Unleashing the importance of creativity, experience and intellectual capital in the adaptation of export marketing strategy and competitive position

Export marketing strategy has become an exciting research topic in strategic management literature because of its momentous role in sustainable competitive advantage and performance of firms. However, it is not yet recognized what factors enable top management team in adaptation of the export marketing strategy. This research aims to unleash how the intangible skills; creativity, business experience and intellectual capital facilitate marketing managers in adaptation of the expert marketing strategy (product, price, promotion and distribution) that can spur sustainable competitive performance. We collected data from 293 SMEs and used structural equation modeling for testing the hypotheses. The results indicate that the intangible skills; creativity, experience and intellectual capital do not directly contribute to sustainable competitive performance. However, creativity has a significant influence on product, price, promotion and distribution strategy, experience has a significant influence on product, price and promotion strategy and intellectual capital is only a significant predictor of product strategy. In the dimensions of export marketing strategy, product, price and distribution significantly while promotion does not significantly contribute to sustainable competitive performance. Moreover, export marketing strategy adaptation fully mediates the relationship between creativity and sustainable competitive performance as well as between experience and sustainable competitive performance while it does not mediate the path between intellectual capital and sustainable competitive performance. The findings recommend SMEs to emphasize highly skilled marketing staff who have competencies (experience, creative and intellectual) in order to build an effective export marketing strategy—resulting sustainable competitive performance. Further implications are discussed.