Market Orientation, Relationship

Marketing Orientation, and Business

Performance: The Moderating Effects of
Economic Ideology and Industry Type

ABSTRACT This study examines how economic ideology and industry type
moderate the impacts of market orientation and relationship
marketing orientation on business performance. The authors
collected data through a survey of firms in both Mainland
China and Hong Kong. They selected these two economies
because they have similarities in cultural dimensions and dif-
ferences in economic dimensions. The authors find support for
the moderating effect of economic ideology and industry type
on the link among market orientation, relationship marketing
orientation, and business performance.

Because of the globalization process during the past decades,

Leo Y.M. Sin, more and more companies have adopted a global outlook
Alan C.B. Tse, through which the world becomes their market. The growth
in the internationalization of business and markets has led to
Oliver H.M. Yau, a greater need for analysis of the role and the effectiveness of
Raymond P.M. Chow, strategies in different geographic markets. Such an analysis
requires an examination of whether particular strategies are
and Jenny S.Y. Lee associated with particular market characteristics and with
particular kinds and levels of business performance (Manu
1992). Some previous studies have suggested that differences
in the market environments of different countries influence
the types of strategies that companies develop and adopt,
which in turn influence business performance (Douglas and
Rhee 1989; Manu 1992). The findings have significant impli-
cations for the choice of strategy standardization or strategy
localization in international business operations, which has
been the most debated topic throughout the past decades in
global business (Levitt 1983).

The particular aspect of the strategies we chose to investigate

Submitted November 2003
Accepted September 2004
© Journal of International Marketing
Vol. 13, No. 1, 2005, pp. 36–57
ISSN 1069-031X
involves a firm’s market orientation (MO) and relationship
marketing orientation (RMO). Given that marketing is an
adaptive, boundary-spanning business function, we believe
that the business-environment context may moderate the
impact of different types of marketing strategy on business
performance. Such studies should be important for firms
operating in China or intending to enter the Chinese market.
The basic premise of this article is that the characteristics of
different business environments suggest that MO and RMO
are unlikely to have similar influences across all markets.

36 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

The effects of external, environmental factors can be studied
by examining companies based in different economies and
markets across different market environments. This
approach considers the market environment a variable
exogenous to the organization that affects and reinforces the
norms and behaviors within the firm (Deshpandé and Web-
ster 1989). Thus, the purpose of this research is to examine
how the business-environment context moderates the effect
of MO and RMO on business performance.

Using a survey design, we collected data from firms in two

Chinese economies: Mainland China and Hong Kong. We
selected Hong Kong and Mainland China because of their
contrasting political and economic systems. First, the politi-
cal economies of Hong Kong and Mainland China differ
markedly. Hong Kong is a market-driven economy and is
considered one of the most open and free economies in the
world. Conversely, Mainland China is an economy that is
undergoing a transition from a planned system to a market-
driven system. Second, the home market in Mainland China
constitutes more than 1.2 billion Chinese consumers,
whereas Hong Kong’s home market is approximately 6.7 mil-
lion Chinese consumers. In 2003, the gross national product
per capita was approximately US$1,100 in Mainland China
compared with US$25,430 in Hong Kong (World Bank Group
2003). Thus, the political economies of the two Chinese soci-
eties provide sufficiently contrasting systems to test the gen-
eralizability of the MO and RMO models.

The remainder of this article is organized into six sections. In

the first section, we review previous research that relates to
MO and RMO to provide a basis for this study. Then, we
describe the conceptual framework and research hypotheses.
Next, we review the research methodology, including sam-
pling, data collection, and measures. We assess the reliability
and validity of the MO and RMO concept. We then present
the results of the tests of the hypotheses. Finally, we discuss
the managerial implications and directions for further
research.

As a fundamental construct in marketing, MO has received a

great deal of attention from marketing scholars (e.g., Kohli PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON MO
and Jaworski 1990; Kumar, Subramanian, and Yauger 1998; AND RMO
Narver and Slater 1990). According to Kohli and Jaworski
(1990), whereas the marketing concept is commonly defined
as a philosophy or way of thinking that guides the allocation
of resources and the formulation of strategies for an organiza-
tion, MO is considered the activities involved in the imple-
mentation of the marketing concept.1 With this definition,
three sets of activities—intelligence generation, intelligence
dissemination, and responsiveness to market intelligence—
represent the operationalization of MO. Narver and Slater

Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing Orientation 37

 (1990) and Ruekert (1992) also report similar conceptualiza-
tions and scales and test them for reliability and validity.

