Antecedents of functional integration during new product development: The purchasing–marketing link

• We explain the increasing relevance of purchasing–marketing functional integration during new product development.
• We test the effect of different integration mechanisms on purchasing–marketing essential components.
• Most of the integration mechanisms traditionally proposed by the literature just promote some of these components.
• These results should be taken into account in the selection and design of effective purchasing–marketing integration mechanisms.

In response to different economic and business trends, companies are becoming increasingly dependent on external resources and capabilities as they seek to cater for an ever more complex and challenging demand. Such dependence has led an important group of scholars to draw attention to the inevitable integration of the purchasing and marketing functions. We stress here the need for such integration during new product development, and seek the mechanisms that may promote purchasing–marketing integration. Accordingly, this study describes two essential components underlying the concept of purchasing–marketing integration, and tests the effect of different integration mechanisms gathered from the literature on these two components. The model is tested on a sample of 141 Spanish industrial companies. Our results show that each one of these integration mechanisms varies in its effectiveness in promoting each key component of purchasing–marketing integration. Taking these asymmetric effects into account is crucial for selecting the appropriate purchasing and marketing integration devices within companies.