مدیریت کیفیت جامع، جهت گیری بازار و عملکرد هتل: اثرات تعدیل عوامل محیطی خارجی

With the market competition of hotel industry being heated, it is critical that hotels have a breadth of resource and more flexible forms to meet the needs of a changing marketplace. In the past, the relation of total quality management (TQM), market orientation, and performance are equivocal. These mixed results may be due to some factors or not to include the environmental factors. This study adopts the Input-Processing-Output (IPO) concept model to construct all variables research model. The research surveyed samples of 588 and used Structural Equation Model and discriminate analysis for analysis and testing. The results show that TQM positively affects hotel performance. Market orientation positively affects hotel performance. Market orientation has the mediating effect between TQM and hotel performance. External environment factors truly play a moderator between TQM, market orientation and hotel performance, especially when external environment factors greater changes are going to help to build relationship with customer, to enhance hotel performance and further to gain chance of hotel's survival.

Total quality management (TQM) is a widely recognized management philosophy, and has become the key slogan as organizations strive for competitive advantage in markets (Sureshchandar et al., 2001). TQM focuses on continuous process improvement within organizations to provide superior customer value and meet customer needs. Meeting customer needs involves company operations focused on understanding, sharing, and responding to customers through marketing concept. Firms adopting and implementing the marketing concept are said to display a market orientation (Lamb et al., 2005). Market-oriented firms have been demonstrated to be successful at maintaining a strong competitive position (Walker et al., 2006). Therefore, TQM and market orientation can constitute a valuable firm strategy and provide a competitive advantage to respond to the competitive business environment. Studies have claimed that marketing and TQM are complementary business philosophies (Longbottom et al., 2000, Mohr-Jackson, 1998a and Mohr-Jackson, 1998b). However, departments responsible for implementing TQM policy may consider increasing sales through higher quality products or service needs rather than marketing. Poor coordination among departments, or even rivalries and distrust, are not unusual. Moreover, partial enterprises that have conducted TQM have not considered their attributes or properly used them in marketing, preventing top managers from understanding marketing topics. Therefore one-third of TQM-adopting enterprises continue to exhibit prejudice (Witcher, 1995), or have failed in TQM implementation. These factors cause many organizations to have little or no to complement to TQM and market orientation together. However, even when both are linked in hotel performance effect, the empirical findings are mixed, and homogeneous results regarding their relationships are lacking. Furthermore, scholars have also argued that relationships among TQM, market orientation and organization performance often vary considerably in terms of magnitude, or when improving performance, generating mixed and controversial results. Additionally, the hotel industry suffers a lack of information regarding TQM or barriers to developing market orientation (Gray et al., 2000, Harris and Watkins, 1998 and Lazari and Kanellopoulos, 2007); few studies have addressed this lack of information or the existence of such barriers in the Taiwanese hotel industry. In the competitive market environment, quality is considered the basic consuming condition. Hotels seeking to improve their performance cannot simply rely on quality, but must also design inducements to attract customers. Longo and Cox (1997) and Youssef et al. (1996) addressed the IPO (Input-Processing-Output) model of TQM, which displays the relationships between the TQM system and participants. This model defines input to enlarge the process and involve both internal and external environments. Process improvement and products are designed to focus on present and future customer needs. Output describes the way in which participant quality is enhanced to ensure profitability and custom satisfaction. To gain competence of hotels faster than competitors and create superior customer value strategically within conflicts and interest of inter-departments are critical for hotel survival. This study adopted the IPO concept model of TQM to develop a research model and further probed the relationship between TQM and market orientation to understand its influence on hotel performance. Environmental uncertainty arises from organizational ability to make environmental forecasts (Milliken, 1987). As a result, organizational decision making is influenced by environmental complexity and volatility (May et al., 2000). Organization attempting to ignore environmental factors or that refuses to respond to such factors create trouble for themselves and placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage. On