In the past decade, a steady stream of research has focused

on the impact of MO on business performance. Sin and col-
leagues (2000) provide a summary of prior empirical studies
on the association between MO and business performance;
they report that nearly all studies find support for a positive
association between MO and performance. Performance
measures used in these studies range from hard measures,
such as return on investment, sales growth, and market
share, to soft measures, including organizational commit-
ment and esprit de corps.

Although literature on MO has provided sufficient evidence

of the positive relationship between MO and firms’ business
performance, some scholars have highlighted the importance
of RMO for firms to compete effectively (Perrien, Filiatrault,
and Ricard 1992). Berry (1983, p. 25) formally introduces the
concept of relationship marketing and defines it as “attract-
ing, maintaining, and enhancing customer relationships.”
Grönroos (1991) proposes a more comprehensive definition
and delineates relationship marketing as attempts by firms to
establish, maintain, and enhance relationships with cus-
tomers and other parties at a profit so that the objectives of
all the parties are met by mutual exchange and fulfillment of
promises. Furthermore, after a comprehensive review of 26
definitions of relationship marketing, Harker (1999, p. 16)
proposes the following description: “An organization
engaged in proactively creating, developing, and maintain-
ing committed, interactive, and profitable exchanges with
selected customers (partners) over time is engaged in rela-
tionship marketing.” Although the preceding definitions dif-
fer somewhat, they all indicate that relationship marketing
focuses on individual buyer–seller relationships, that the
relationships are longitudinal in nature, and that both parties
in each individual buyer–seller relationship benefit. In short,
from a firm’s perspective, the relationship marketing concept
can be viewed as a philosophy of doing business success-
fully or as a distinct organizational culture/value that places
the buyer–seller relationship at the center of the firm’s strate-
gic or operational thinking. Limited empirical research has
examined the relationship between RMO and business per-
formance. Several studies in the past decade have indicated
that relationship marketing has a positive impact on firms’
business performance. For example, Smith (1991) studies
direct marketing in the insurance sector and finds that rela-
tionship marketing helps maximize long-term profitability.
Using firms in China, Sin and colleagues (2005) develop and
validate a scale made up of six subscales—bonding, commu-
nication, shared value, empathy, reciprocity, and trust—and

38 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

find that RMO yields a significant impact on the determina-
tion of the firms’ performance.

Despite the rich body of literature that supports the positive

relationship between MO/RMO and performance, there is
relatively little work on the relationship between competi-
tive environment and the relative importance of MO and
RMO.

Both MO and RMO are strategic orientations that a firm can

adopt in various degrees, depending on the conditions in the
firm’s competitive environment. Previous studies in the
strategics management and marketing literature have firmly
established that firms should consider environmental char-
acteristics in the choice, development, and implementation
of strategy (Lusch and Lusch 1987; Slater and Narver 1994).
Often, firms’ strategies reflect their external conditions (Seb-
ora, Hartman, and Tower 1994). Hambrick (1983) and
McKee, Varadarajan, and Pride (1989) have shown that the
effectiveness of a particular strategic orientation depends on
the dynamics of the business environment. Thus, depending
on the characteristics of the competitive environment, a firm
may experience different levels of performance that are con-
tingent on its choice of the appropriate blend of MO and
RMO.

This study follows the environment–strategy–performance

paradigm. This paradigm suggests that a company’s perform- CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
ance is a function of market conditions and the strategy pur- AND HYPOTHESES
sued (Lenz 1981). Manu (1992) and Miles and Snow (1978) DEVELOPMENT
provide empirical evidence for this viewpoint.
Conceptual Framework
With the environment–strategy–performance paradigm, we
present our conceptual framework in Figure 1. First, the
model comprises MO and RMO and its consequences that
are embedded in the business-environment context. We
include two contextual factors, economic ideology and
industry, which the two ellipses in the middle of Figure 1
represent and symbolize. We define economic ideology as
the “workplace philosophy” that pervades the business envi-
ronment of a country (Ralston et al. 1997). In general, eco-
nomic ideology evolves from the legal and political systems
of a society (Kelley, Whatley, and Worthley 1987). In this
study, we contrast the two major economic ideologies in the
world today: capitalism and socialism. Another type of con-
textual factor is industry type. Here, we compare firms in
two different industries: manufacturing and services.

The second component of the framework is marketing-

related strategies—that is, MO and RMO. These two strate-
gies are important elements in influencing business perform-
ance. Two ellipses in the orientation box in Figure 1

Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing Orientation 39

 Figure 1.
Conceptual Framework Economic
ideology

Market
orientation

Business
performance
Relationship
marketing
orientation

Industry
type

represent the strategies. However, the level of influence of

each strategy on business performance may vary when the
moderating effects of economic ideology and industry type
are considered, respectively. In Figure 1, the arrows inter-
cepting the arrow coming from the orientation box on the
left-hand side symbolize the effects of the two moderating
variables: economic ideology and industry type.

