The impacts of competence-based marketing capabilities : relative attention, relationship learning and collaboration development

Purpose: Original equipment manufacturing (OEM) suppliers must identify and communicate competences to ensure that they are successfully translated into competitive advantages. This study aims to explore the competence-based marketing capabilities of suppliers based on competence-based marketing view. It integrates resource-based theory and resource dependence theory to conduct a detailed evaluation of the impact of competence-based marketing capabilities on collaboration development, which is classified as either exploitative or explorative collaboration between buyers and suppliers. Design/methodology/approach: The partial least squares method was used to analyse and find direct support for the authors’ hypotheses based on cross-sectional data from a sample of 116 Taiwanese OEM suppliers. Findings: The results find no support as recent arguments that the marketing of competence would directly affect collaborative relationships in a buyer–supplier relationship. The two mediating roles of relative attention from buyers and relationship learning with buyers were confirmed. The empirical findings indicated that relative attention from buyers partially mediates the relationship between competence-based marketing capabilities and exploitative collaboration development, while relationship learning completely mediates the relationship between competence-based marketing capabilities and two-pronged collaboration development. Originality/value: This study provides a thorough examination of competence-based marketing capabilities, which have attracted substantial attention from business scholars but empirical research investigating and discussing how suppliers develop new collaborations with buyers is lacking.