تاثیر مقررات و مالکیت ساختار بر بازارگرایی در صنعت گردشگری در چین

The nature of market orientation and its impact on business performance and other related outcomes have been extensively researched in a range of service contexts including tourism. In contrast, our understanding of the factors that influence market orientation is still limited. This paper reports on a study that contributes to our understanding of the determinants of market orientation within the tourism sector by focusing specifically on the role played by two strategically important variables, namely government regulation and ownership structure. The study analyses two national samples of hotels and travel services in the rapidly growing tourism industry in China. The hotel sector has been open to foreign investment for two decades and has a diversified ownership structure, whereas the travel services sector has been dominated by government owned firms and relatively closed to foreign investment. The results of the survey suggest that of the two new antecedents, only government regulation has a significant role to play in driving market orientation. Internally, access to appropriate managerial and marketing capabilities was identified as a significant predictor of the development of market orientation.

The importance of marketing in relation to the tourism industry is well recognised (for example, Seaton & Bennett, 1996; Buhalis, 2000; Buhalis & Laws, 2001). However, much of the existing research in tourism marketing has tended to emphasise the consumer perspective, the tourism product and the nature of tourism distribution channels. In contrast, research in other sectors has increasingly emphasised the importance of the development of a marketing orientation as a route to competitive success. (Houston, 1986; Webster, 1988; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990). Building on the initial research by, inter alia, Kohli and Jaworski (1990), Narver and Slater (1990), and Deshpande, Farley, and Webster (1993) significant progress has been made in the understanding the conceptualisation and measurement of market orientation and evaluating its impact upon business performance in a range of different contexts including tourism (see Kohli, Jaworski, & Kumar, 1993; Slater & Narver, 1994; Cadogan & Diamantopoulos, 1995, Hooley, Cox, Fahy, & Shipley, 2000; Au & Tse, 1995; Sargeant & Mohamad, 1999; Harris, 2001; Wu, 2004). In contrast, despite their obvious importance, issues relating to the determinants and development of market orientation are still relatively under-researched (Jaworski & Kohli, 1996; Harris, 2002) and virtually no attention has been paid to the determinants of market orientation in the tourism sector. Where the determinants of marketing orientation have been the subject of research effort, it is typically internal organisational influences that have been the focus of attention (e.g. Ruekert, 1992; Jaworski & Kohli, 1993; Harris (1996) and Harris (2000); Homburg & Pflesser, 2000; Cadogan, Paul, Salminen, Puumalainen, & Sundqvist, 2001). Notwithstanding the impact of the external environment on business performance and the integration of environmental influences into the original market orientation models (Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Narver & Slater, 1990), researchers have devoted relatively little attention to exploring the impact of these variables in practice. Despite its economic significance, relatively little market orientation research has examined the travel and tourism sector and understanding of the factors that drive market orientation is, at best, limited. This paper aims to contribute to this relatively under-researched area by exploring both the internal and external influences on market orientation among hotels and travel services in China. In addition to an examination of existing, identified internal antecedents, the paper argues that governance issues may be of relevance to market orientation and considers the impact of ownership structure. With respect to external influences, the paper explicitly considers the impact of regulation—both of competition and product quality. The article begins with a brief review of the literature and discusses the development of hypotheses. The following sections explain the research method and data collection procedures. Thereafter, the results of the data analysis are presented and discussed and the final section provides a summary and conclusions.

This paper has focused attention on the determinants of market orientation in the tourism industry. The research has evaluated both recognised antecedents based on the original work of Kohli and Jaworski (1990) and proposed new factors which are expected to affect the development of market orientation. The empirical analysis of the tourism industry in China produces results that are broadly in line with those reported by Jaworski and Kohli (1993) and subsequent studies. Of the proposed new influences, regulation and human resource constraints were found to be significant but the evidence for the impact of governance arrangements (via ownership structure) was less clear cut, suggesting a need for further research in this area in particular. From the perspective of policy makers a number of important conclusions may be drawn, although these conclusions relate specifically to the context of tourism in a transitional economy. First, it is noted that, government regulations can have both negative and positive effects on market orientation. While the development of market orientation in tourism is facilitated by regulations emphasising product quality, fair competition and consumer protection, regulations that constrain competition between firms are found to have negative impacts on the development of market orientation. Second, the research suggests that the development of market orientation in the tourism industry in a transitional economy can be significantly constrained by the shortage of competent managerial and marketing talents and this may reflect a more general problem of limited access to appropriately qualified staff in the tourism sector. To the extent that promoting market orientation is seen as desirable in order to improve the competitiveness of tourism businesses in transitional economies, the findings suggest that policy makers need to pay particular attention to the configuration of existing regulations as they affect business. Regulations which constrain competition and protect established firms will have a detrimental effect on the development of market orientation and their value should be re-assessed. At the same time, there may be a case for tightening up the existing regulations or even developing new regulations that attempt to enhance levels of consumer protection, encourage increases in product quality and generally provide greater incentives for a move towards a market orientation. In addition, there may also be a role for governments in transitional economies in helping tourism business to become more market-oriented by providing solutions to the shortage of competent managerial and marketing talents. As a major provider and sponsor of education and training, there is considerable potential for government policy to attempt to improve the availability of well trained and market oriented managers to domestic businesses. The results reported above provide some useful insights into issues surrounding the development of market orientation in tourism in a transitional economy. However, they are not without limitations. These relate to several areas. First, with respect to measurement, non-state and state ownership are used as proxies for owner-controlled and manager-controlled companies respectively. A more refined measure could shed more light upon the effects of the ownership structure on firms’ development of market orientation. Second, the cross-sectional design enables the generation of important insights into the determinants of market orientation but understanding of the change processes involved in improving market orientation is still limited. Future research could usefully adopt a more in-depth and longitudinal design to explore the processes associated with the development of market orientation. Third, as with many previous studies, data were obtained from top managers. It would be useful to obtain a broader sample of managers and perhaps even non-managers in future studies, so that any potential bias in the data resulting from the level of the informants will be minimised.