A configurational perspective of marketing’s role in the performance of tech-based ventures

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-026-01164-2 ORIGINAL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH A configurational perspective of marketing’s role in the performance of tech-based ventures Jannis von Nitzsch1 · Victor Trofimov1 · Verena Rieger2 · Andreas Engelen1 Received: 13 June 2025 / Accepted: 5 May 2026 © The Author(s) 2026 Abstract While existing research has examined how founders’ marketing experience and the presence of a Chief Marketing Officer relate to the performance of tech-based ventures, we broaden this perspective by studying how these roles may be complemented or substituted by early marketing managers and marketing employees. Relying on a configurational approach, we acknowledge that multiple distinct combinations of marketing positions across levels of an organizational hierarchy may be positively associated with the performance of tech-based ventures. We employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), complemented by qualitative interviews and regression analysis, to identify these highperforming combinations. Drawing on a longitudinal sample spanning Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and Compustat data on 1,791 tech-based ventures over six years, we find that no single marketing level is necessary for funding and marketrelated performance. Instead, we identify six configurations associated with high funding volumes and five associated with a high number of covered markets. Across these configurations, marketing management appears to be the most consistently influential role, appearing in most high-performing combinations and demonstrating strong positive effects in our complementary regression analyses. Keywords Tech-based ventures · Configurational perspective · Resource-based view · Marketing structure · FsQCA Introduction Tech-based ventures play a significant role in driving nations’ innovativeness and economic growth (Wong et al., 2005). Yet, among the total population of these techbased ventures, only a few reach key milestones in the early Bulent Menguc served as Area Editor for this article. Andreas Engelen Jannis von Nitzsch Victor Trofimov Verena Rieger 1 Faculty of Business Administration and Economics – Management, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstr. 1, Düsseldorf 40225, Germany 2 University of Münster, Schlossplatz 3, Münster 48149, Germany stages, such as commercializing products in one or more markets and securing venture capital (VC) funding (Rieger et al., 2025). Research suggests that the marketing function of ventures plays a significant role in achieving these milestones (Fürst et al., 2023). Since ventures usually lack established marketing resources such as brands (Read et al., 2009), many of their resources reside in their marketingrelated members. In this vein, for example, Zhao et al. (2013) find that ventures led by marketing-experienced founders achieve superior performance, and Homburg et al. (2014) find that tech-based ventures benefit from having a CMO early in their efforts to secure much-needed VC funding. While these studies emphasize the importance of the marketing function for tech-based venture success, they have so far overlooked the presence of marketing at the middle (“marketing management”) and lower levels (“marketing employees”) of the organizational structure, and have paid limited attention to the consequences of how marketing presence is configured across all hierarchical levels of the marketing structure. This is a critical omission because, in tech-based ventures, many different configurations of marketing presence across these levels are possible, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science especially since it is intuitive to assume that most ventures cannot afford to staff all levels with marketing expertise due to scarce resources, nor is there necessarily a need to do so. While entrepreneurship literature finds that ventures build first hierarchical structures very early on (Jung et al., 2017), it also emphasizes that role allocations are highly flexible, with founders often acting as “Jacks of all trades” who also assume operational roles (Åstebro & Thompson, 2011) and early employees taking on mission-critical strategic tasks (Roach & Sauermann, 2015). These considerations explain the not-so-uncommon observations of successful ventures without marketing-experienced founders or CMOs, which somewhat contradict prior empirical findings. For example, the tech-based venture Benu Networks, founded in 2010 in Massachusetts and active in the telecom services sector, secured significant funding (about 60 million USD) and successfully broadened its trademark applications (i.e., another early-stage performance indicator) early on, without a marketing-experienced founder or a CMO during the first six years after its founding. Understanding the implications of such marketingstructure configurations for the performance of tech-based ventures is essential for both scholars and practitioners. From a scholarly perspective, a configurational approach that encompasses marketing presence across hierarchical levels offers a new lens for research investigating the role of marketing presence in tech-based ventures. While existing research has examined associations with unifinality by studying “average net effects” of, for example, CMO presence, we extend this perspective by focusing on complex configurations that imply equifinality. Hence, we shift the discussion from which marketing resources are needed to how they should be configured. From a practitioner perspective, knowledge of alternative ways to build a performanceenhancing marketing structure is vital, as most tech-based ventures operate in resource-constrained settings where, for example, creating a CMO position might be too costly. Therefore, we ask the following question: Which configurations of marketing at various levels within the marketing structure of tech-based ventures (founders with marketing experience, a CMO, marketing management, and marketing employees) are associated with strong performance? To address this question, we draw on the resource-based view, especially the sub-stream on resource configurations (Pahnke et al., 2023; Sirmon et al., 2010), to examine the association between different configurations of marketing structures and funding- as well as market-related performance. Recognizing both the relevance of all marketing levels as resources that may enhance tech-based venture performance (e.g., Homburg et al., 2014; Rieger et al., 2025) and the challenge of a priori theorizing about “high performing configurations,” we use an abductive research approach 13 that primarily relies on a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) (Fiss, 2011), which is an effective tool for capturing complex interdependencies and equifinality (Fiss, 2011; Salonen et al., 2021; Schückes et al., 2025; Slager et al., 2023). Adopting such an approach offers important input for theory building on the (...truncated)