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The knowledge‐based view of the firm suggests that knowledge is the firm’s key resource for creating and sustaining economic rent. This perspective raises an important question for marketers: What is marketing knowledge? We argue first that marketing knowledge resides in three key marketing processes: product development management, customer relationship management, and supply chain management. Second, we argue that marketing knowledge is the extent of understanding of these three marketing processes, an extent which can be measured by evaluating awareness of factors, control of factors, and application of knowledge in new markets. We empirically test this conceptualization of marketing knowledge and, as a predictive validation, examine its relationship with marketing innovation.

International businesses play a significant role in the growth, innovation and survival of technology-based firms (TBFs). Creating new opportunities in international markets, using communication networks and confronting constraints on available resources have distinguished the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and intensified the importance of knowledge acquisition and continuous learning. This study aimed to (1) configure (the types and sources of) and (2) measure the internationalization knowledge of TBFs, by focusing on a knowledge-intensive part of the health industry in an emerging country: Iranian advanced medical equipment companies.

For this purpose, a qualitative approach was adopted to interview the leaders of eight TBFs exporting medical equipment. Obtained data were investigated using content analysis.

According to the content analysis results for configuration, technological knowledge and market knowledge were mainly obtained through direct experience and vicarious learning; however, internationalization knowledge is not so established as the third major knowledge area to integrate technological with market knowledge in line with corporate strategies of an internationalizing firm. For measurement of knowledge assets of internationalizing firms as a prerequisite for continuous improvement, several intellectual capital indices were extracted, including human, structural and relational capital.

This research complements existing literature in internationalization knowledge configuration via deploying an "Intellectual capital" perspective. It could enhance efforts for improving the learning of internationalizing SMEs, especially in the developing countries.

Focusing on entrepreneurship in China's emerging economy, this paper aims to explore the extent to which the human capital and social capital of Chinese entrepreneurs facilitates their acquisition of tacit marketing knowledge.

Observation and literature review are presented.

The paper proposes a conceptual framework that links tacit marketing knowledge and entrepreneurs' human and social capital. When accessibility of the general knowledge of expertise and professional business in a society is low, Chinese entrepreneurs in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) thus depend on their own resources of human capital and abilities of social capital to acquire tacit knowledge. Both specific and general human capitals facilitate Chinese entrepreneurs' acquisition of tacit marketing knowledge. With a strong awareness of the low level of institutional trust in the current transition economy, Chinese entrepreneurs develop the interpersonal trusting relationship to gain social support. Through the trust and trustworthiness, the quality of relationships in business networks creates the personal relational resource for tacit knowledge reciprocity.

This paper fills the gap in the literature by identifying critical intervening components of human and social capitals in the entrepreneurship process in China's emerging market knowledge which have previously remained untouched. The key issues of how Chinese entrepreneurs of private SMEs initially acquire knowledge‐based resources to operate their businesses are critically proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to detail teaching and learning strategies designed to incorporate advances in marketing and continued interest in new marketing knowledge.

The current debate concerning the transfer of new marketing knowledge from academics to practitioners is reviewed. Teaching and learning strategies that increase exposure to and interest in new marketing knowledge are described.

Certain classroom strategies that increase the transmission of new marketing knowledge appear to increase the receptivity towards future advances. The argument is made that the use of such strategies helps move marketing academics from a push strategy for disseminating marketing knowledge to a pull strategy.

The strategies described here have been used with highly motivated, experienced students, such as executives.

The specific classroom techniques have been refined over a number of years and offer ideas that are immediately applicable to marketing faculty.

The educational approach presented here derives from a firm grounding in both research and teaching and offers a practical approach to bridging the academic‐practitioner divide.

This paper aims to adopt a contextual approach to the knowledge-performance linkage by deepening into the role of marketing and sales employees’ knowledge resources in the generation and delivery of superior customer experiences (CEs) and into the motivational antecedents of knowledge acquisition and development.

