Are hotel managers taught to be aggressive in intelligence gathering?
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Are hotel managers taught to be aggressive in intelligence gathering? Patrick C. L. Chan 1 & Jimmy H. T. Chan 1 & Alan K. M. Au 1 & Matthew Yeung 1 Received: 6 December 2019 / Accepted: 18 November 2020 / Published online: 4 December 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The study examines the ontological similarity between the concept of competitor orientation and questionable intelligence-gathering efforts. Respondents from the hotel industry were surveyed with self-administered questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to identify the structure underlying variables of market orientation and ethical judgment on questionable intelligence-gathering efforts. The results suggest that the surveyed hotel managers are unable to distinguish the legitimate tactics of competitor orientation from the questionable practice of industrial espionage. Keywords Intelligence gathering . Aggressive competitors . Market orientation
Introduction Research in the areas of market orientation has had a major and enduring impact on marketing education. The concept of market orientation as a business strategy (Kohli and Jaworski 1990; Narver and Slater 1990) has been acknowledged as one of the most important philosophies of management across a good range of business research domains. Varadarajan (2017) counts the number of citations of three major research papers that focus on market orientation and found that the three articles have hit a combined citation of over 20,000 since 1990. The concept is further popularized by its implications to firm performance and the repeated attempts on finding positive evidence to support its offerings. These attempts include linking market orientation to firm-level outcome variables such as profitability, innovation, entrepreneur, and the learning organization. Dev et al. (2008) argue that hotels are market-driven businesses; thus, studies related to market orientation are particularly relevant and useful to the hotel industry.
* Matthew Yeung [email protected]
1
Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, The Open University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, China
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Chan P.C.L. et al.
To develop market orientation as a long-term organizational culture for firms, both the information-based view (Kohli and Jaworski 1990) and behavioral view (Narver and Slater 1990) of market orientation point to the needs for competitor-oriented intelligence gathering and scrutinizing the foci of a rival firm’s activities. In the present study, a sample of 118 hotel management staff from six hotels in Hong Kong was surveyed with the questions items used by Narver and Slater (1990) and Schultz et al. (1994). It uses exploratory factor analysis to examine if hotel staff who are trained to be market oriented can separate their industrial espionage efforts from being competitor oriented. Next, the literature highlighting the relevant ontological similarities between competitor orientation and questionable intelligence-gathering efforts are reviewed.
Literature review For over four decades since the
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