Proactive Customer Orientation Research Articles

ENHANCING SUSTAINABILITY AND REDUCING CUSTOMER TECHNOSTRESS THROUGH FOOD-ORDERING APPS

To investigate customer technostress antecedents and consequences of the restaurants’ food-ordering apps and suggest a coping strategy (i.e., customer orientation). This qualitative study relied on twenty-three semi-structured interviews with Egyptian restaurant customers and managers to understand the customer technostress caused when using food-ordering apps. The study found that restaurant customers experience technostress due to app complexity, security and privacy concerns, frequent app changes, feelings of diminished control, and time constraints. These app-related techno stressors cause customer dissatisfaction and purchasing reluctance. The study also found that not all restaurants adopt a responsive and proactive customer orientation to reduce food-ordering app technostress. However, customers were satisfied with proactive restaurants revealing technostress from food-ordering apps. This study is the first research in the hospitality industry to use Transactional Stress Theory (TST) to investigate the antecedents and consequences and suggest a customer orientation as a coping strategy of customer technostress from food-ordering apps from the perspectives of customers and restaurant managers. As a result, restaurants can be proactive and responsively customer-oriented to overcome customer technostress from food-ordering apps by considering the customers' concerns to satisfy and retain customers and attract new ones.

The effects of positive personality on life insurance salespeople's customer orientation

PurposeStudies have shown that customer orientation has a substantial impact on a business's success. This study examines the effects of positive personality on salespeople's proactive customer orientation (PCO) and responsive customer orientation (RCO) by incorporating the effects of job enthusiasm and transformational leadership.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey is conducted. A total of 511 questionnaires are received from Taiwan's life insurance salespeople. Partial least squares (PLS) regression is used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results show that positive personality influences PCO and RCO both directly and indirectly through job enthusiasm. The effect of transformational leadership is also found to be significant. Financial service companies should be concerned about the important role of positive personality and transformational leadership in promoting job enthusiasm, PCO and RCO among salespeople.Originality/valuePrevious studies mostly focused on the direct relationship between customer orientation and organizational outcomes, neglecting the role of individual personality. This gap leaves us wondering how a positive personality influences a salesperson's proactive and responsive customer orientation. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the mechanisms of a positive personality, job enthusiasm, and transformational leadership on salespeople's PCO and RCO.

The role of customer orientation in creating customer value in fast-food restaurants

PurposeScholars and professionals are interested in studying customer value in fast-food restaurants. Previous research on the customer value of fast-food restaurants mainly measured the dimensions and relationships of the customer value. However, the research has not examined a method for identifying sources of customer value in fast-food restaurants. Therefore, this study used customer orientation to find customer needs and generate customer value in fast-food restaurants.Design/methodology/approachThis study presents a conceptual framework with six constructs. A questionnaire was used to gather empirical data from fast-food restaurant customers in Greater Cairo, Egypt. The suggested framework was evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity analysis, standardized path coefficients and regression-based moderation analysis.FindingsThis study found that proactive customer orientation has a substantial direct and positive impact on customer perceived value. Customer perceived value is also positively influenced by responsive and proactive customer orientations, with customer desired value change intensity acting as a moderator. Customer perceived value substantially impacts customer satisfaction, and the latter substantially affects behavioural intention.Practical implicationsThis study offers several suggestions for managers of fast-food restaurants on how to employ customer orientation to find current, latent and future customer desires to provide customer value.Originality/valueThis is the first research in the hospitality industry to demonstrate how responsive and proactive customer orientation may be used to recognize customer needs and provide the desired customer value.

Completing the market orientation matrix: The impact of proactive competitor orientation on innovation and firm performance

The concept of market orientation comprises four components: customer and competitor orientations, each with a proactive and responsive dimension. Studies have considered both responsive and proactive customer orientation. Competitor orientation, however, has been investigated more narrowly. Research has focused specifically on its responsive dimension, a firm's posture of quickly responding to its competitors' actions and their offerings; but has largely disregarded proactive competitor orientation, a firm's posture towards altering the market's competitive behavior in its favor. This study investigates the role of responsive and proactive competitor orientation on influencing innovation and firm performance, as well as the mediating effects of technology and learning orientation. Utilizing a unique dataset that combines primary and time-lagged secondary data from 306 firms, we find that both responsive and proactive competitor orientation are observable drivers of performance in the market, but in notably different ways. Proactive competitor orientation drives innovation performance, directly and through technology orientation. Responsive competitor orientation, instead, enhances firm performance through learning orientation. By providing insights about the proactive side of competitor orientation, this study supplements and completes the so called “market orientation matrix”. This framework provides guidance for leaders to develop and manage a practical application of, and future research on market orientation.

