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Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 50 A Conceptual Analysis of Market Orientation Philosophy in the Hospitality Industry of Nigeria. Dr. Balarabe A. Jakada, Musa Gambo K.K., Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. [email protected], [email protected] Abstract Marketing is a universal discipline which is applicable to different areas of human endeavor in both profit and non-profit organization. In this paper an attempt is made to discuss on the practice of market orientation in the Nigerian hotel industry. It is essentially a literature based paper which utilizes document analysis techniques. It views hospitality as a consumer oriented activity which calls for identification of tourist’s needs, packaging the services and pricing them appropriately, distributing information about the service mix to the target tourist as well as promoting the tourists packages consistently and aggressively. It shows that an organization’s degree of market orientation has a positive effect on business performance, especially profitability, perceived quality, customer satisfaction as well as creation and delivery of superior customer value. It is therefore recommended that hotels and other hospitality businesses should invest in building a customer oriented work culture through widespread training programs geared towards customerservice personnel and other supporting staff. They should also endeavor to be more proactive and efficient in responding to the market needs and demands. Key words: Hotel, Tourism, Hospitality, Market Orientation, Marketing Strategy, Service. Introduction The origin of market orientation can be traced to one of the orientations that a company may have towards its target market popularly known as the marketing concept. This concept has been a cornerstone of the marketing discipline right from the time Peter Drucker described marketing as the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view (Drucker, 1954). By stating that firms that are more market oriented will be more successful in their markets, the marketing concept has appealed to generations of managers and has been one of marketing’s most influential ideas. However, its apparent importance Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 51 notwithstanding, the systematic investigation of market orientation as a construct and its impact on businesses is relatively recent phenomenon. To date, majority of empirical studies have focused on the link between performance and market orientation (Narver & Slater 1990, Jaworski & Kohli 1993, Greenley 1995, Harris 2001). In comparison, the impact of market orientation on other organizational stakeholders such as customers, distributors and the general public are somewhat under-researched, resulting in a limited understanding of the full benefits of market orientation. It is against this background that an attempt will be made in this paper to explore the issue of market orientation in the hospitality industry of Nigeria with particular emphasis on the hotel subsector. Concepts Definition The word hospitality is derived from the Latin verb hospitaire, meaning “to receive as a guest” (Dittmer, 2002). It thus focuses on a host who receives, welcomes, and caters to the needs of people temporarily away from their homes. It basically refers to the relationship process between a guest and a host and/or the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors or strangers with liberality and goodwill (Gambo & Jakada, 2013). It is also frequently used to describe the hospitality industry’s jobs for hotels, restaurants, casinos, catering, resorts, clubs and any other service occupation that deals with tourist. Therefore, hospitality can generally be seen as the act of equalizing a visitor to the host by making the stranger feel secured, protected and taken care of and at the end of his/her stay, guiding him/her to his next destination safely. A key to good hospitality is accommodation and catering services which in turn are part of hotel offerings. Salami (2008) defines hotel as hospitality environment built either by an individual or a group of people or by state or by the federal government to welcome and receive guests in a friendly manner and to sell suitable accommodation and other ancillary services such as food and drinks to any normal person who Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 52 appears physically fit and agreed to comply with the necessary documentations and instructions of the hotel and ready to pay for the hotel services without prior contract. Therefore, most hotel services are hospitality services rendered to customers in order to satisfy their needs and wants. In addition, since tourism usually generates guest to hotels, it is equally important to define it here. Tourism can be defined as a temporary purposeful and guided visitation to a place or places for leisure, pleasure or treasure. Uyah (2005) explained that tourism is all about selling dreams. It is about experiencing beyond the ordinary, the stepping out of the daily treadmill into a wonderful, exciting and challenging world. Jega (2005) also said that tourism is a displacement activity, which encompasses, the temporary free movement to an stay of people at places of their interest outside where they normally live and