How marketing-experienced board members shape marketing leadership and firm value

Marketing research has increasingly examined marketing’s representation in firms’ upper echelons, yet the governance origins and value implications of marketing expertise in the boardroom remain underexamined. This study develops and tests a cross-level framework in which MEBMs shape firm value directly through governance and indirectly by influencing marketing leadership architecture in the top management team. Using an unbalanced panel of 193 U.S. Fortune 500 firms observed from 2013 to 2017, results indicate that MEBM representation is positively associated with Tobin’s q, a forward-looking measure of firm valuation. MEBMs are also positively associated with the likelihood of employing a marketing-experienced CEO (MECEO) and with chief marketing officer (CMO) presence in the top management team. Mediation analyses further indicate positive indirect effects of MEBMs on Tobin’s q through MECEO and CMO presence, consistent with partial mediation. These findings extend upper-echelon research in marketing by identifying board composition as a governance-level antecedent of marketing leadership and by clarifying when marketing expertise at the board level is reflected in shareholder value.