Development of marketing capabilities scale in banking sector

Purpose – The purpose of the study is to develop, measure and empirically validate marketing capabilities (MARKCAPB) scale in banking sector. Design/methodology/approach – Data are collected from a branch manager and three next senior managers of 144 branches of 21 public and 7 private banks operating in Jammu city, North India. Findings – The study finds that marketing capabilities are of multi-dimensional scale, comprising three dimensions – outside-in, inside-out and spanning. Further, the study results demonstrate that all three dimensions are significantly related to marketing capabilities; with outside-in capabilities to be most strongly associated with marketing capabilities development followed by inside-out and spanning dimensions. Research limitations/implications – The study focused on only operational perspective of marketing capabilities to develop a reliable and valid measurement scale. Hence, developing marketing capabilities scale from remaining three perspectives – intellectual capital, marketing mix and competition would prove to be an interesting line of future research. Second, as marketing capabilities scale is developed and tested in banks, that too, in a single city of a country (India), it becomes important to examine whether the same scale can be applied to different sectors and countries. Moreover, future research could be carried on at identifying various antecedents that facilitate the development of marketing capabilities. Originality/value – This is the first study of this type that contributes to the development of multi-dimensional scale of marketing capabilities in banking sector in Indian context. The study provides banks’ managers with the deeper understanding of how to develop and establish marketing capabilities in an organisation. Besides, it also put light on the significant role of outside-in, inside-out and spanning capabilities that facilitate the managers in enhancing financial performance by focusing on varied sub dimensions such as relationship, regularity, communication (outside-in), Web technology and employee bonding (inside-out), advertising, pricing and product/service skills (spanning).