The Influence of Digital Marketing Capability Based on Resource-Based View on the Competitive Advantage of MSMEs in North Sulawesi Province

Abstract

This article examines how digital marketing capability, viewed through the lens of the resource-based view (RBV), can be theorized to influence the competitive advantage of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in North Sulawesi Province. RBV holds that a firm's sustained competitive advantage derives from internal resources and capabilities that are valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable (the VRIN criteria); this article treats digital marketing capability as a bundle of five such candidate resources: social media marketing capability, e-commerce/online sales capability, content marketing capability, digital advertising capability, and customer data and analytics capability. Each dimension is mapped conceptually onto the VRIN criteria and a constructed dataset to illustrate how these dimensions might be distributed in their relative contribution to competitive advantage among North Sulawesi MSMEs. The discussion suggests that social media marketing and e-commerce capability are the most readily observable and most rapidly diffusing dimensions, which may simultaneously make them valuable but comparatively easier to imitate, whereas customer data and analytics capability, while less commonly adopted, may offer more durable VRIN-consistent advantage once established. The article argues that RBV provides a coherent rationale for prioritizing MSME digital-capacity-building investment toward dimensions that are harder to imitate, rather than toward the most visible but most easily copied digital marketing tactics.