To gather information about the variables studied in this research, a survey was conducted among Spanish firms with at least 100 employees, resulting in a representative sample of 346 companies. Structural equation modeling based on partial least squares was then applied to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results show that employees’ motivation (and especially intrinsic motivation) affects CE both directly and indirectly through its influence on marketing-specific human capital. More precisely, customer knowledge and different types of marketing-related skills (creativity, targeting, problem-solving, social media management and communication skills) are the only constituents of marketing-specific human capital that significantly affect relative CE performance (i.e. performance vis-à-vis competitors), while product/service and market knowledge do not play a relevant role.

The results contribute both to the knowledge management and intellectual capital literatures by highlighting the motivational levers of human capital in the context of the marketing and sales function and the specific types of employee knowledge resources that induce superior CEs. Consequently, marketing and sales managers are provided with useful guidance to shape their human resource management policies and to establish their knowledge priorities.

The purpose of this paper is to: first, divide external knowledge into different levels and understand how these different levels of external knowledge create different knowledge networks. Second, explore the relation among different levels of external knowledge, different types of knowledge and their influences on innovation. Different types of knowledge may act as mediators between different levels of external knowledge and innovation performance are also discussed. Third, further explicate the possible reasons behind the phenomena observed in the first and second objectives.

The quantitative and qualitative research methods were adopted in this study. In terms of the quantitative research method, data were collected from 157 information and communications technology (ICT) companies in Zhangjiang. There were 38 interviews carried out using the qualitative research method. Interviewees included 26 directors from the Zhangjiang ICT chip companies and 12 directors from China’s domestic mobile phone manufacturing sector.

This study finds out that the source of external knowledge in the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park is mostly derived from cross-regional and cross-national connections. Through the connection with global companies, the firms in Zhangjiang acquire technical knowledge. Also, through the interaction with cross-regional companies, the firms in Zhangjiang absorb market knowledge. The results of this study indicate that the cross-regional connections are spurred by the increasing demand of the Chinese domestic market and the government’s support for cross-regional interactions. Cross-national connections are encouraged and led by the Chinese Government after China’s 3G communication standard is adopted.

This study is built upon a case study in Zhangjiang of China. The findings of this study may not be applicable to other countries or regions in China. Also, this study only focusses on the ICT industry in Zhangjiang. Knowledge from different industries is not included in this study. In addition, the formal and informal knowledge flow is neglected in this study as well.

The findings of this study provide business executives and policymakers with a new way of thinking about the development of industrial clusters and local firms. Firms may be able to find new ways to raise innovation performance using different external knowledge.

The major contribution of this study is an initial attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of external knowledge of industrial clusters, different types of knowledge and their influences on innovation performance. Moreover, the mediating effects of different types of knowledge are also discussed.

The topic of organizational learning is populated with many theories and models; many relate to the enduring organizational learning framework consisting of knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination, and knowledge use. However, most of the research either emphasizes structural knowledge acquisition and dissemination as a composite construct, or focuses solely on the structural aspect of knowledge acquisition and dissemination. The primary objective of this study is to develop and test a model of organizational learning that incorporates both structural and informal knowledge acquisition and dissemination and as separate processes. The predictors of these processes are also proposed

A model of organizational learning that incorporates both structural and informal knowledge acquisition and dissemination constructs, along with three predictors of these organizational learning constructs were developed and quantitatively tested.

An inference to the research questions and hypotheses suggests that informal knowledge acquisition and dissemination have significant paths to market knowledge use, whereas structural knowledge acquisition and dissemination have, at best, a weak association with market knowledge use. Although the results were based on exploratory analysis, they provide tentative quantitative evidence that informal knowledge processes are at least as important as structural knowledge processes in market‐based organizational learning.

While the hypothesized model did not satisfy the goodness‐of‐fit tests, data‐driven exploratory analysis helped to refine two separate structural and informal models for future testing. The statistical explanation provided and procedures used to remedy the non‐fit issues should help future researchers to deal with structural equation‐modeling issues when similar non‐fit problems arise.

