence of resource heterogeneity (size and export department) in the proposed model.

The current paper tests a posited research model and its hypotheses using the data from a multi-sector sample of exporters (196 Spanish industrial SMEs). The data are analyzed using a partial least squares approach.

The results of the empirical study show that: strategic decisions to adapt marketing mix elements to suit foreign markets have a positive effect on export performance; strategic adaptations are more numerous when export managers perceive a greater psychic distance; an export department helps develop market intelligence ability, which positively moderates the impact of strategic adaptations on export performance; and size does not have a significant effect on the interrelations studied.

Export managers in industrial SMEs can use the results and conclusions of this present paper to systematise their decision-making in export activity.

This paper makes a significant contribution towards covering an important gap in research into industrial SME exporters, by demonstrating the importance of market intelligence in export activity.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the technological phenomenon artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can contribute to knowledge-based marketing in B2B. Specifically, this paper describes the foundational building blocks of any artificial intelligence system and their interrelationships. This paper also discusses the implications of the different building blocks with respect to market knowledge in B2B marketing and outlines avenues for future research.

The paper is conceptual and proposes a framework to explicate the phenomenon AI and its building blocks. It further provides a structured discussion of how AI can contribute to different types of market knowledge critical for B2B marketing: customer knowledge, user knowledge and external market knowledge.

The paper explains AI from an input–processes–output lens and explicates the six foundational building blocks of any AI system. It also discussed how the combination of the building blocks transforms data into information and knowledge.

Aimed at general marketing executives, rather than AI specialists, this paper explains the phenomenon artificial intelligence, how it works and its relevance for the knowledge-based marketing in B2B firms. The paper highlights illustrative use cases to show how AI can impact B2B marketing functions.

The study conceptualizes the technological phenomenon artificial intelligence from a knowledge management perspective and contributes to the literature on knowledge management in the era of big data. It addresses calls for more scholarly research on AI and B2B marketing.

The article traces the origins of the competitive intelligence fields and identifies both the practitioner, academic and inter‐disciplinary views on CI practice. An examination of the literature relating to the field is presented, including the identification of the linear relationship which CI has with marketing and strategic planning activities.

Bibliometric assessment of the discipline. Findings reveal the representation of cross disciplinary literature which emphasises the multi‐faceted role which competitive intelligence plays in a modern organization.

The analysis supports the view of competitive intelligence being an activity consisting dominantly of environmental scanning and strategic management literature. New fields of study and activity are rapidly becoming part of the competitive intelligence framework.

The analysis only uses ABI Inform as the primary sources for literature alongside Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) and Competitive Intelligence Foundation (CIF) publications, particularly the Journal of Competitive Intelligence and Management. A more comprehensive bibliometric analysis might reveal additional insights. Simple counts were used for analytical purposes rather than co‐citation analysis.

Attention is drawn to the need for the integration of additional, complementary fields of study and competitive intelligence practice. It is clear that today's competitive intelligence practitioner cannot afford to rely on what they learned 20 years ago in order to ensure the continued competitive advantage of their firm. A keen understanding of all business functions, especially marketing and planning is advocated.

While there have been bibliographies of competitive intelligence literature there have been few attempts to relate this to the three distinct areas of practice. This article is of use to scholars in assisting them to disentangle the various aspect of competitive intelligence and also to managers who wish to gain an appreciation of the potential which competitive intelligence can bring to marking and business success.

The paper seeks to show how the increasingly popular use of data and information acquired from open sources (OS) impacts competitive and marketing intelligence (C/MI). It describes the current state of the art in analysis efforts of open source intelligence (OSINT) in business/commercial enterprises, examines the planning and execution challenges organizations are experiencing associated with effectively using and fusing OSINT in C/MI decision‐making processes, and provides guidelines associated with the successful use of OSINT.

This is a descriptive, conceptual paper that utilizes and develops arguments based on the search of three unclassified bodies of literature in competitive and marketing intelligence, intelligence processing and marketing analysis.

Open sources are useful in marketing analyses because they can be easily accessible, inexpensive, quickly accessed and voluminous in availability. There are several conceptual and practical challenges the analyst faces in employing them. These can be addressed through awareness of these issues as well as a willingness to invest resources into studying how to improve the data gathering/analysis interface.

Marketing analysts increasingly rely on open sources of data in developing plans, strategy and tactics. This article provides a description of the challenges they face in utilizing this data, as well as provides a discussion of the effective practices that some organizations have demonstrated in applying and fusing open sources in their C/MI analysis process.

There are very few papers published focusing on applying OSINT in enterprises for competitive and marketing intelligence purposes. More uniquely, this paper is written from the perspective of the marketing analyst and how they use open source data in the competitive and marketing sense‐making process and not the perspective of individuals specialized in gathering these data.

Market orientation (MO) (intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and responsiveness) is known as one of the key concepts in marketing literature. Although prior research has widely focused on the meaning and application of MO, few attempts have been made to explore how market-oriented firms lead to innovation and market performance and what factors actually moderate this relationship. To fill this gap, the present study aims to explore the relationship between MO, innovation and market performance. This study also attempts to examine the intervening role of IT infrastructure, business analytics (BA) capabilities and market turbulence in the proposed model.

In this study, a questionnaire-based survey was undertaken to test the proposed hypotheses. To verify the proposed theoretical model, partial least squares (PLS)/structured equation modeling (SEM) was performed with 114 valid survey data.

Despite prior studies which postulated innovation performance as the final outcome of MO (Han et al., 1998; Song et al., 2015), this study focused on innovation performance as a mediating outcome which finally leads to market performance. The statistical results approve the putative relationship which means managers would be able to realize the paramount role of innovation as an integral part of achieving higher market performance. In addition, no support was found for the relationship between intelligence generation and responsiveness. This finding shows that not all obtained information can help managers in the decision-making process.