An ellipse on the right-hand side of Figure 1 represents the

last component of the framework: performance. For the pur-
pose of this study, we used two broad categories of measures,
marketing performance (sales growth, market share, and cus-
tomer retention) and financial performance (return on invest-
ment). Both categories of measures have been studied exten-
sively in previous research on strategy and performance in
both domestic and international markets (Douglas and Craig
1983; Manu 1992; Sin et al. 2000). The conceptual frame-
work provides a basis for addressing the research issues that
we posed previously. The issues suggest that there is a condi-
tioning impact of business-environment factors, and thus we
should not expect MO and RMO to be associated with the
same level of performance in two economies or two
industries.

The Moderating Effect of Economic Ideology. The samples

Hypotheses that we examine herein originate in economies with different
economic ideologies. Hong Kong’s socioeconomic and politi-
cal systems are significantly different from those of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC). Hong Kong has an open
and almost totally free market economy and a laissez-faire
approach to public policy. In Hong Kong, private firms make
up the vast majority of the economic base, and they operate
in an environment that consistently encourages the use of

40 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

market forces and prices to allocate resources and make
Hong Kong exports competitive in the world market. Even
after Great Britain returned Hong Kong to Mainland China in
1997, the PRC’s government has repeatedly stated that it will
keep its promise to allow Hong Kong to remain a bastion of
free-market capitalism for at least another 50 years. In con-
trast, Mainland China was essentially a rigid, planned econ-
omy from 1949 to late 1978. Under this system, state-owned
enterprises played a dominant role in China’s economy,
which left little room for collectively owned organizations to
enter the market and virtually excluded private firms from
the economy (Deng and Dart 1995).

Although both MO and RMO have a direct impact on per-

formance, the relative importance of MO and RMO may
depend on the competitive environment in which the firm
operates. Prior literature has suggested that the greater the
environmental uncertainty, the more likely are firms to rely
on personal or institutional relationships when doing busi-
ness (Davies et al. 2003; Peng and Luo 2000; Powell 1990).
Davies, Luk, and Wong (1995) and Sin (1998) have applied
the transactional cost theory to explain the importance of
personal relationships, or guanxi, in imperfect competitive
economies characterized by weak market-institutional sup-
port in areas such as transparent laws and regulations. With-
out a strong market-institutional framework, firms will
attempt to minimize business uncertainties by engaging in
building personal relationships with governmental bodies,
major resource suppliers, and key customers. Mainland
China, a socialist economy, is in an apparent transition to a
market-oriented economy. However, China’s transition is far
from complete. Abramson and Ai (1997) empirically study
the business-to-business sector in China and conclude that
guanxi-style buyer–seller relationships (similar to relation-
ship marketing) are strongly related to reduced levels of per-
ceived uncertainty about the business environment and to a
variety of improved performance outcomes. Wong (1998)
studies the effect of guanxi and relationship performance on
industrial buying in China and suggests that firms should
adapt relationship marketing plans to the changing environ-
ment of the Chinese market.

Thus, we hypothesize that because managers in Mainland

China operate in a business environment with highly unsta-
ble political, legal, and bureaucratic factors, they are forced
to rely more on guanxi when doing business there. In con-
trast, although Hong Kong is essentially a Chinese society, its
market-institutional support is different from Mainland
China. Hong Kong, with a heritage of British culture, has a
well-developed and independent legal system. In addition,
Hong Kong’s society has a stable and open business environ-
ment, which consistently encourages both local and interna-

Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing Orientation 41

 tional firms operating in Hong Kong to remain competitive
through the use of strategic and innovative customer-driven
strategies rather than personal relationships. Indeed, prior
studies have shown that MO has a significant and positive
impact on business performance in Hong Kong’s market
(Chan and Ellis 1998; Tse et al. 2003). Therefore, we expect
that MO is a more effective business strategy than RMO in
Hong Kong. Thus, we postulate the following hypothesis:

H1: The relative impact of MO and RMO varies across

Hong Kong and Mainland China, such that (a) MO
has a greater impact on business performance than
does RMO in Hong Kong and (b) RMO has a greater
impact on business performance than does MO in
Mainland China.