work, the various providers of the services need by those away, from the time they leave house until they return, the impact which such visits and stay have on the socioeconomic, political and physical environment of the host destinations and the visitors themselves. A tourist is a person or group of persons who travel from home, either within the same country or abroad and stay away at least one night. Thus a holiday maker, a conference delegate, and a traveling business person are all tourist, (WBE 1996). Matheson & Wall (1982) opine that tourism is the temporary movement to destination outside the normal home and workplace, the activities undertaken during the stay and the facilities created to cater for the needs of tourism. It is all about temporary movement of tourists from their homes to host destinations in order to experience new authentic attractions. To this end, it can be inferred that marketing is relevant to hotel and hospitality businesses in that it helps to attract potential tourists or visitors to a destination including other related services. Thus, in this paper tourism and hotel are used interchangeably because of the fact that they are birds of the same feather, in that they are all part of the whole hospitality industry. Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 53 Overview of the Nigeria’s Hotel Industry Nigeria is a multicultural society with a population of over 140 million people, over 250 ethnic groups and 500 languages (Dantata, 2011). The country comprises of several cities that are urbanized and advanced in many sectors. Some of these cities include Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano. Abuja, the capital is located in the center of the country and has the corporate headquarters of most organizations. It is fast growing developing city and the inhabitants consist of indigenes of all over the country who believe that the city belongs to any tribe and any religion. The standard of living is believed to be high as compared to other cities in the country. Hotels play an important role in the hospitality and tourism industry. There are many categories of hotels in Nigeria ranging from the four star hotels to the traditional guest houses in Nigeria. Some recognized hotel chains in Nigeria include the South African Hotel chain, Protea, Hilton, Sheraton, and French Le Meridien and Eko Hotel. There are also chains such as Rock view, Chelsea and Chida Hotels among others with most of them located in major cities of the country. There are resorts also such as the Obudu cattle ranch as well as Yankari Game Reserve. Fast food chains and restaurant businesses are also thriving in the country with chains such as Mr. Biggs, Ten 05 and Tantalizers among others. With the influx of international hotel brands and high employment capacity, the hospitality sector seems to be the only thriving sub-sector in the travel and tourism industry in Nigeria. However, while there is a remarkable growth in the sector (which is a recent development), incessant electricity power outage, dearth of skilled personnel and insecurity still pose problems to the sector for some years now (Emelke, 2011). Despite the harsh business climate, the likes of Protea, Golden Tulip, Royal Tropicana, Prince Hotel, among others, added a number of services to their repertoire in their preparation to take on Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 54 the big players and multinational brands such as Sheraton, Le Meridian and NICON Transcorp Hotel. Many two-star and three-star hotels also opened all over the place with established hotels adding more rooms and expanding facilities. In general terms, the hotel sector is also likely to exhibit a wider and more diverse range of organizational and staffing characteristics than other sectors of the hospitality industry. A typical hotel comprises of two major groups of departments; operation department which is necessary for the hotel keeping side of the business and for dealing with all needs and requirements of the guests and support department which deals with additional specialist expertise that serves as an essential back-up to a well-run large business venture. Hotel operations usually include front office services such as reception and booking, housekeeping, food and beverages services as well as other supporting services like accounts, administration, maintenance and perhaps customer relations in some customer oriented hotels. Housekeeping is one of the most important departments in the catering or hospitality industry since 80% to 85% of the industry depends on it (UNESCO – Nigeria TVE, 2010). The whole business of housekeeping involves the provision of accommodation to people who are away from home. Furthermore, there are many different types of hotels. They are often sub-divided into class or luxury hotel, medium class hotel and small size hotel (Branson & Lennox, 1976). Furthermore, hotels are also graded differently depending on the quality and range of services being offered therein and award stars or seals of merit as guide to travelers or tourist. The grading starts from one star to five star hotels in ascending order. The latter is the best in terms of service quality and facilities. In addition to providing an indication to the type of hotels, grading by star is often regarded as an accepted mark of quality in all