Examination of the role of competitive advantage in the relationship between the marketing intelligence and export performance of the companies located in the industrial town of Ilam city

The current paper was conducted with the aim of investigating the role of the competitive advantage in the relationship between the marketing intelligence on the export performance within the scope of the activities of the Industrial towns in the city of Ilam. To attain the research goals, as many as 155 people of mangers and experts were selected through simple random method for responding to the research questionnaires. The research sample group responded to the Marketing Intelligence (L.A. Cacciolatti and A. Fearne) and the Competitive advantage and Exports performance (Murray et al) questionnaires on the Likert scale. The data taken from the research questionnaires were analyzed by using the Pearson correlation coefficient, structural equation modeling and regression analysis. The findings resulting from the data analysis implicated that there is a significant and direct relationship between dimensions of the marketing intelligence (type of information, sources of information, and alternation in using information) and the competitive advantage (r=0.986) and between the competitive advantage and the export performance (r=0.925). The results of the structural equation modeling and regression analysis illustrated that the competitive advantage plays a mediating role in the relationship between the marketing intelligence and export performance of the companies among the industrial companies. The findings suggest that the marketing intelligence will at first result in enhanced competitive advantage of the companies and then the competitive advantage will bring about a boost to the export performance of the companies