The Moderating Effect of Industry Type. Although both MO

and RMO have a direct impact on performance, RMO should
be more dominant in the determination of firms’ business
performance in the services sector than in the manufacturing
sector. The reason for this is that relationship marketing
relies on a close interaction between the firm and its cus-
tomers, which is a dominant feature of a service firm. Indeed,
the origins of relationship marketing are in the services
industry (Gummesson 1999). Many authors have suggested
that the intangibility of services and the maturity of service
offerings have made relationship marketing essential for
service firms to develop a sustainable competitive advantage
(Czepiel 1990; Perrien and Ricard 1995). Thus, RMO should
be more important for the services sector than for the manu-
facturing sector. This gives rise to the following hypothesis:

H2: RMO has a greater impact on business performance

in the services industry than in the manufacturing
industry.

MO. We began this study with the traditional Western defini-

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY tion of MO. To determine whether Chinese managers also
view MO as constituting the same three behavioral character-
Scale and Measurement istics that Narver and Slater (1990) propose—that is, cus-
tomer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunc-
tional coordination—in line with Savitt’s (1999) approach,
we conducted focus group discussions with 20 Chinese man-
agers, of whom 10 worked in Mainland China and 10 worked
in Hong Kong. We asked the participants to express their
opinions about marketing and what activities they believed
were necessary for their enterprises to outperform their com-
petitors in the changing marketplace. Managers in both Hong
Kong and Mainland China demonstrated a surprisingly
sophisticated level of understanding of marketing. In their
definition of marketing, most of the respondents elicited the
dimensions of MO that Western researchers cited.2 Thus, we

42 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

were confident that the activities constituting MO in firms
operating in a Chinese context were similar to those that
Narver and Slater (1990) found. Consequently, we used
Narver and Slater’s scale to measure the MO construct in this
study. We used a seven-point scoring format (1 = “strongly
disagree” and 7 = “strongly agree”) for all 14 items.

RMO. Relationship marketing orientation measures the

extent to which a company engages in developing a long-
term relationship with its customers. In this study, we
hypothesize RMO as a one-dimensional construct that con-
sists of six behavioral components—bonding, empathy, reci-
procity, shared value, communication, and trust—that can be
measured reliably with a multi-item scale. For this study, we
developed a measurement scale to capture the six dimen-
sions of RMO (Sin et al. 2002) on the basis of the findings
from a survey. The scale successfully met standards for inter-
nal validity, content validity, construct validity, and
criterion-related validity. To measure RMO, we used a seven-
point scoring format (1 = “strongly disagree” and 7 =
“strongly agree”) for the six dimensions of bonding (3 items),
communication (3 items), shared value (4 items), empathy (4
items), reciprocity (3 items), and trust (2 items).

Business Performance. To measure business performance, we

asked each respondent to evaluate his or her company’s cur-
rent business performance in the local market relative to that
of its major competitors with respect to the following four
items: (1) sales growth, (2) customer retention, (3) return on
investment, and (4) market share. We measured responses on
a seven-point scale (1 = “worse than” and 7 = “better than”).

In Hong Kong, we administered the survey using a two-step

procedure. In the first phase, we mailed a questionnaire Questionnaire Administration
titled “Business Practice Survey” and a cover letter that
explained the purpose of the survey to the marketing direc-
tor/manager of selected organizations on the basis of a ran-
dom sampling from a database that the Hong Kong Trade
Development Council (HKTDC) provided. The HKTDC is a
highly respected statutory organization that promotes trade
in Hong Kong. In an effort to obtain a high level of participa-
tion, we offered respondents an executive summary of the
findings on completion of the study. In the second phase,
five weeks later, we mailed a follow-up letter with a ques-
tionnaire, which reminded participants to complete and
return the survey within the prespecified time period.

In countries in which there is a general mistrust of data-

gathering techniques and a lack of understanding of contem-
porary marketing research methods, Jain (1993) and Terpstra
and Sarathy (1994) advocate the use of alternative data-
collection procedures. In Mainland China, we did not admin-

Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing Orientation 43

 ister the survey by mail, because these characteristics are evi-
dent there; thus, we used an alternative, more appropriate
data-collection technique. We collected the data for the study
from companies located in Beijing, the national capital of
Mainland China. With the help of a major university in Bei-
jing, we randomly selected 1200 companies from the Beijing
Yellow Pages Commercial/Industrial Telephone Directory. We
made telephone calls to the top administrator of each com-
pany to explain the purpose of the study and to solicit agree-
ment for survey participation. Of the 1200 companies, 300
agreed to participate. We then hand delivered a total of 300
questionnaires to the top administrator in each company.

The questionnaire that we used in this study contained ques-

tions on the following areas: (1) MO (14 items), (2) RMO (19
items), (3) business performance (4 items), (4) company
background (3 items), and (5) respondent background (4
items). In Hong Kong, we administered the questionnaire in
English, the official and common language that Hong Kong
businesspeople use; in Mainland China, we administered the
questionnaire in Chinese. To ensure that the meanings of all
questionnaire items in the Chinese version were the same as
those in the English version, we translated all the questions
into Chinese and then back-translated them into English in
line with the procedure that Brislin (1980) suggests.