the contrary, understanding and responsiveness can contribute to hotel effectiveness and benefits. Several studies have argued that market and technological turbulence and competitive intensity may moderate the relationship between market orientation and performance (Kirca et al., 2005, Qu and Ennew, 2003, Rose and Shoham, 2002 and Subramanian et al., 2009), or that this relationship does not moderate effects (Aziz and Yassin, 2010, Jaworski and Kohli, 1993, Slater and Narver, 1994 and Subramanian and Gopalakrishna, 2001). TQM is an open system that interacts with the surrounding environment (Steel and Jennings, 1992). However, scholars have argued that TQM does not adapt to dynamic situations (Dooley and Flor, 1998). Business environment is complicated by the dynamics of change and competition producing a degree of uncertainty such that the results after TQM implementing are unclear (Montes et al., 2003). Moreover, prior scholars have studied the influence of external environmental factors on the hotel performance effect; most studies have probed legal, political, social, economic, cultural, and technological dimensions. New advanced technologies and a changing market environment have provided quality and marketing concepts with a new dimension. Empirical studies have largely overlooked external environmental factors (for example, market and technological turbulence, and competitive intensity) related to hotel performance. This study incorporates these factors to examine and fill the gaps in the literature. The maturing of the hotel industry has seen competition gradually intensify and customers become increasingly sophisticated. To compete, hotels require a breadth of resources to transform them into more flexible forms to meet the needs of the changing hotel industry marketplace. This study simplifies the complex reality of the hotel industry, in which hotels examine their performance using TQM, market orientation, and the moderating effects of external environmental factors. This study tested the research model using data gathered from hotels using a questionnaire survey method, and used the Structural Equation Model and discriminate analysis for analysis and testing. This paper is organized as follows. A literature review discusses four variables and establishes the study hypotheses. Subsequent sections then describe the methodology, results, and analysis. Finally, the last section discusses conclusions and presents limitations and recommendations.

5.1. Discussion and conclusions Based on literature review, this study proposes and hypothesizes Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2, Hypothesis 3, Hypothesis 4, Hypothesis 5 and Hypothesis 6. The analytical results support all of the above hypotheses. However, empirical discussions of the test results and the conclusions state that: (1) Total quality management or market orientation positively affects organizational performance (Demirbag et al., 2006a, Feng et al., 2006, Kara et al., 2005 and Li et al., 2008). This study shows that TQM or market orientation positively affects hotel performance. These analytical results are consistent with those obtained by Claver-Cortés et al. (2008), Langer (1997), and Sin et al. (2005) in hotel industry studies. These may be that hotels implementing TQM or market orientation, which strengthen service detail, teamwork, and reward systems, and help in modifying business operating patterns and responding to customer feedback, are more responsive to changes in internal and external customer needs (Youssef et al., 1996), thus reducing uncertainty in business management (Van Zyl and Mathur-Helm, 2007) and improving hotel performance. (2) Literature review revealed a lack of academic research on the links between TQM and market orientation in the hotel industry. This study found that TQM is an antecedent of market orientation. Market orientation mediates the relationship between TQM and hotel performance. The results of market orientation thus differ from those of TQM and play an important mediating (Demirbag et al., 2006b) or moderating role (Day, 1994). This shows that TQM offers a holistic and systematic approach for developing a work environment to build an organization engaged in market orientation behavior, and creating a market orientation atmosphere and environment (Yam et al., 2005). Marketing helps in strategic planning (Piercy, 1998), in turn improving hotel performance. The analytical results also indicate that the value criterion hotels provide for customers also require close co-ordination between the marketing and quality departments (Lai, 2003), which helps promote customer satisfaction (Yam et al., 2005) and financial performance (Han et al., 2007). (3) This study finds that external environmental factors moderate the relationship between TQM or market orientation on hotel performance. The moderating effects of external environmental factors resemble those described by Atuahene-Gima (1995), Kirca et al. (2005), Qu and Ennew (2003), Rose and Shoham (2002), and Subramanian et al. (2009). Additionally, the moderating effects of