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How market orientation contributes to innovation and market performance: the roles of business analytics and flexible IT infrastructure

Amir Ashrafi (Department of Industrial Management, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran)
Ahad Zare Ravasan (Department of Computing and Informatics, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK)

Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing

ISSN: 0885-8624

Article publication date: 11 September 2018

Issue publication date: 15 October 2018

1302

Abstract

Purpose

Market orientation (MO) (intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and responsiveness) is known as one of the key concepts in marketing literature. Although prior research has widely focused on the meaning and application of MO, few attempts have been made to explore how market-oriented firms lead to innovation and market performance and what factors actually moderate this relationship. To fill this gap, the present study aims to explore the relationship between MO, innovation and market performance. This study also attempts to examine the intervening role of IT infrastructure, business analytics (BA) capabilities and market turbulence in the proposed model.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, a questionnaire-based survey was undertaken to test the proposed hypotheses. To verify the proposed theoretical model, partial least squares (PLS)/structured equation modeling (SEM) was performed with 114 valid survey data.

Findings

Despite prior studies which postulated innovation performance as the final outcome of MO (Han et al., 1998; Song et al., 2015), this study focused on innovation performance as a mediating outcome which finally leads to market performance. The statistical results approve the putative relationship which means managers would be able to realize the paramount role of innovation as an integral part of achieving higher market performance. In addition, no support was found for the relationship between intelligence generation and responsiveness. This finding shows that not all obtained information can help managers in the decision-making process.

Originality/value

This study aims to enrich literature by developing a conceptual model to test the link between MO, innovation and market performance. The value of this study is to investigate the roles of flexible IT infrastructure, BA capabilities and market turbulence as the potential moderators in the proposed model. The results advance the understanding of the influence of BA capabilities on the link between intelligence dissemination and responsiveness. Findings also show innovation performance as remarkable and deemed valuable capability, leading to higher performance in marketing-related activities, particularly in highly turbulent markets.

Keywords

Citation

Ashrafi, A. and Zare Ravasan, A. (2018), "How market orientation contributes to innovation and market performance: the roles of business analytics and flexible IT infrastructure", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 33 No. 7, pp. 970-983. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-05-2017-0109

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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