The Influence of Marketing Communications on the Dominance of Standards

Literature suggests that in battles between competing standards, ultimately one standard will emerge as the dominant one to the detriment of the others. Various factors and forces have been identified to explain this phenomenon. The factor of marketing communications is one of these. This paper addresses its influence on standards dominance by analyzing 46 different standards from the high tech industry developed by consortia. We found five determinants of marketing communications, each with a direct positive impact on standards dominance . This study is new in applying insights from marketing (communications) literature to standards battles and in empirically showing the impact of marketing communications on standards dominance. Our findings have managerial implications both for standardization consortia and for participants in these consortia.