Proactive customer orientation and joint learning capabilities in collaborative machine to machine innovation technology development: the case study of automotive equipment manufacturer

Research background: There is a considerable amount of literature focused on customers? motivation to participate in cooperative new product development [NPD], but previous research neglected the suppliers? perspective concerning organizational mechanisms for the facilitation of customer involvement in cooperative new product development.
 Purpose of the article: The aim of the study is to explore the influence of two kinds of dynamic capabilities, proactive customer orientation [PCO] and joint learning capability [JLC] on the acceptance and use of machine to machine interaction [M2M] in collaborative innovation development [CID], from the supplier?s perspective.
 Methods: The research is based on a case study carried out from June 2018 till June 2019 of a Polish automation integrator supplying a manufacturer of automotive equipment, i.e. automotive industry, in a fully robotized workstation. In order to understand how the company functions in this case, in-depth interviews with the company?s employees have been conducted.
 Findings & Value added: The results revealed that intelligent devices, interacting machines, and real-time data transfer to the supplier may cause disruptions through their impact on establishing trustful business relationships. We believe our findings could have a profound impact on the way how proactive customer orientation and relational interactions supported knowledge sharing and joint learning sense-making through operational meetings and on-the-job workshops which role was to evaluate the collaborative project.

CUSTOMER ORIENTATION AND OFFICE SPACE PERFORMANCE: ASSESSING THE MODERATING EFFECT OF BUILDING GRADE USING PLS-MGA

This study presents a framework to measure and empirically validate the relationship between customer orientation and office space performance. The framework uses two types of customer orientation (i.e., responsive customer orientation and proactive customer orientation) and two types of office space performance metrics (i.e., tenant satisfaction and tenant loyalty). Moreover, the building grade (Grade A and Non-grade A) is incorporated into the framework to assess its moderating effect on the relationships. 380 usable responses were collected from building managers in Grade A and Non-grade A buildings using a questionnaire survey. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was utilized to perform latent variable and multi-group analyses. The findings indicate that proactive customer orientation enhances satisfaction to a level not reached by responsive customer orientation as well as suggesting the applicability of both customer orientations in different scenarios. While proactive customer orientation practices lead to higher satisfaction in Non-grade A office ten-ants, responsive customer orientation practices lead to greater satisfaction in grade A office tenants. The latter tend to be more satisfied with Grade A office and thus loyal. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Impact of customer orientation on word-of-mouth and cross-buying

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the direct impact of proactive customer orientation (PCO) and responsive customer orientation (RCO) on word-of-mouth (WoM) and cross-buying (CB). Further, this study tests the mediating role of perceived value (PV) in the relationship between customer orientation (CO) (PCO and RCO) and WoM as well as CB in the context of retail banking in an emerging market, India.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used cross sectional survey research design to collect data from 443 customers of retail banks in India. The authors analyzed the data using IBM AMOS 23.0 taking structural equation modeling approach to test the hypothesized relationships.FindingsThe findings of the study suggest that PCO positively influences CB but there is no significant relationship between PCO and WoM. RCO positively influences WoM and CB. PV partially mediates the relationship between RCO and WoM as well as CB. PV does not mediate the relationship between PCO and WoM or the relationship between PCO and CB.Practical implicationsThis study shows that managers need to focus on proactive as well as RCO. Further, managers need to adopt RCO in order to ensure cross-buying and promote WoM recommendations by customers. By practicing PCO managers can promote CB. Also, managers will be able to enhance CB and promote WoM recommendations if the value delivered by the bank is perceived to be adequate by customers.Originality/valueThis study contributes to current knowledge in retail banking by testing the relationship between CO and CB as well as WoM through data obtained from customers in an emerging economy. This study also tests the mediating role of PV for the above-mentioned relationships.

Strategic orientations, joint learning, and innovation generation in international customer-supplier relationships

While innovations generated by international supply channel relationships, as opposed to individual partners, are playing an increasingly important role in the success of all international supply chain partnerships, research on how international supply chain relationships cultivate the process of such innovation generation, particularly for contracting suppliers firms, remains scant. This study explores how supplier joint learning capability can play a role in developing both incremental and radical innovations. The empirical test, which used a sample of 204 Taiwanese executives in electronic suppliers, supports most of the hypotheses in the study. The results demonstrate that different strategic orientations can drive various types of innovation through different paths by the mediating effect of joint learning capability. Specifically, we find that long-term orientation influences only incremental innovation, whereas radical innovation is driven by electronic integration and proactive customer orientation by joint learning. Furthermore, environmental uncertainties such as technological uncertainty and demand uncertainty are found to be moderating the impacts of joint learning capability on radical innovations. Some implications of the results are discussed at the end.