classification, from the simplest inn to the most luxurious hotel. Corell (2007) equally categorizes hotels as international, resort, commercial, Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 55 residential, floating hotels (on boats or ships), motels and youth hostels. All these classes of hotels are provided in order to serve different customer needs and wants based on the nature and disposition of a tourist or guests Literature review In this section, relevant articles, papers and texts were studied with a view to understand the relevance of market orientation thinking in the operation of hotel businesses in Nigeria. Kohli & Jaworski (1990) define market orientation as the organization wide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current and future customer needs, dissemination of the intelligence across departments, and organization wide responsiveness to it. In the same vein Ruekert (1992) defines market orientation as the degree to which the business unit obtains and uses information from customers, develops a strategy which will meet customer needs and implements that strategy by being responsive to customers’ needs and wants. Market orientation helps organizations in developing a customer driven work culture and in providing customers with the products and services they need and desire. According to Deshpande, Rohit, & John U. Farley (1998), market orientation is the situation in which customer’s interests are the first and foremost priority for the organisation. Liyun, Keyi, Xiaoshu & Fangfang (2008) considers market orientation as a process which helps construct relationships and communicate knowledge with customers in order to improve customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and increase the value of the organization. Similarly, in their study, Narver & Slater (1990) produced three components of market orientation as customer, competitor and departmental coordination. It is equally important to note that market orientation is not a competency and obligation of only a particular department, but all within the Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 56 organization must contribute to building a fully market oriented organization. There is a need for coordination among all the departments within the organization. Market Orientation and its Relevance in the Hotel Business Market orientation is generally regarded as the implementation of the marketing concept which is offering products or services based on customer needs and wants (Kohli & Jaworski, 1990). The marketing concept is a philosophy of doing business, which puts the customer’s needs at the centre of the organization. But Abdul Adis & Jublee (2010) argue that being market oriented is more than just being customer-led, reasoning that it requires full support from the organization’s top management to be implemented in the long term and, indeed, may need a complete change in an organization’s culture. Market orientation refers to the organization-wide generation of market intelligence through decision support systems, marketing information systems, marketing research efforts, dissemination of the intelligence across company departments, and organization-wide responsiveness to the changes taking place in the environment (Kohli & Jaworski, 1990). There is a large body of literature dedicated to studying whether marketing orientation results in superior organizational performance. A study done by Azaze-Azizi & Izyanti (2009) found that there was an impact of strategic orientation (customer, competitor, technology and interfunctional coordination) on new product development among Malaysian manufacturers. Several studies have equally verified a strong link between marketing orientation and performance (Greenley 1995; Matsuno, Mentzer & Ozsomer 2002). In hotel business, the marketing orientation more often starts with the tourist’s or visitor’s need as the central focus of hotel business. The hotel must identify these needs and then decide which one it should try to satisfy. This is because the dominant view is that an organization’s degree of market Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 57 orientation has a positive effect on business performance, especially profitability (Narver & Slater 1990: Jaworski & Kohli 1993: Pelham & Wilson 1996). Consequently, market orientation has also been related to customer-level performance measures, like perceived quality, value and satisfaction (Slater 1997). Empirically however, little research has been done to relate market orientation to quality, value, and customer satisfaction. But Pelham & Wilson (1996) have shown that market orientation is positively related to managers’ perceptions of relative product quality. Also Gray et al, (1998) have found a positive and significant relationship between market orientation and a subjective measure of customer satisfaction relative to the nearest competitor. A more moderate but still significant relationship with subjective/relative customer loyalty was also found. Webb, Webster & Kreppa (2000) equally found positive correlations between market orientation and service quality, and between market orientation and customer satisfaction. Similarly, Narver and Slater consistently link market orientation to the creation of superior customer value (Narver & Slater 1990). This goes to show that being more market oriented