Chief marketing officers and firm performance: A multinational perspective on the value relevance of the chief marketer

ABSTRACT

The authors examine the effect of the presence of a chief marketing officer (CMO) in the top management team on firm performance and explore the performance implications of the CMO function worldwide by using a data set of publicly traded companies from 93 countries from all continents. The article draws on upper echelons theory and the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) literature and focuses on the differences in performance across public companies contingent on corporate organizational structure complexity, uncertainty avoidance, and the degree of firm globalization. The findings show evidence of a positive effect of CMO presence in the worldwide sample, as well as nuanced pathways of impact, mainly through the effects of organizational structure complexity and country level uncertainty avoidance on the value relevance of the CMO in the corporation.

KEYWORDS:

• chief marketing officer
• marketing department influence
• firm performance
• globalization
• uncertainty avoidance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Our results are robust to including controls for ownership concentration, leverage, R&D/sales, board size, and board independence.