Strategic Management Journal Strat. Mgmt. J., 26: 259–276 (2005) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/smj.450 MARKETING AND TECHNOLOGY RESOURCE COMPLEMENTARITY: AN ANALYSIS OF THEIR INTERACTION EFFECT IN TWO ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXTS MICHAEL SONG, 1 CORNELIA DROGE, 2 * SANGPHET HANVANICH 3 and ROGER CALANTONE 2 1 The Bloch School, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.A.; TEMA, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands 2 Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A. 3 Williams College of Business, Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A. The dynamic capabilities perspective posits that a firm can leverage the performance impact of existing resources through resource configuration, complementarity, and integration, but little empirical research addresses these issues. We investigate the effects on performance of marketing capabilities, technological capabilities, and their complementarity (interaction), and whether these effects are moderated by low vs. high technological turbulence. Results from SEM two- group analyses (with controls) show that both main effects positively impact performance in both environmental contexts. However, (1) their interaction effect is significant only in the high- turbulence environment; (2) the marketing-related main effect is lower in the high-turbulence environment; and (3) the main effects of technology-related capabilities are the same in both environments. Our research suggests that the synergistic performance impact of complementary capabilities can be substantive in particular environmental contexts: while synergistic rents cannot always be obtained, it is possible to leverage existing resources through complementarity. Copyright  2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION The relationships between resources (or capabil- ities) and firm performance have attracted much research interest, but we still know relatively lit- tle about why some firms successfully use their capabilities while others do not (Helfat, 2000). The extant literature suggests that superior performance Keywords: dynamic marketing/technological capabilities; resource-based theory; interaction effect; SEM * Correspondence to: Cornelia Droge, Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University, N370 North Busi- ness Complex, East Lansing, MI 48824-1122, U.S.A. E-mail: droge@msu.edu can come from resource uniqueness (e.g., Bar- ney, 1991), from reconfiguration and integration of existing resources (e.g., Eisenhardt and Mar- tin, 2000; Teece, Pisano, and Shuen, 1997), and/or from the ability to respond appropriately to the surrounding environment (e.g., Mintzberg, 1987; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Tan and Litschert, 1994). Our study aims to contribute to this lit- erature by focusing on two issues that are rel- atively neglected: (1) the performance impact of the interaction of capabilities (in addition to main effects); and (2) the differential impact of capa- bilities and their interaction in different environ- ments. The former addresses whether complemen- tary capabilities have synergistic effects, while Copyright  2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 17 October 2002 Final revision received 17 September 2004