Dynamic Marketing Capabilities: Ein qualitativer Vergleich von Literatur und Praxis

Abstract

In a dynamic and technology-driven market environment, companies are faced with the challenge of not only acting efficiently, but also continuously adapting to new conditions. Dynamic marketing capabilities (DMCs) describe those market-oriented skills that enable organizations to identify market changes at an early stage (sensing), develop suitable measures (sizing) and adapt internal resources and structures in a targeted manner (reconfiguring). Although the concept is discussed in the academic literature, there is a lack of concrete research into how these capabilities are anchored in the day-to-day operations of Austrian companies. The need to study DMCs empirically is emphasized in order to better understand how companies use their marketing resources and capabilities to respond to market changes and gain competitive advantage. This study addresses this research gap by comparing the practical manifestations of DMC components described in the literature with their implementation in Austrian companies. A two-stage qualitative research design is used for this purpose. First, a systematic literature analysis is carried out, in which 50 empirical studies are thematically evaluated. The categories derived from this form the basis for the subsequent empirical study. In a second step, the thesis conducts five guideline-based expert interviews with marketing managers, which are analyzed using Mayring's qualitative content analysis. The findings from the literature are inductively supplemented and compared with the experts' statements. The results show that all the capabilities of the Sensing, Seizing and Reconfiguring components described in the literature can also be observed in practice. Only the two characteristics “Supply Chain Management” and “Development and Optimization of Knowledge Management” cannot be proven. At the same time, this work identifies twelve additional practical characteristics that have not been considered in the literature to date. The study concludes that although the DMC components and their described practical manifestations are largely confirmed by practice in the existing literature, they do not cover the entire spectrum of real application. This underlines the fact that the characteristics of DMCs are highly context-dependent and differ depending on the industry, company size or organizational structure.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	German (Austria)
Supervisor	Fabian Josef Stangl (Supervisor)