than competitors enables a firm to attain a position of sustainable competitive advantage by creating superior, or rather distinctive value for its customers. Achieving this calls for gathering and sharing market intelligence, the selection of target markets and the management of relationships with customers. Moreover, given the fact that attracting customers is much more expensive than retaining existing ones, the former approach argues Van Raaij (2001), is increasingly seen as the more rewarding in terms of return on marketing investment. This chain of effects from distinctive value to superior business performance is driven by a balance between expected customer value and perceived customer value. Although actually achieving this balance is dependent upon subjective evaluation in the head of the customer, hotel businesses have an active role in this Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 58 balancing act by consciously managing business processes that generate expectations and perceptions by creating and delivering superior value to the customers courtesy of their market orientation culture. Hotel Services Marketing Strategies From the point of view of its users, a hotel is an institution of commercial hospitality, which offers its facilities and services for sale individually or in various combinations in a geographical location. Location denotes accessibility and the convenience this represents, freedom from noise and other nuisances or otherwise. In marketing terms, locational convenience, high standard of comfort and efficiency and value for money are, therefore, the primary features or core product to be communicated (Hosseini, 2011). The main customer demand in most hotels is for accommodation, food and drink, and for food and drinks for organized groups. Accommodation is provided for hotel resident alone, restaurants and bars meet the requirement of hotel residents and non-residents alike, even though separate facilities may be sometimes provided for them. The total hotel concept of location, facilities, service image and price can be sub-divided according to the needs of the customer and the particular facilities brought into play to meet them. This concept is often incorporated in the hotel’s product mix geared towards satisfying a given customer needs and wants. The hotel services require a fair combination of core and augmented services. While formulating the product mix for the hotel services, it is essential that catering management, cafeteria and bedrooms management are given due consideration. In essence, hotel organizations are required to make possible a fair mix of core and augmented services. The product mix for a hotel according to Vora (2010) will typically Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 59 include reception (welcome, enquiry and sign posts), boarding (catering, restaurants and cafeterias), lodging (bed, room, light, water, sanitation and ventilation) entertainment (TV, Dance, Music, cultural shows and radio), shopping, personal care, communication and transport (telephone, news, magazine, reservations and car rentals) as well as health care services. Here, it is essential that facilities like light, water, electricity, ventilation, entertainment, sanitation arrangement of bed etc, are readily made available to the guests. In terms of pricing, fixing the hotel tariffs is just like pricing other goods and services. At the same time, it is also right to mention that the hotel professionals need more excellence while fixing the hotel tariffs since the services are of perishable nature. In the tactical sense, pricing is highly instrumental in promoting the hotel business because it is often considered as a major selling tool. This is achieved through such tools as premium pricing, market penetration pricing, seasonal discount especially during the off-season, trade discounts and special discounts. McIntosh & Goeldner (1986) posit that hospitality services suffer from fluctuation in demand. This demand will fluctuate over time and by the type of customer. Forecasting business is therefore often difficult because of mixture of patterns and variables which can affect demand, making planning, resourcing and scheduling difficult. Hospitality cannot be delivered without customers who are involved in many aspects of the delivery of the hospitality service. So, achieving a satisfactory balance between demand patterns, resource scheduling and operational capacity is a difficult task for managers in hospitality. Differential pricing strategy is usually used to synchronize the level of demand and supply especially in service marketing. Demand forecasting is therefore a crucial function which contributes to the successful operation of the hospitality business. On promotion, it focuses the attention on innovative promotional measures. It is the way a company communicates what it does and what it can offer customer (CIM 2009). It includes Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 60 activities such as advertisement, publicity, sales promotion, personal selling, word-of-mouth promotion and telemarketing. Promotion must gain attention, be appealing, tell a consistent message and above all give the customer a reason to choose your service rather than someone else’s. To remain competitive, hoteliers have to promote their services aggressively. For