The value appropriation gap in developing dynamic capabilities from marketing crowdsourcing

Abstract

While the crowdsourcing of marketing activities offers firms access to external knowledge, its potential to enhance dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring) lacks empirical investigation. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory and using an exploratory qualitative approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews with key informants, including marketing managers and crowdsourcing platform managers. Our findings reveal a persistent discrepancy between the potential value of crowdsourced insights and their actual integration into dynamic capabilities, conceptualized as the value appropriation gap. This gap arises from systemic friction when firms attempt to assimilate heterogeneous, externally generated insights with internal, firm-specific knowledge. We identify two interconnected barriers fueling this gap: cognitive biases, which distort the assimilation of external input, and ordinary capabilities, which can become structural barriers inhibiting innovation. By formalizing the value appropriation gap, we introduce a crowd-contextualized mechanism explaining why firms often fail to fully leverage external knowledge for competitive advantage.