سیستم های منابع انسانی به عنوان مقدمات بازار گرایی صنعت هتل: یک مطالعه تجربی در جزایر قناری، اسپانیا

This paper studies how the different dimensions determining the human resource management system (recruiting, training, evaluation and compensation) influence the market orientation of hotels. There is also an exploratory analysis of the differences in the human resource management systems according to the following hotel classification data: star rating, size, ownership, time-share offer, type of location, customer satisfaction and profitability.

Research into market orientation has basically been conducted in consumer goods and industrial markets, with few works in service markets and, as far as we know, none in the area of tourism marketing. This lack of research studies in service markets contrasts with the evident importance of market orientation in these markets and the importance of the service sector to the economy in terms of gross domestic product. In this respect, Grönroos (1994) argues that traditional marketing management in the service sector must be substituted by market oriented management. Many markets for services, including the tourism market, achieve success by coordinating their marketing functions with the other functions. They stress a culture of customer service with the design of performance policies and measures that are sensitive to customer needs; they also consider information about the customer a key asset and possess a “strategic vision of service” based on market segmentation, identification of the target group and the satisfaction of specific needs. Those business practices reflect the importance of market orientation in the service sector. According to Harris and Ogbonna (2001), many theorists and practitioners persist in noting that further research is required to explore the barriers and processes of market orientation development and they note the relative dearth of research into such antecedents. In recent decades, researchers have studied several antecedents of market orientation in order to have a better understanding of its role in organizations. A business is market orientated only when the entire organization embraces the values implicit therein and when all business processes are directed at creating superior customer value (Slater, 2001). This idea is of greater importance in service companies, where human resource practices have a greater influence on market orientation than in manufacturing firms because of the greater dependence on person-to-person interactions that are predominant in the service sector (Singh, 2000; McNaughton et al., 2002). According to Mavondo et al. (2005), investment in HR practices impacts on the processes of creating customer value; through the attraction, selection and retention of high quality employees, providing appropriate skills. In that respect, Mavondo et al. (2005) indicate that marketing research must consider incorporating human resource practices in models of market orientation as this provides a holistic presentation and adds realism to such models. Both market orientation and human resource practices favor the processes of creation of value to the customer. However, Mavondo et al. (2005) state that, in the academic literature both research streams have been developed along parallel trajectories despite the recognition of linkages in these areas. Therefore, this work aims to contribute an integrated vision of both streams research. Moreover, it is important to study how the antecedents of market orientation influence different sectors of activity. In that respect, Kirca et al. (2005) demonstrate that the extant literature needs a better understanding of how the impact of the antecedents of market orientation varies in different business and cultural contexts. Thus, further research should identify profiles of best practices to implement market orientation in different cultural contexts. This study is justified by the absence of research in the tourism sector and the importance of studying the interrelations between market orientation and human resources in service companies. In that respect, this research work seeks to study the extent to which human resource management is an antecedent of market orientation in the hotel sector. More specifically, this work aims to identify the influence that the policies for recruiting, training, evaluation, career development and compensation issues exercise on the different dimensions of market orientation.