In Hong Kong, we mailed questionnaires to a random sample

Response Rate of 1000 firms. A total of 266 firms completed the surveys and
returned them, yielding a usable response rate of 26.6%. In
Mainland China, 210 firms completed the questionnaires
and returned them, yielding a response rate of 17.5%. We
show the characteristics of the responding firms in Table 1.

To test for nonresponse bias in mail surveys, we compared

early respondents with late respondents along all the
response items (Armstrong and Overton 1977). The chi-
square tests show that there is no significant difference
between the early and the late respondents on demographic
characteristics. In addition, t-test results indicate that there is
no significant difference between the early and the late
respondents on MO and performance measures. Thus, we
can conclude that nonresponse bias is not a serious problem
in this study.

Reliability Analysis. Table 2 reports the reliability of the MO

RESULTS scale using Cronbach’s coefficient alpha. The overall coeffi-
cient alpha for the scale is .934 and .869, respectively, for the
Reliability and Validity of the Hong Kong and Mainland China sample, which is greater
MO and the RMO Scales than .7, as Nunnally (1994) suggests. With regard to individ-
ual subscales, the reliability of all three subscales met the
standard of .7 for both samples.

44 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

 Hong Kong Mainland China
Sample Sample Table 1.
Number % Number % Characteristics of Responding
Industry Firms
Manufacturing 80 30.1 63 30.0
Services 139 52.3 60 28.5
Othersa 42 16.1 77 36.7
No response 4 1.5 10 4.5
Number of Employees
100 or less 153 57.5 60 28.6
101–500 43 16.1 33 15.7
501–1000 16 6.0 20 9.5
1001–5000 37 13.9 55 26.2
5001 or above 9 3.4 36 17.1
No response 8 3.1 6 2.9
Business Type
State-owned enterprises 0 .0 176 83.8
Private enterprises 266 100.0 21 10.0
No response 0 .0 13 6.2
aThis item includes building and construction, electricity and gas, mining and iron ore, and
others.

Table 3 reports the RMO scale. The overall coefficient alpha

for the scale is .932 and .841, respectively, for the Hong Kong
and Mainland China sample. With regard to individual sub-
scales, the reliability coefficient of all the six subscales met
the standard of .7 for the Hong Kong sample. For the Main-
land China sample, the reliability of the six components are
marginally acceptable.

Convergent Validity. Convergent validity is the degree of

agreement in two or more measures of the same construct.
We examined evidence of convergent validity of the MO and
RMO scales through simple correlations among the compo-
nents of the respective scale. The results show that correla-
tions among the three components of MO ranged from .627 to
.783 across the two samples, and all correlations were signif-
icant at p < .01. In addition, each of the components was
highly correlated (.857 or above) with the overall measure of
MO. Furthermore, we obtained significant correlations
among all the six components of RMO across the two sam-
ples. The pattern of correlations indicates that components
of each MO and RMO scale converge on a common construct,
thereby providing evidence of convergent validity.

Discriminant Validity. Discriminant validity is the degree to

which measures of conceptually distinct constructs differ. To
test for discriminant validity, we performed a simple factor
test on the data collected in this study (see Podsakoff and

Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing Orientation 45

 Hong Kong Mainland China
Table 2. Item-to- Item-to-
Scale Reliabilities of MO Cronbach’s Total Cronbach’s Total
Across Cultures Item alpha Subscale alpha Subscale
Customer Orientation .844 .722
1. Measure customer
satisfaction .671 .510
2. Create customer value .642 .412
3. Understand customer
needs .568 .389
4. Customer satisfaction
objectives .530 .405
5. After-sale service .633 .492
6. Customer commitment .704 .547
Competitor Orientation .807 .714
7. Respond rapidly to
competitions’ actions .627 .429
8. Salespeople share
competitor information .636 .610
9. Target opportunities for
competitive advantage .620 .468
10. Top managers discuss
competitors’ strategies .633 .521
Interfunctional Coordination .876 .722
11. Functional integration
in strategy .664 .528
12. Share resources with
other business units .755 .490
13. Information shared
among functions .798 .583
14. All functions contribute
to customer value .722 .444
Alpha coefficient for the
entire scale .934 .869

Organ 1986). We factor analyzed the MO subscales and the

RMO subscales together, using principal components analysis.
The analysis produced two factors with eigenvalues greater
than unity, which account for a total of 72.3% and 57.3% of
the variance for Hong Kong and Mainland China samples,
respectively (Table 4). A clean solution results from the MO
and RMO subscales, which loaded in two separate factors.
Therefore, the results suggest that the respondents discrimi-
nated between the MO and the RMO constructs, thus imply-
ing discriminant validity within the measures.

