From a strategic marketing theory perspective, these findings
highlight the importance of strategy implementation as a
source of competitive advantage. Our results indicate that
marketing organization fit with strategic type, a key enabler of
strategy implementation in marketing theory (e.g., Bonoma
1985; Walker and Ruekert 1987), is significantly associated
with marketing performance. In contrast, our data suggest that
a business's strategic type alone is not significantly associated
with marketing performance. These findings are consistent
with two central tenets of strategic marketing theory that have
received only limited empirical attention: When implemented
successfully, several different strategies can lead to superior
performance (e.g.. Day and Wensley 1988), and the way marketing
activities are organized is an important enabler of strategy
implementation (e.g.. Walker and Ruekert 1987).
Our findings also indicate the existence of important
trade-offs between the effectiveness and efficiency dimensions
of marketing performance (e.g., Bonoma and Clark
1988; Walker and Ruekert 1987).