Discusses issues concerning the relationship between codified marketing theory and practical strategic marketing expertise, particularly with respect to the importance of “tacit” or unarticulated knowledge. The trajectory of argument draws attention to the role of words as symbolic modelling devices and explores implications of this position for theorising marketing expertise. Makes use of a multidisciplinary perspective and draws material from work in cognitive science, the psychology of expertise and the philosophy of science. Sets the problematisation of practical theory in marketing within a broader context of a possible epistemological “crisis” of rationality in practical disciplines. The conclusion suggests that an epistemology of expertise for marketing management demands both theoretical and linguistic sophistication and implies a pedagogic shift towards a model of philosophic enquiry in marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of relational mechanisms and market contracts on cross‐enterprise knowledge trading in supply chain and to examine the role of market contracts. Relational mechanism is categorized into indirect and direct relational mechanism in this paper. Cross‐enterprise knowledge trading is categorized into explicit and tacit knowledge trading. The indirect relational mechanism is mainly expressed by knowledge brokers, while the direct relational mechanism consists of shared goals and trust.

Multiple regression analysis was performed on questionnaire data from 256 Chinese manufacturing enterprises in supply chain in order to assess the relationships between relational mechanisms, market contracts and cross‐enterprise knowledge trading.

The results show that knowledge brokers and market contracts have significant and positive effects on explicit knowledge trading, but the effects on tacit knowledge trading are not significant. Shared goals and trust have significant and positive effects not only on explicit knowledge trading but also on tacit knowledge trading, while trust has a stronger positive effect on tacit knowledge trading than explicit knowledge trading. Finally, the moderating effects of market contracts are proven in the relationships between relational mechanisms and knowledge trading, excluding the relationship between knowledge brokers and tacit knowledge trading.

Previous studies about the cross‐enterprise knowledge trading in supply chain focused on theoretical research which did not match with reality, especially in China, where the relational mechanism in trading activities is strong. Based on relational exchange theory and transaction cost theory, a conceptual model for the effects of relational mechanisms and market contracts on cross‐enterprise knowledge trading in supply chain is proposed in this paper, and then empirically tested using the data collected from 256 Chinese manufacturing enterprises in supply chain with multiple regression models. The findings provide a theoretical basis for knowledge trading participants selecting an appropriate governance mechanism to promote knowledge trading, and these also guide the knowledge trading among members of supply chain in practice.

The paper aims to establish which formally and informally published sources of knowledge were mainly used by executives in the computer service industry to obtain knowledge of current developments in the field of marketing and to examine the purposes for which the knowledge gathered from these sources was employed.

Marketing managers in 141 large computer services businesses completed a questionnaire concerning the extents to which they used books, marketing magazines, academic journals, and grey literature (GL) for instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic purposes. Four “motivating factors” (e.g. occupational learning orientation) were examined plus three other influences (e.g. length of time in a marketing role). The possible consequences of the extensive use of various sources were explored.

Only 2 per cent of the sample read academic marketing journals, and just 3 per cent looked at marketing textbooks. However, 89 per cent of the sample accessed (mainly internet‐based) grey marketing literature and 62 per cent read marketing magazines. Nearly, one in six of the respondents stated that they had read practitioner “how to do” marketing books. Several hypothesised independent variables exerted positive and significant impacts on the degrees to which magazines; GL and practitioner books were employed to obtain marketing knowledge.

It was not possible to examine exactly why a particular knowledge source was preferred for a specific purpose. Potential connections between past academic research outputs and the contents of contemporary grey marketing literature and articles in marketing magazines could not be investigated. The results imply that GL must be recognised as a vital source of marketing knowledge. Issues relating to the codification and wider distribution of GL, copyright, the shortage of specialised GL bibliographies in the marketing area, and the long‐term availability of materials in electronic form need to be addressed.

This was the first empirical study to connect the use of marketing knowledge sources to the purposes (instrumental, conceptual, symbolic) for which the knowledge contained within them was required.