As in other areas of the marketing discipline, there are many definitions of the concept of market orientation. In order to include the latest contributions in that topic, present the theoretical antecedents and support the bases underlying this research, we have proposed a classification of the theoretical contributions to market orientation from five perspectives: (1) philosophical or cultural; (2) from the process of market information; (3) from the interfunctional coordination of market information; (4) from the management systems, and (5) from resources. However, the differences between the principal conceptions of market orientation are often more a question of emphasis than of content. In this respect, Ruekert (1992) stresses the development and execution of the business unit strategy as the key organizational factor of market orientation. With regard to the organizational factors that favor the development or maintenance of market orientation, it should first be pointed out that it is necessary to conduct new empirical applications that complement and give some consistency to the results of research into the antecedents of market orientation. There is no conclusive empirical evidence of the influence of human resource management systems. Secondly, there is some controversy, at least, some theoretical controversy, about the role of market orientation in service companies. In this respect, some theoretical proposals argue that service companies tend to be less market oriented than manufacturing companies (Cowell, 1991). Thirdly, despite the economic importance of the service sector in general, and of the tourism industry in particular, in the developed economies, we have found no research works that study market orientation in the context of the tourism sector. From an empirical point of view, the results of this research have provided us with a valid and reliable instrument to measure the market orientation of Canarian hotels, represented by three interrelated dimensions: intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and responsiveness. With regard to the influence that the human resource management system may exercise to favor the development of hotel market orientation, a direct and significant influence has been confirmed. In this respect, the human resource management system influences all three dimensions of market orientation although the intensity of the effect varies. The human resource management system has most influence on the intelligence dimension. That general conclusion implies that a market oriented human resource management system, in which the recruiting, evaluation, development and compensation systems consider the important role played by employees in achieving the objectives of customer satisfaction and loyalty, favors the intensity and execution of activities to generate and disseminate market information. From a more specific point of view and considering the relationships between each dimension of the human resource management system and each dimension of market orientation, we can conclude that the human resource evaluation systems that consider: (1) the results of customer satisfaction questionnaires; (2) the execution of activities to improve customer satisfaction; and (3) the extent to which customer satisfaction targets are accomplished, favor the intensity and implementation of practices and behaviors to disseminate and respond to market information. We can also conclude that activities to generate market information are favored when orientation to customer service, and the previous experience of marketing, sales and reception employees are considered essential to the professional development of the personnel, and when an incentive policy that rewards employees’ contributions to service orientation and customer satisfaction is also considered. The profile of hotels according to the characteristics of their human resource management systems is associated with the category, size, time-share offer, type of location, customer satisfaction and profitability of the hotel. More specifically, the systems to evaluate worker performance that consider the results of customer satisfaction questionnaires and the activities to improve that satisfaction, as well as the extent to which the customer satisfaction targets are met, are directly and positively associated with the category and size of hotel, belonging to a chain, the vacation, rural or airport location of the establishment, and some better indicators of customer satisfaction and profitability. Moreover, the employees’ concern about being customer service oriented, and the previous experience of the marketing, sales or reception managers are more embedded in hotels with a higher category, greater profitability and those belonging to hotel chains. Lastly, it should be mentioned that, in the more profitable hotels, there is greater implementation of human resource recruiting processes that evaluate the applicants’ skills to deal with customers and that test the candidates’ orientation to customer service. From the point of view of managerial implications, managers are concerned about how market orientation can be implemented and what its impact on performance is. The results of our work provide an integrated framework that may be of great use to hotel managers. In that respect, this work finds evidence that human resource management practices favor the implementation of market orientation. Furthermore, Market Orientation and Human Resource Management might be more integral to hotels because of the greater need for direct firm–customer interactions. With regard to research implications, the extant literature needs a better understanding of how the impact of Human Resource Management on market orientation varies across different business and cultural contexts. Thus, further research should identify profiles of best practices to implement market orientation in other sectors of activity and in different cultural contexts. Although strict scientific criteria were adhered to throughout this research work, it clearly has its limitations. From a methodological perspective, this study, like all empirical research works, has certain limitations which affect the evaluation and generalization of its results. Firstly, there is the possible bias stemming from the self-selection of the surveyed hotels. Secondly, the size of the sample did not permit us to divide the sample in two and use exploratory factorial analyses and confirmatory factorial analyses for each sample. Thirdly, and with respect to the transversal design of this research, the causal relationships revealed in the study should be interpreted with caution, since its design does not allow for rigid compliance with the conditions for causality, and thus it is impossible to absolutely confirm that changes in the cause mean changes in the effect. In many structural models, causality must be understood in terms of statistical association and not under the conditions of an experimental design. However, this work has attempted to establish causal relationships theoretically substantiated by the theoretical foundations set out in this paper. It was also taken into account that structural equation models involve linearity in the causal relationships, which represents a further limitation in cases where such relationships are not lineal. Finally, the generalization of the results is yet another limitation since the area of research only permits the results to be generalized for the population under study and the destination of the Canary Islands, which makes it advisable to replicate this research in other settings.