H1 postulates that the relative impact of MO and RMO varies

Test of Hypotheses across Hong Kong and Mainland China. To test the hypothe-
sis, we conducted a regression analysis using business per-
formance as the dependent variable, MO and RMO as the
predicting variables, and industry type and firm size as the

46 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

 Hong Kong Mainland China
Item-to- Item-to- Table 3.
Cronbach’s Total Cronbach’s Total Scale Reliabilities of RMO
Item alpha Subscale alpha Subscale Across Culture
Bonding .844 .697
1. We both try very hard to
establish a long-term
relationship. .728 .579
2. We work in close
cooperation. .687 .460
3. We keep in touch
constantly. .713 .504
Communication .701 .588
4. We communicate and
express our opinions to
each other frequently. .429 .398
5. We can show our
discontent toward each
other through
communication. .532 .406
6. We can communicate
honestly. .557 .393
Shared Value .863 .809
7. We share the same
worldview. .674 .524
8. We share the same
opinion about most things. .718 .626
9. We share the same
feelings toward things
around us. .754 .679
10. We share the same
values. .711 .693
Empathy .828 .584
11. We always see things
from each other’s view. .633 .434
12. We know how each
other feels. .641 .400
13. We understand each
other’s values and goals. .653 .324
14. We care about each
other’s feelings .699 .313
Reciprocity .767 .627
15. My company regards
“never forget a good turn”
as our business motto. .716 .471
16. We keep our promises to
each other in any situation. .447 .329
17. If our customers gave
assistance when my
company had difficulties,
then I would repay their
kindness. .655 .522
Trust .912 .654
18. They are trustworthy on
important things. .840 .495
19. My company trusts them. .840 .495
Alpha coefficient for the entire
scale .932 .841

Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing Orientation 47

 control variables. We entered all variables simultaneously
into the equation.

The results in Table 5 show that for the Hong Kong sample,
both RMO and MO are significant in explaining the variation
in business performance, with an R2 of .250. In addition, the
MO variable is the dominant variable and yields a higher
beta value (.325) than does the RMO variable (.213). In con-
trast, for the Mainland China sample, we found RMO to be
the only significant predicting variable associated with busi-
ness performance (b = .187, R2 = .92, p < .01). These results
show that MO has a greater impact than RMO on business
performance in Hong Kong, and this pattern is reversed in
Mainland China. To test whether the observed differences in

Hong Kong Mainland China

Table 4. Sample Sample
Results of Simple Factor Test Variables Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 1 Factor 2
for Discriminant Validity Communication .845 .743
Empathy .836 .698
Shared value .787 .670
Trust .759 .622
Bonding .727 .615
Reciprocity .601 .600
Competitor orientation .895 .873
Customer orientation .885 .856
Interfunctional coordination .869 .830
Eigenvalue 3.388 3.120 2.746 2.417
Percentage of variance 37.648 34.661 30.515 26.860

Dependent Variable: Overall Performance

Table 5.
Hong Kong Sample Mainland China Sample
Relative Impact of MO and
Independent Manufact- Manufact-
RMO on Overall Performance: Variables Totalb uring Services Totalb uring Services
Estimated Standardized
RMO .213* .551* .121 .187** –.220 .628*
Regression Coefficients
MO .325* .051 .348* .102 .081 .144
Industry
typea
I1 –.166** — — .080 — —
I2 –.129 — — .019 — —
Firm size .129 .198 .297** .087 –.140 .218
R2 .250* .324 .232* .092* .001 .184**
*p < .01.
**p < .05.
aI1 and I2 are dummy variables. I1 = manufacturing, and I2 = services.
bWe include the “Others” category in the industrial classification in the regression analyses

for the “Total” sample, but we exclude it in the comparison of manufacturing and services
industries.

48 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

relative impacts of MO and RMO are statistically significant,
we used the Chow test. The results show that the difference
is significant (F = 7.792, n1 = 6, n2 = 449, p < .01). Thus, the
results support H1.

H2 predicts that the impact of RMO is more important for the

services sector than for the manufacturing sector. To test this
hypothesis, we ran a regression analysis with business per-
formance as the dependent variable, RMO as the predicting
variable, and MO and firm size as control variables. In addi-
tion, we divided the overall sample into two subsamples:
manufacturing industry and services industry. We performed
regressions on each subsample separately.

