Information, intelligence and resource advantage: A multi-market multi-theoretic call for research

Market orientation has been cited as a source of competitive advantage that allows the firm to construct offerings superior to those of competitors by the effective collection and dissemination of and reaction to market intelligence. Previous work on market orientation has focused on the effort firms devote to market intelligence and the importance that firms assign to market oriented capabilities. However, there has been little attention to the sources from which firms draw market intelligence. This oversight bears particular importance in a world of global trade, where the ability to gather useful information relies on the ability of firms to establish and maintain relationships with trade partners who can provide accurate and relevant information on the customers the firm seeks to serve, the competitors against which it must contend, and various environmental conditions in which it must compete. Developed specifically for the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Transitions and Innovation Systems as a guide for authors, this conceptual paper suggests topic areas, streams of research, and specific research questions for leveraging information towards firm competitive advantage in global, emerging, and domestic markets.