example Royal Tropicana Hotel in Kano used advertising vigorously in launching its services and the hotel is still advertising both in print and electronic media. Moreover, another peculiar nature of hotel marketing is that instead of moving the product to the customer, the customer must travel to the product area or destination (Mahoney & Warmell 1987). Therefore, place or distribution decision is very crucial to the success of hotel business. To this end, hotel services could be distributed through direct individual sales, direct group sales, travel agents, tour operators, hotel representatives, hotel booking agencies and the internet. And since the main goal is to create and keep a satisfied customer, hoteliers should continually seek new ways to acquire, retain and increase business, because the cost of losing customer is rising. Service is an important factor in retaining clients. Hotels that have the ability to attract, satisfy and thus retain customers are more likely to survive than hotels that do not do so. Apart from the four traditional marketing mix variables discussed above, Booms & Bitner (1981) proposed three additional Ps service marketing. They are people, process and physical evidence. Their relevance and importance as tools for successful marketing of hotel services cannot be over empathized. However, it is pertinent to note that the strategies, tactics, and practices that have been used successfully in marketing tangible products do not always work successfully in marketing services (The Marketer, 2010). This is based on the fact that unlike products, which are tangible, services are usually intangible. Marketing a service-based business is therefore different from Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 61 marketing a tangible product because the buyer purchases are intangible, it is more difficult to compare the quality of similar services and that the buyer cannot return the service (Afridi, 2009) Therefore, hotels need to put in place workable marketing strategies to improve their competitiveness and thus retain their customers. Service employees like receptionists, housekeepers and waiters are responsible for creating positive experiences for customers. These frontlines are critical to the success of service firms and play boundary-spanning roles because of their direct contact with customers. These roles are important because customers’ perceptions of service firms are formed as a result of their dealings with the boundary-spanning employees. This in turn calls for effective internal marketing by hotels, that is marketing to the company’s employees. According to this concept, every employee, team or unit in the company is simultaneously a supplier and a customer of services and products such that if internal marketing is effective, every employee will provide and receive exceptional service from and to other employees. Thus George (1990) claims that an effective internal marketing program is a prerequisite for effective external marketing effort. The success of internal marketing in tourism is dependent upon creating an atmosphere in which employees’ desire to give better service and sell the business/community to visitors. Creating such atmosphere, argue Mahoney & Warnell (1987), calls for developing good hospitality and Guest relations attitudes, continuous hospitality and personal selling training and introducing programs and incentives aimed at boosting and maintaining employee morale. Journal of Marketing and Management, 5 (1), 50-65, May 2014 62 Conclusion and Recommendations The forgoing discussions clearly show and prove that market orientation is a crucial factor in an organization’s marketing practice. It paves way for successful business performance in a competitive market. It therefore presupposes that hotels and other hospitality businesses should invest in building a customer oriented work culture through widespread training programs geared, initially, at customer-service personnel and then rolled out throughout the organization related to marketing fundamentals, customer focus orientation, listening and responding to customers and up selling. Effective market orientation also calls for the development of appropriate service mix that is consistent with customers’ requirements, proper pricing and promotion and efficient service delivery. Achieving market orientation equally requires hotel to have well trained and skilled personnel that will deliver the service, efficient process and an enticing and attractive physical structure which depicts warmth, cleanliness and serenity. Thus hotels should play special attention on development of internal mechanisms to feedback market information and respond to those needs promptly. They must also be more proactive and efficient in responding to the market needs and demands. References Afridi, F. (2009). Extended Services Marketing Mix and Emergence of Additional Marketing Ps, Journal of Managerial Science (3), 137 – 143. Abdul Adis, A. H & Jublee, E. (2010). Market orientation and new product performance: The mediating role of product advantage, African Journal of Marketing Management 2 (5), 91-100. Azaze-Azizi H, Abdul, N. & Izyanti A.R. (2009). Factors Affecting New Product Development in Malaysian Manufacturing Industry. In Abdul Adis, A. H and Jublee, E. 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