As we show in Table 5, RMO has differential impacts on the

business performance of the manufacturing industry and the
services industry for the Hong Kong sample. Contrary to
what we propose, RMO is more important for the manufac-
turing industry than for the services industry, and we found
the difference to be significant using the Chow test (F =
7.441, n1 = 4, n2 = 203, p < .01). For the Mainland China sam-
ple, the results are significantly different. The Chow test
shows that RMO is more important for service firms than for
manufacturing firms (F = 68.358, n1 = 4, n2 = 111, p < .01).
Thus, the results confirm H2 for the China sample but not for
the Hong Kong sample.

Although the study is set in a context of Chinese economies,

our major motivation is to examine how the business- DISCUSSION AND
environment context moderates the effect of MO and RMO CONCLUSION
on business performance.
Contributions
Two sets of ideas and findings distinguish this study from
previous studies. First, we developed the constructs and the
measures of MO and RMO available for data collection
mainly in the context of the U.S. cultural setting. Although
the continued internationalization of business operations
has led to the conjecture that marketing theories and models
may be transportable across national and cultural borders
(Buzzell 1966), the direct application of the constructs and
measures to subjects from another culture without any vali-
dation could create a “category fallacy,” as Kleinman (1977)
suggests. Moreover, an uncritical emulation and extrapola-
tion of the experiences of U.S. marketing practices to coun-
tries with different cultural and economic environments
could lead to inefficient and ineffective performances of
organizations in those countries (Agarwal 1993). Therefore,
several researchers have called for empirical work that dis-
tinguishes “culture-bound” behavior from “universal”
behavior (Weinshall 1977). Our study validates the MO and
RMO scales in a Chinese context using data that we obtained
from marketing decision makers at the corporate level.

Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing Orientation 49

 Although the scale was originally developed in the United
States for the strategic business unit level, our findings sug-
gest that the scale captures the constructs of MO and RMO in
Hong Kong and Mainland China, two Chinese economies
with different economic and cultural environments. There-
fore, we confidently conclude that the two scales are valid
and reliable and can be used across a variety of boundaries—
companies, industries, and cultures.

Second, previous studies have consistently shown that either

MO or RMO has a significant association with business per-
formance. However, researchers have made few attempts to
assess the relative impact of these two strategy variables on
business performance. Through an environmental perspec-
tive, this study was able to identify the environmental con-
texts in which MO and RMO are effective. Our findings sup-
port H1, which hypothesizes that in Hong Kong, a
market-driven economy, MO has a greater effect on perform-
ance than does RMO. However, this pattern is reversed in
Mainland China’s regulated and transitional economy.

For researchers, this study helps expand the understanding

Research and Managerial of marketing strategies in a transitional economy. Many
Implications scholars have argued that transitional economies, such as
China’s, “offer fascinating grounds to refine and test existing
theories and to develop new ones” for two major reasons
(Peng and Heath 1996, p. 493; see also Nee and Matthews
1996). First, China is undergoing an economic transition
from a planned economy to a market economy. The disconti-
nuity in China’s business environment can be regarded as a
“quasi experiment” that has resulted in a significant change
in firm behavior. Such a naturally occurring experiment-like
setting makes it possible to observe strategic changes in Chi-
nese firms. Currently, researchers know very little about the
marketing practices of firms in transitional economies, espe-
cially with regard to the relationship among MO, RMO, and
business performance. We hope that our study can stimulate
additional studies on the strategic behaviors of firms in tran-
sitional economics, which can help move the market transi-
tion literature to the center stage of business research and
make more potential and relevant contributions to the busi-
ness literature. Second, because China shares an important
common legacy with other countries under communist
regimes or countries with central planning systems, the Chi-
nese experiment can help shed light on the evolution of the
market systems in the post-Soviet republics and Eastern
Europe. Further studies must be conducted to determine the
generalizability of the research findings. We suggest that
comparative research (e.g., on firms in Mainland China ver-
sus firms in Russia or Eastern Europe) can further enhance
the understanding of the relationship among MO, RMO, and
performance that we investigated herein.

50 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

From a managerial perspective, the continuing expansion of
international, multinational, or global companies has created
a need for understanding management imperatives in differ-
ent national market environments. Managers who implement
business strategies in different environmental settings can-
not have ethnocentric views about management imperatives.
At the same time, they cannot be expected to know the man-
agement practices in every country (Agarwal 1993). This
study provides some guidelines for marketing managers who
handle environmental similarities or diversities across coun-
tries. For example, the results of this study demonstrate that
MO has a stronger effect than does RMO on performance in
Hong Kong, a capitalist economy, than in Mainland China, a
highly regulated, government-involved economy. Con-
versely, RMO is a dominant and effective strategy in Main-
land China. Marketing managers in Hong Kong should con-
tinuously monitor customers’ needs and competitors’
strategies to propose integrated and timely marketing strate-
gies in this market. For practitioners in Mainland China and
people interested in doing business there, our findings sug-
gest that RMO, not MO, is a more effective strategy for busi-
ness success. Thus, different marketing strategies should be
employed to explore the two Chinese economies.

