Measuring the relationship between marketing assets, intellectual capital and firm performance

Although the literature highlights the contribution of different marketing assets to firm performance, it is still far from reaching a consolidated and exhaustive position on this topic. Several authors have, in fact, proposed metrics and performance measurement systems related to marketing strategies, but the relationship between specific marketing resources and overall firm profitability needs further analysis and empirical research. This paper proposes a framework to measure the effect of the use and interaction of different marketing assets on firm performances, through their impact on the level of the firm’s intellectual capital. We test our framework by adopting a quantitative approach, providing evidence from within the Italian children’s clothing industry. Specifically, we measure the intellectual capital using the knowledge capital scorecard method proposed by Lev (Gu and Lev in Intangibles assets. measurement, drivers, usefulness. New York University, New York, 2001; Seetharaman et al. in J Intellect Cap 3(2):128–148, 2002) and we analyze it by modeling some firm specific variables such as brands, stores, advertising expenses, the balance sheet’s intangible assets and their interactions. The empirical analysis highlights that: (a) there is a positive direct relationship between a firm’s intellectual capital value and its performance; (b) the combination and interaction of specific marketing resources affect the intellectual capital value. The results show that the intellectual capital value can be used as a synthetic indicator to evaluate the impact of some specific marketing resources on business performance.