Equifinality or singular path? A configurational analysis of new farmers’ marketing competence and marketing performance on digital platforms

New farmers who sell through digital platforms are increasingly important economic actors in rural China, yet their marketing performance varies widely. Most studies of their marketing competence estimate the net effect of each competence and therefore cannot show how competences combine. Drawing on the marketing-capabilities literature and a configurational perspective, this study examines how six competence conditions—resource integration capability, digital marketing skills, content creation capability, customer relationship management, brand narrative capability, and platform adaptation capability—combine in association with marketing performance, and whether these combinations differ across levels of product differentiation. Survey data from 240 new farmers in 12 Chinese provinces are analysed with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. First, no single competence is necessary for high marketing performance. Second, three configurations are each sufficient for high marketing performance: content-driven, platform–relationship, and platform-dependent. At the level of core conditions they reflect two routes—content and brand competences, or digital marketing skills combined with platform adaptation—and platform adaptation capability is present in all three. Third, the configurations for non-high performance are largely the mirror image of the high-performance configurations, sharing the joint absence of digital marketing skills and platform adaptation capability as their core, so the evidence of causal asymmetry is limited. Fourth, all three configurations are sufficient at both high and low levels of product differentiation, but the two configurations that include content and brand competences cover more high performers among farmers with highly differentiated products, whereas the platform–relationship configuration covers a similar share at both levels. Because the data are cross-sectional and self-reported, the findings are associational. The study offers a configurational account of new farmers’ marketing competence and suggests directions for differentiated support.