The Effect of the Board of Director's Characteristics on the Marketing Capability of Selected Companies Active in the Iranian Food Industry

Marketing capabilities represent a firm's specific abilities in identifying target markets, strategies related to it, and establishing and maintaining relationships with loyal customers. Theoretical and empirical research on marketing capabilities generally supports a positive relationship between marketing capabilities and firm performance. There are many factors that can affect the firm's marketing capabilities. One of these factors is the board structure and its characteristics. As an instrument of corporate governance, the board of directors helps to improve its effectiveness and thereby improve the company's performance through its composition, internal organization and decision-making processes. This study uses the data of 12 selected companies active in the food industry in the period 2011-2020, to study the effect of board characteristics on marketing capabilities of companies. to estimate the model, the system generalized method of moments and dynamic data panel approach have been used. Based on the research results, the independence of the board of directors and the size of the board of directors had a positive and significant effect on the marketing capability of the studied companies. Because with the increase of the independence of the board of directors and the size of the company, the supervision of the activity of the board of directors and the company has increased and while improving the performance of the company, it has increased its marketing capability. The duality of the role of the CEO also has a negative and significant effect on the marketing capabilities of companies. Also, the effect of firm size, market value on book value of company assets and financial leverage on the marketing capability of companies are positive, positive and negative, but they are not significant. In addition, the age of the company and the rate of return on assets of the company have a positive and significant effect on the recovery ability of companies. In estimation models, the variable of environmental forgiveness (industry growth) has a positive and significant effect on the marketing capability of companies. But the effect of turbulence variable on the marketing capability of the company at a significant level of 5% has been negative and significant. the independence of the board of directors and the size of the board of directors have had a positive and significant impact on the marketing ability of the studied companies. This is similar to the findings of Sun et al. (2020), Arosa et al. (2013) and Nikbakht et al. (2010). Because the greater the number of non-executive members to the total number of board members, the monitoring of the activities of the board of directors and the company (including the company's marketing department) will increase, and therefore, with the increase in the number of non-executive board members, the performance of the company will improve and its marketing capability will also increase. In addition, companies with a large board of directors benefit from the diverse and specialized opinions and suggestions of members, and while having more non-commissioned directors in their composition, they have more time and ability to perform their supervisory and decision-making duties. The duality of the CEO's role also has a negative and significant impact on the marketing ability of companies. This finding confirms the study results of Arosa et al. (2013) and Sun et al. (2020). Because if the CEO is present in the composition of the board of directors, the possibility of monitoring the company's activity by the board of directors is reduced and this has a negative effect on the performance and marketing ability of companies.The age of the company also has a positive effect on the marketing ability of the companies and confirms the results of the study of Sun et al. (2020). In other words, compared to new companies, old companies have more marketing capabilities. Also, the effect of the rate of return on the company's assets on the company's marketing ability was positive. These findings confirm the results of the study by Sun et al. (2020) and Tavassooli and Nasrullah Nia (2019). In the estimated models, the variable of environmental forgiveness (industry growth) has a positive effect on the marketing ability of companies. Because with a high probability, along with the growth of the industry, the company also has a high and stable growth and this has a positive effect on its marketing, entrepreneurship and research and development expenses. This is different from the results of the study by Sun et al. (2020). The impact of the disturbance variable on the company's marketing ability was also negative because with the increase in the fluctuation of income in the company and the entire industry, the expenses spent on marketing, entrepreneurship and research and development of the companies will also fluctuate and will have a negative impact on the company's marketing capabilities.