Value innovation, deliberate learning mechanisms and information from supply chain partners

Although marketing scholars have emphasized both the importance of internal learning mechanisms and of external learning through supply chain partners research findings on how these factors influence each other are merely lacking. Analyzing survey data of 182 industrial firms, we examine how information provision by upstream and downstream supply chain parties moderates the effect of internal deliberate learning mechanisms on value innovation ability. Results of the PLS analysis suggest that internal learning mechanisms and external information exchange do not always work symbiotically. Our findings provide interesting results for (the management of) innovation processes and supply chain relations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.