The Effect of Proactive Market Orientation on Company Performance: The Case of Medium and Large Manufacturing Companies in Ethiopia

The objective of this study was to examine the effects of proactive market orientations on companies' performances to come up with possible managerial and theoretical insights as to how manufacturing companies become proactive in formulating and implementing their marketing strategies of these days. Quantitative research approach with explanatory research design was employed. The variables used in the research were formulated based on the extant literature review which includes proactive customer orientations, proactive competitors' orientations, and market-based innovations as determinant variables and the companies' performances as an outcome variable. Textile and leather companies become the center of attention for this study because being proactive is the demand of the competition for such industries as fashion dictates the needs of customers and the dynamism of the competition in general. Simple random sampling technique was applied and a total of 76 qualified questionnaires were used for the data analysis. Multiple linear regression analysis was used for data analysis and SPSS version 22 was used for the purpose. Based on the result, all of the three independent variables are found to significantly affect the dependent variable while proactive customer orientation is the strongest predictor among the three predictor variables. Hence, the managerial implication is implied for the companies that while being proactive is essential in general, being proactive in understanding the current needs of customers and predicting the changes in those needs in the future is particularly important in order for those companies to remain relevant and sustainable in the market.

Relationship-based product innovations: Evidence from the global supply chain

Global supply chains offer a range of expertise to suppliers interested in generating innovative new products through capitalizing on the closeness of their working relationships with other firms. However, current knowledge on whether and how relational capital between firms can be leveraged for innovation is equivocal, conceptualizing little of the underlying processes responsible for mobilizing relational capital, as well as yielding mostly contradictory empirical results. This study proposes and tests the intermediate mechanisms of proactive customer orientation and joint learning capability as two distinctive capabilities that may account for how relational capital drives relationship-based innovation. Our conceptual model posits that the relational capital–innovation link is neither simple nor direct. An empirical test on 204 Taiwanese suppliers demonstrates the complexity of the innovation generation process. Two pathways from relational capital to innovation are revealed: joint learning capability fully mediates the link, whereas the role of proactive customer orientation is moderated by aspects of the suppliers' ties to their international customers; our theory is thereby largely confirmed. Finally, implications for the theory and practice of innovation in global supply chain relationships are drawn.

Beyond listening: the distinct effects of proactive versus responsive customer orientation on the reduction of uncertainties at the fuzzy front end of innovation

The extent to which the intensity of R&D employees' interaction with market‐oriented employees, proactive customer orientation, and responsive customer orientation affect the ability to reduce product‐related uncertainties at the fuzzy front end of innovation was analyzed. They investigated 160 product innovation projects in various high‐tech industries and identified proactive customer orientation as an important moderator of the link between R&D employees' interaction with market‐oriented employees and the reduction of product‐related uncertainties at the fuzzy front end. They also found that responsive customer orientation diminishes the ability to reduce product‐related uncertainties at the fuzzy front end. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed.

Proactive customer orientation and its role for creating customer value in global markets

Today’s business customers expect sellers not only to respond effectively to their expressed needs but also to understand their business sufficiently well to proactively address their latent and future needs. Yet, research shows that many firms underestimate, misunderstand, or overlook these customer expectations. To draw clarity to this discrepancy, this study explores the notion of proactive customer orientation and examines the degree to which this capability offers an opportunity for competitive advantage. While research in recent years has explored the role of proactive customer orientation in new product performance, empirical investigation in this stream of market orientation literature is significantly underdeveloped. We assess the impact of the proactive customer orientation construct on value creation by taking a novel approach that examines the proactive customer orientation → value → satisfaction → loyalty chain using data from 800 business customers in India, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We find that, relative to other firm capabilities, proactive customer orientation is the most consistent driver of customer value across our multinational data set. Results also show robust effects for the interaction of proactive and responsive customer orientation to create superior value. Several moderating conditions further frame the impact of this capability: intense levels of customer value change, a global relationship scope, and a transnational relationship structure. Overall, findings significantly advance the understanding of the proactive dimension within market orientation and provide marketers with insights for voice of the customer processes.