Co-Marketing Capability: Scale Development and Performance Implications

Co-marketing alliances are a sustainable source of competitive advantage, though alliances still pose significant management challenges. Little is known about which capabilities allow firms to manage ongoing co-marketing alliances. Drawing on in-depth interviews with marketing alliance managers, the authors differentiate three dimensions of co-marketing capability and develop a multi-dimensional scale for its measurement. They test the relationship of co-marketing capability with alliance performance, as well as the moderating role of boundary conditions specific to alliances, using a cross sectional survey of 287 chief marketing officers. They find amplifying and buffering effects of the alliance context. The empirical results imply that managers who want to benefit from their co-marketing alliances should invest in alliance coordination, inter-firm communication, and knowledge management capabilities, and that alliance tenure, power imbalance among partners, and alliance flexibility affect resource allocation decisions.