Most work extending the resource-based theory of the firm to examine the marketing assets and capabilities required to deliver customer value is of a theoretical or casebased nature. Little attempt has been made to measure these empirically, nor to examine differences in the capabilities required in different industries. In addition, similarities or differences between countries in assets and capabilities due to differences in market conditions or resource endowments have not been considered. The paper reports preliminary findings from research conducted in the U.K and New Zealand to develop a cross-nationally valid measure of marketing capabilities in service industries. Introduction In recent years the resource-based view of the firm has become a dominant paradigm in strategic management literature. This paradigm has been extended to marketing and to studying the assets and capabilities underlying superior performance in the marketplace (Day 1994; Hooley et al. 1999; Hooley and Greenley 2002; Hooley et al. 2002). Relatively little attention has, however, been devoted to examining how to measure such resources effectively, nor to how they vary across types of businesses, for example, between product and service businesses. Equally, resources may differ across countries due to differences in market conditions or country resource endowments (Porter 1990). The purpose of the present paper is to develop an instrument for measuring marketing capabilities in service industries in two different and distinct countries, the U.K. and New Zealand. The U.K. is a large industrialised country, geographically proximate to other European countries, with a high proportion of service industries. New Zealand is a small predominantly agricultural economy, geographically distant from its markets. Literature Review The resource-based view of the firm developed from economics and strategy literature in the 1950s (Wernerfelt 1984). In essence, it seeks to identify the characteristics of the resources underlying the development of a sustainable competitive advantage (Day 1994). Such resources are considered to be those that possess the combined