Cross-border digital platforms and discretionary adaptation strategy of exporters in emerging markets: The capability building perspective

In today’s digital era, many exporters in emerging markets (EMEs) participate in cross-border digital platforms to conduct business internationally. While recent research has acknowledged the significance of these platforms in EMEs’ international marketing practices, their impact on international marketing strategies remains underexplored. We address this gap by applying organizational learning theory to develop a conceptual framework that explains how participation in cross-border digital platforms influences EMEs’ marketing capabilities, enabling them to adopt a discretionary adaptation strategy. We also examine how this relationship is influenced by contingent factors, including latent factors (formal/informal institutional distance) and active factors (platform’s international infrastructure, CMO presence). Using survey data from 328 manufacturing EMEs in China, we find a positive relationship between EMEs’ participation in cross-border digital platforms and their discretionary adaptation strategy, with marketing capabilities as the mediator. Moreover, this positive relationship is strengthened by greater formal institutional distance and the degree of internationalization of the infrastructure provided by the platforms, but weakened in host markets with lower informal institutional distance. However, the presence of a CMO has no significant effect on the extent to which EMEs benefit from cross-border digital platforms. These findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of cross-border digital platforms and international marketing strategies, while providing valuable insights for policy makers and EMEs seeking to implement effective international marketing strategies.