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A multidimensional model of
marketing culture and
performance
A different approach to the use of Webster’s
marketing culture measurement scale
Mamoun N. Akroush
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Graduate School of Business Administration,
The German-Jordanian University, Amman, Jordan
Samer M. Al-Mohammad
Faculty of Business Administration, Mu’tah University, AL-Karak,
Jordan, and
Abdelhadi L. Odetallah
Hotel and Tourism College, Ta’if, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine a multidimensional model of marketing culture and
performance in tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. The paper introduces a model proposing
certain associations between Webster’s (1990) marketing culture dimensions and attempts to underline
how such associations affect restaurants’ performance.
Design/methodology/approach – A structured and self-administered survey was used, targeting
managers and employees of tourism restaurants operating in Jordan. A sample of 334 tourism
restaurants’ managers and employees were involved in the survey. A series of exploratory and
conrmatory factor analyses were used to assess the research constructs dimensions,
unidimensionality, validity and composite reliability. Structural path model analysis was also used to
test the hypothesised interrelationships of the research model.
Findings – The empirical ndings indicate that the marketing culture dimensions are seven rather
than six, as proposed by Webster’s (1990) original model: service quality, interpersonal relationships,
management–front-line interaction, selling task, organisation, internal communication and
innovativeness. “Organisation” had positively and signicantly affected “interpersonal relationships”.
“Interpersonal relationships” had positively and signicantly affected each of “management–front-line
interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications”. On the other hand, each of “management–
front-line interaction”, “selling task” and “internal communications” had positively and signicantly
affected “innovativeness”. However, “innovativeness” itself had positively and signicantly affected
each of “service quality” and restaurant performance. Finally, “service quality” had positively and
signicantly affected restaurants’ performance.
Research limitations/implications – Only seven dimensions of marketing culture were
examined; meanwhile, there could also be other dimensions that affect restaurants’ performance.
This paper has also examined the effect of a multidimensional model of marketing culture on
restaurants’ nancial performance only; the use of other types of non-nancial measures could
yield different results. The fact that paper’s sample consisted only of Jordanian restaurants further
limits its generalisation potential.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0959-6119.htm
IJCHM
27,7
1442
Received 23 February 2014
Revised 2 June 2014
4 October 2014
24 November 2014
Accepted 28 November 2014
International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality
Management
Vol. 27 No. 7, 2015
pp. 1442-1478
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0959-6119
DOI 10.1108/IJCHM-02-2014-0088
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Practical implications – The paper reinforces the importance of sound marketing culture to
Jordanian tourism restaurants. It further underlines the importance of several marketing culture
dimensions, particularly those related to employees’ selection, development and communication.
Further, the paper emphasises the particular importance of front-ofce employees to the success of
Jordanian restaurants. Tourism restaurants’ managers and executives can benet from such ndings
for designing their marketing culture strategies to achieve long-term performance objectives.
Originality/value – This paper represents the rst empirical attempt to examine the
interrelationships between marketing culture dimensions introduced by Webster (1990). Accordingly, it
should shed more light on the dynamics of marketing culture within service organisations, and how
such dynamics affect organisations’ performance. Further, the paper is the rst of its kind to study
marketing culture dynamics in the context of Jordanian tourism restaurants industry. International
tourism restaurants planning to expand their operations in Jordan’s tourism industry have now
valuable empirical evidence concerning the marketing culture dimensions and their effect on
performance.