low external environmental factors are stronger than those of high external environmental factors. This effect may result from low market and technological turbulence and competitive intensity, where customer preferences change little once the hotel focuses its attention and resources on improving or modifying product and process, forming closer customer relationships, and concentrating on acquiring and managing resources to keep pace with market demand (Walker et al., 2006). Since high external environmental conditions produce high uncertainty from competitors and customers, hotels increase their customer focus and carefully respond to competitor actions before making final decisions, especially when being more aggressive than competitors in improving the efficiency and the reliability of products or services, and in advanced technological process management. Responding to competitor actions may be more important than a strong customer focus. Clearly, TQM or market orientation practices create a breadth of resources and a flexible form to slow the influence of external environmental factors and absorb their complexity, enhancing hotel performance. 5.2. Theoretical and managerial implications (1) TQM positively affects hotel performance. TQM-adopting hotels achieve improvements in customer focus, internal/external cooperation, leadership, continuous improvement, process management, employee training, empowerment, and rewards. It also shows that hoteliers identify the areas of TQM in which they invest, and the areas requiring improvements. However, the degree of implementation of the basic elements of TQM influences business performance (Powell, 1995). In this study, elements of TQM such as customer focus (factor loading = 0.75) and internal/external cooperation (factor loading = 0.72) are most important for hotel TQM practice. Hoteliers more effectively reinforce these elements in ways such as supplying customized products or services or highlighting the importance of interdepartmental or external (that is, customers or suppliers) connectedness via networks or through information or communication technology systems. (2) Market orientation enhances hotel performance. Hoteliers are aware that changes in consumer perception and competitor activities are important for hotels. Hoteliers must also continuously educate and train employees to detect and understand such changes. Furthermore, sharing customer and competitor information within the hotel fulfills customer needs and expectations with new solutions. (3) TQM identifiably affects market orientation. Market orientation has a mediating effect on the relationship between TQM and hotel performance, showing that TQM offers a rich array of tools that organization can transform to achieve a market orientation (Yam et al., 2005). Market orientation can be a catalyst to help hotel design and offer a service mix that customers perceive as superior quality, in turn enhancing hotel performance. Hotels request close co-ordination between their marketing and quality departments, and do not only use TQM strategies, but also strengthen marketing strategies to meet and satisfy customer needs in hotel management systems. (4) The external environment is constantly changing. Adopting TQM and market orientation as a business strategy is critical, especially as external environmental factors challenge the ability of hotels to understand competitor actives, strive to improve products, services and processes, improve responses to competitor actions and track the most profitable customers using new technologies such as email, websites or online communities to grasp initiative living chance. Consequently, hoteliers adopt TQM and market orientation as a “save for rainy days” method, or as a breadth of resource and more flexible forms to meet changing market needs. 5.3. Research limitations and recommends (1) The questionnaire in this study comprised 57 items that were completed by hotel managers. Methods were used to eliminate Common Method Variance, including respondent anonymity, meaning anonymity of the measurement items. This study suggests dividing the questionnaire into half items to be completed by marketing directors, general managers or by multiple participants separately to eliminate measurement errors. (2) Many hotels have successfully outsourced security, maintenance, laundry, and baking, thus reducing costs and improving operating results (Espino-Rodríguez and Padrón-Robaina, 2005). However, the question of how outsourcing hotels adopt TQM and market orientation between hotels and vendors remains unclear. Future studies can further investigate this area and thus help further enrich the theory on this area. (3) This study was based on cross-sectional data. Does TQM or market orientation positively affect long term hotel performance? A major gap exists in the related literature on longitudinal studies. This study suggests that subsequent researchers perform longitudinal studies based on long-term observations or interviews regarding actual implementation in hotels to provide further insights regarding probable causations.