Do resources mediate the relationships between the internet and performance in the marketing domain? Testing the role of customer orientation and brand equity

The adoption of internet solutions for marketing increases over time, but a strong empirical evidence of their effect on performance is still lacking. The paper investigates the links existing between the internet, marketing resources and marketing performance, and test a model where two marketing resources – customer orientation and brand equity – are expected to mediate the relationship between internet technologies and performance. The analysis, based on a sample of 277 service firms and handled with a structural equation model technique, reveals that a significant partial mediation effect exists for customer orientation but not for brand equity. This effect provides implications for both theory and management.