Keywords Tourism, Interpersonal relationships, Restaurants, Innovativeness, Marketing culture,
Hospitability
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Ample, worldwide tourism research has underlined the importance of marketing to
tourist rms’ success (e.g. Soteriades, 2012;Jayawardena et al., 2013). Further, empirical
research has underlined the particular impact of “marketing culture” over tourist rms’
performance (e.g. Appiah-Adu et al., 1999;Tsiotsou and Vlachopoulou, 2011;
Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). Marketing culture is a concept derived from theoretical and
practical research on organisational culture. Scholars generally agree that an
“organisational culture” is composed of a set of values, beliefs and norms shared by
members of an organisation (Postruznik and Moretti, 2012), which has a sound impact
over organisational performance (Lancaster and Brierley, 2001). Noticeably, a
consensus has yet to emerge on a universal conceptualisation of marketing culture
(Zostautiene and Vaiciulenaite, 2010;Biloslavo and Trnavcevic, 2011). Such
phenomenon has made marketing culture more of an ambiguous concept with no
consistent terminology. For instance, researchers have tended to use “marketing
culture”, “service climate”, “service culture”, “market culture” and “market-oriented
culture” interchangeably (Luk, 1997;Harris, 1998;Simberova, 2007). Moreover, the lack
of a unied denition of marketing culture has made it difcult to distinguish it from
other marketing concepts, particularly market orientation (Biloslavo and Trnavcevic,
2011;Postruznik and Moretti, 2012). In addition to the lack of a unied conceptualisation
of marketing culture, there is no agreement amongst authors on a unied
operationalisation of the concept (Homburg and Pesser, 2000;Singh, 2005;Biloslavo
and Trnavcevic, 2011).
In a series of papers published during the early 1990s, Webster (1990,1993,1995)
attempted to provide both conceptual and operational denitions of marketing culture.
Webster (1995) dened marketing culture as “the element of the entire organisational
culture related to the pattern of shared values and beliefs that helps individuals
understand and ‘feel’ the marketing function”. As such, marketing culture is considered
as a higher level of abstraction than market orientation (Harrison and Shaw, 2004).
Marketing culture is not the behaviour of individuals in the organisation, i.e. market
orientation; rather, it is the underlying assumptions and attitudes that shape the
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behaviour of individuals within the organisation (Singh, 2005). Accordingly, marketing
culture can both facilitate and strengthen market orientation (Zostautiene and
Daraskeviciute, 2009). In her attempt to provide an operational denition of marketing
culture, Webster (1990) introduced a marketing culture measurement scale. The scale
consisted of 34 items measuring six different dimensions of marketing culture, namely,
service quality, interpersonal relationships, the selling task, organisation, internal
communications and innovativeness. Underlining the particular importance of
marketing culture to service organisations, Webster (1990,1993) conducted rigorous
tests on her measurement scale for further validation and robustness.
Since its introduction, Webster’s marketing culture measurement scale was applied
in different research contexts to assess the impact of marketing culture over service
organisations’ performance (e.g. Singh and Shanker, 2012;Halac et al., 2013;
Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). Although earlier empirical research has underlined the
robustness of the measurement scale, and its ability to predict performance in different
contexts (e.g. Webster, 1995;Luk, 1997;Appiah-Adu et al., 2000), later, more recent
attempts have suggested that the scale might show different results in
different contexts. For instance, some of the marketing culture dimensions had no direct
effect over performance as suggested by Webster (e.g. Karatepe et al., 2005;
Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). Further, factor analysis of the scale’s 34 items has resulted
in seven, rather than six, dimensions of marketing culture (e.g. Al-Mohammad et al.,
2014).
Accordingly, this paper represents a continuation to previous research on Webster’s
(1990) marketing culture measurement scale. The paper argues that, although some
marketing dimensions might not have a direct effect over organisations’ performance,
they can exert impact on performance indirectly through the effects that take place
between marketing culture dimensions themselves. The paper introduces a model
proposing certain associations between Webster’s (1990) marketing culture dimensions,
and attempts to underline how such associations affect organisations’ performance. To
the authors’ knowledge, this paper represents the rst empirical attempt to examine the
interrelationships between marketing culture dimensions introduced by Webster (1990).
Accordingly, it should shed more light on the dynamics of marketing culture within
service organisations, and how such dynamics affect organisations’ performance.
Further, the paper is the rst of its kind to study marketing culture dynamics in the
context of Jordanian tourism restaurants industry. With the kind of challenges facing
Jordanian tourism industry in general, and the restaurants industry in particular, the
paper should provide a practical manifestation of how marketing culture can contribute
in confronting such challenges.