This study aims to enrich literature by developing a conceptual model to test the link between MO, innovation and market performance. The value of this study is to investigate the roles of flexible IT infrastructure, BA capabilities and market turbulence as the potential moderators in the proposed model. The results advance the understanding of the influence of BA capabilities on the link between intelligence dissemination and responsiveness. Findings also show innovation performance as remarkable and deemed valuable capability, leading to higher performance in marketing-related activities, particularly in highly turbulent markets.

This paper investigates how affirmative leadership management styles, market orientation and marketing intelligence drive the performance of small business enterprises in Bangkok, Thailand.

Small business performance is a formative measurement consisting of financial and marketing metrics. Other constructs are reflective. Some 200 manager-owners of small businesses were interviewed. The authors use structural modeling, partial least squares (PLS).

The data were collected from two of 50 districts in Bangkok. The study is cross-sectional. Performance measures were self-reported.

Building and exercising affirmative leadership skills and behaviors in small business operations is crucial. Small businesses should focus their recruitment on this quality. Affirmative leaders must create and promote a systematic approach to gathering and analyzing market intelligence on customers and competitors and utilize this strategically.

This empirical paper establishes two important mediating roles of market orientation. First, affirmative leadership is necessary to motivate a market-oriented enterprise in its successful performance. Second, marketing intelligence contributes to business performance when it is driven by market orientation.

This paper aims to investigate whether it is meaningful to decompose market orientation into customer orientation and competitor orientation, and what possible implications this decomposition may have for researchers and business practitioners.

Through a review of existing market orientation research, two of its salient dimensions, customer orientation and competitor orientation, are theoretically investigated. Then, two symmetric component measures are developed and tested on 308 manufacturing firms in a cross‐sectional questionnaire survey, supplemented with census data.

Empirical evidence reveals that, while competitor orientation is positively related to a firm's market share, a customer orientation is detrimental to a firm's return on assets for firms in less competitive environments.

The study advocates moving beyond “global” measures of market orientation and focusing on symmetric component measures of customer orientation and competitor orientation when investigating a firm's performance differentials. The study's cross‐sectional setting limits inference about causality among the constructs.

Customer versus competitor orientation appears to be contingent on a firm's competitive environment, which indicates that market orientation and its components are not necessarily equally relevant for firms with different strategies and in different environments.

The paper introduces and empirically tests two novel symmetric component measures of customer orientation and competitor orientation. Academicians are provided with insights with respect to the content and symmetry of component measures of the market orientation construct and their relation to firm performance. Furthermore, business practitioners are given a more solid foundation for better allocation of resources to their customer and competitor‐oriented activities.

There is limited understanding of how businesses, particularly in a global context, activate the marketing concept in order to become market‐driven. A study was conducted to delineate the activation process in an international setting, and some of the facilitating and impeding factors. In‐depth interviews were conducted with executives of 22 subsidiaries of a multinational firm. Activation appeared to consist of interpreting, adopting and implementing the marketing concept. Implementation is itself a sequence of market intelligence activities. Greater adoption and implementation, as well as higher quality intelligence work, are tied to stronger organizational performance. Facilitators (e.g. top management commitment) and inhibitors (e.g. over‐emphasis on profits) were identified. Other dimensions also surfaced including the slow, top‐down path of adoption, national culture, and market competitiveness. Recommendations were made on enhancing activation success.

Based on the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory, this study aims to examine the complementarity between market orientations and launch proficiency as a driver of new product performance.

In this research, an on-site survey of Iranian, research and development- intensive, manufacturing firms was carried out to examine the proposed hypotheses. Based on the 179 workable survey responses, a covariance-based structural equation modeling was applied to verify the proposed theoretical model.

The empirical findings reveal that the effects of market orientation or launch proficiency alone are not significant while the complementarity between them significantly influences new product performance. These research outcomes suggest that this complementarity leads to a bidirectional co-specialization relationship in firms, promoting both market intelligence generation processes and product-launch capabilities, and therefore resulting in superior new product performance.

The current characterization of the resource-based theory signifies that strategic resources merely have potential value and actualizing this value needs complementary organizational capabilities. Furthermore, the literature notably lacks empirical findings supporting these complementarities. Therefore, the findings concerning the bidirectional co-specialization between market orientation and launch proficiency not only provide empirical support for the dynamic capabilities theory but also address recent research calls to identify and calibrate the importance of dynamic capabilities for leveraging market orientation on new product performance.

This paper aims to conceptualize supply market orientation (SMO) for the purchasing and supply chain management function and discusses how SMO capabilities are developed and how their application differs within and across firms. This research can thus be used as a blueprint for the development of a SMO capability that accommodates a firm’s unique contextual antecedents’ profile.

The qualitative research design comprises five in-depth case studies with 43 semi-structured interviews with large manufacturing and service firms.

SMO is defined as the capability to exploit market intelligence to assess, integrate and reconfigure the heterogeneously dispersed resources in purchasing and supply chain management in a way that best reflects the peculiarities of a firm’s supply environment. The empirical analysis shows that although SMO capabilities are configured similarly, their application varies across and within firms depending on the characteristics of a firm’s purchasing categories and tasks. Hence, reactive versus proactive SMO application is contingent upon firm-level and purchasing category–level characteristics.

The study uses the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical background and provides empirical evidence and theoretical reasoning to elaborate and endorse SMO as a dynamic capability that firms need to have to compete in a complex and dynamic environment. The study provides guidance for supply chain managers on how to successfully develop and deploy a SMO capability.