The aims of this paper are to identify and classify the knowledge resources that shape intellectual capital (IC) within the marketing function, to develop and validate a related scale and to demonstrate the scale's applicability in an empirical context.
A literature-based approach was adopted to identify and classify knowledge assets in the field of marketing. The new scale's content was then tested in a number of companies with different profiles. A subsequent survey of a representative sample of 346 Spanish firms sought to validate the scale and to assess those companies' marketing-related IC.
The literature search provided the basis for a marketing-related IC architecture comprising three main categories, nine subcategories and eighty items whose validity was tested and confirmed. The survey revealed that marketing-specific human capital (HC) is the most developed knowledge resource in Spanish firms, followed by marketing-specific relational capital (RC), while marketing-specific structural capital (SC) is the least developed. Significant differences were also found among companies with different profiles (B2C vs B2B, high-tech vs low-tech and manufacturing vs services).
This study makes a valuable contribution to the IC literature as one of the first to deploy the general IC framework in a specific functional area (here: marketing and sales) for more meaningful and in-depth assessment of firm-specific knowledge resources.
