Consistent with our conceptualization of the intermediary role of CE, we employed the procedures recommended by Baron and Kenny [3] to examine H3, i.e., whether CE mediated the effect of IT capabilities on product innovation performance. Recent studies in various research fields (e.g., [41]) argued that condition 1 of the classic mediation analysis (i.e., IT capabilities and product innovation performance) can be relaxed without hampering the validity of the mediation analysis. Therefore, we followed this suggestion by testing the mediation role of CE. Full mediation is present when the following conditions are met: a path from the independent variable (i.e., IT capabilities in our study) to the dependent variable (i.e., product innovation performance) is not significant, while paths from the independent variable to the mediator (i.e., CE) and from the mediator to the dependent variable are both significant. Partial mediation is present when all three paths are significant. After linking IT capabilities with product innovation performance based on Fig. 2, the path from IT capabilities to product innovation performance was not significant (path coefficient was .06 at p > .05), and the other two paths were significant (path coefficient were .32 at p _ .01 and .25 at p _ .05, respectively). We thus concluded that H3 was supported and consistent with our theorization that CE fully mediated the effect of IT capabilities on product innovation performance.