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     Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology


Strategic Role of Customer Orientation in Differentiation Strategy and Organizational Performance Nexus: A Partial Least Square (PLS) Approach

1Haim Hilman and 2Narentheren Kaliappen
1School of Business Management, College of Business
2Othman Yeop Abdullah, Graduate School of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology  2014  19:4150-4156
http://dx.doi.org/10.19026/rjaset.7.780  |  © The Author(s) 2014
Received: December 21, 2013  |  Accepted: January 02, 2013  |  Published: May 15, 2014

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the nexus of differentiation strategy and organizational performance with customer orientation as a mediator in setting of the hotel industry in Malaysia. Data were gathered through a survey using mail and email questionnaire with a sample of 60 three to five star hotels. Smart PLS 2.0 (M3) was used to test the hypotheses. Findings suggest that customer orientation mediates the relationship of differentiation strategy and performance. This study is bridging the gap and presenting the importance of strategic role of customer orientation in facilitating differentiation strategy to produce better performance. It also provides several theoretical and practical implications for scholars and practitioners from perspective of this study.

Keywords:

Customer orientation, differentiation strategy, organizational performance,


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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

Open Access Policy

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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The authors have no competing interests.

ISSN (Online):  2040-7467
ISSN (Print):   2040-7459
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