Although this study has provided relevant and notable

insights into the understanding of the impacts of MO on per- Limitations and Further
formance in two Chinese economies, there are several limita- Research
tions associated with this study. First, we used cross-
sectional data. Consequently, the time sequence of the
relationships among MO, RMO, and business performance
cannot be determined unambiguously, especially in China’s
fast-changing marketplace. The development of a time-series
database and the testing of relationships among MO, RMO,
and performance in a longitudinal framework could provide
more insight into probable causation.

Second, we used a subjective approach to measure perform-

ance. Extensive use of similar measures in research on strate-
gic orientation (e.g., Appiah-Adu 1997; Greenley 1995; Slater
and Narver 1994) and the practical difficulties associated
with data collection in Chinese societies made this approach
necessary (Luo and Chen 1996). In addition, although prior
studies have reported a strong association between objective
and subjective measures of business performance (Dawes
1999; Jaworski and Kohli 1993; Venkatraman and Ramanu-
jam 1986), we could not find any similar studies that used
data from Mainland China and Hong Kong. Thus, further
studies should examine the generalizability of this relation-
ship between the two measures in a Chinese context. Fur-
thermore, China is a society that emphasizes “face saving,”
which may have an inflated effect on the reporting of subjec-
tive measures of performance. Further studies that include

Market Orientation and Relationship Marketing Orientation 51

 this cultural value as a control variable might help improve
the rigor of the results.

Third, we collected data for this study by the key-informant

approach. Although senior managers are adequate for reli-
able and valid data (Tan and Litschert 1994), the information
that a firm generates is not the only source of information
about its levels of MO and RMO. It is important to contrast a
firm’s degree of MO and RMO as internal information
assesses it (e.g., managers’ responses to questionnaires, as we
have done in this study) with its level of MO and RMO as
customers, competitors, and distributors perceive it. This
might be one of the most challenging areas for further
research.

Another potential area for further research is to explore the

moderating role that relationship proneness plays. Gwinner,
Gremler, and Bitner (1998) suggest that the success of
relationship-oriented activities depends not only on its strat-
egy or implementation but also on the preferences of the
individual customer. Christy, Oliver, and Penn (1996) use the
term “psychologically predisposed” to express the idea that
some customers are predisposed to welcome a more
involved relationship. Not all types of buyers are prone to
engage in relationships with sellers (Berry 1995; Crosby,
Evans, and Cowles 1990). Thus, consumer relationship
proneness, which De Wulf, Odekerken-Schröder, and
Iacobucci (2001) define as a consumer’s relatively stable and
conscious tendency to engage in relationships with sellers of
a particular product category, should moderate the relation-
ship between RMO and business performance.

Furthermore, many researchers (e.g., Lindgreen and Pels

2002; Schoder and Madeja 2004) have suggested that
whether a firm operates in a business-to-business or a
business-to-consumer market has consequences on the effect
of RMO on business performance. Thus, further research
should also investigate the role that this moderator plays in
the link between RMO and business performance. Other firm
characteristics, such as whether the firm is state owned, the
country of origin of the firm, and so on, might also be worth-
while to include.

Finally, the sample we used for analysis was drawn only

from Hong Kong and Beijing, two cities in greater China, and
thus the generalizability of the results remains to be tested.
Therefore, further research could expand the present study
by attempting a nationwide survey in China. Indeed, replica-
tion of the study in other transitional economies could
ensure the population validity of the findings.

52 Leo Y.M. Sin et al.

1. In line with the work of Slater and Narver (1994), “market
orientation” and “marketing orientation” are considered NOTES
synonyms, and thus we use the term “market orientation”
in the article.

2. We deleted one of the items in Narver and Slater’s (1990)

original scale that pertained to interfunctional customer
calls after several in-depth interviews with target respon-
dents. We found that such calls often are perceived as
stepping into another department’s territory and are con-
sidered “rocking the boat” and stirring up a schism among
staff in different departments. Such behaviors are consid-
ered annoying in a Chinese community, which stresses
social harmony.

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THE AUTHORS
Leo Y.M. Sin is a professor
(e-mail: leo@bar.msmail.cuhk.
edu.hk), and Alan C.B. Tse is an
associate professor (e-mail: alan@
baf.msmail.cuhk.edu.hk),
Department of Marketing, The
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