2. Literature review
2.1 Webster’s scale of marketing culture: application in tourism industry
As the tourism and hospitality industry becomes more competitive, it becomes more
difcult to meet the expectations of customers due to marketing problems resulting
mainly from the intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability
characteristics of services (Karatepe et al., 2005). While different marketing strategies
can be applied to overcome such problems, the successful implementation of those
strategies requires an established marketing culture (Webster, 1990;Karatepe et al.,
2005;Singh and Shanker, 2012). Webster (1990,1993) was one of the early scholars to
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underline the importance of marketing culture to service organisations in particular.
Webster stated that, in spite of the importance placed on marketing culture by both
service and manufacturing organisations, it was vital for service organisations to take
marketing culture practices seriously.
Emphasising the need for a new measure of marketing culture specic to service
organisations, Webster (1993) dened marketing culture as follows:
[…] a multifaceted construct that encompasses the importance placed on service quality (the
provision of quality of service provided to customers), interpersonal relationships (they way
employees are treated by the organization), the selling task (how employees are helped to adopt
a marketing approach to their jobs), organisation (how organized employees are), internal
communications (how employees are made aware of management expectations of them and
their opportunity to become involved in standard setting), and innovativeness (how receptive
the organization and employees are to change) (McNeil et al., 2001).
Webster (1990,1993) conducted rigorous methodological and statistical procedures that
resulted in a 34-item scale measuring marketing culture’s six dimensions. The scale was
applied by different researchers in different contexts and for different purposes, as
shown in Table I.
While not attempting to be inclusive in nature, several observations can be drawn
from Table I. First, research applying Webster’s “marketing culture measurement
scale” had different purposes. For instance, some research had the purpose of further
testing and purifying the scale (e.g. McNeil et al., 2001;Karatepe et al., 2005). On the other
hand, some research has aimed to examine the impact of marketing culture over
organisations’ performance (e.g. Luk, 1997;Appiah-Adu and Singh, 1999;Appiah-Adu
et al., 1999,2000;Halac et al., 2013;Al-Mohammad et al., 2014), whereas some other
research has intended to measure marketing culture itself (e.g. Singh and Shanker,
2012).
Second, although all of reviewed research was conducted in service organisations,
considerable research applying the Webster’s “marketing culture measurement scale”
was conducted in tourism/tourism-related industries. For instance, Luk (1997) applied
the scale to measure the impact of marketing culture over outbound tour service in Hong
Kong. In addition, Appiah-Adu et al. (1999,2000) applied the scale to measure the impact
of marketing culture over organisations’ performance and customer retention in UK
airline, hotel and tourism rms. Further, Karatepe et al. (2005) attempted to explore the
scale’s ability to predict the importance placed upon marketing culture in Turkish
hotels. Al-Mohammad et al. (2014) also applied the scale to measure the impact of
marketing culture over Jordanian restaurants’ performance. In all of these researches,
and despite some inconsistencies with Webster’s (1990,1993) ndings, the “marketing
culture measurement scale” was a useful, and successful, method for measuring
marketing culture.
Third, all of reviewed research used service organisations’ employees and managers
as units of analysis. One exception to this observation was research conducted by Luk
(1997) who used both employees and customers. A justication to such observation
might be that, despite its vital importance in shaping organisations attitudes and
behaviours towards its external environment, marketing culture remains an internal
issue to the organisation. Accordingly, the best people to judge an organisation’s
marketing culture are those who work in it.
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Table I.
Empirical research
applying Webster’s
(1990) marketing
culture measurement
scale
Author(s) Purpose of study Methodology and research locale Major ndings
Luk (1997) Examine the relationship between marketing culture
and the perceived service quality of outbound tours
Two sets of survey directed to a sample of 68 tour
escorts, a sample of 92 tour customers (Hong
Kong)
Overall marketing culture affects the overall quality of outbound tour service.
Both dimensions of service quality and interpersonal relationships had a
strong impact over the overall quality of outbound tour service
Appiah-Adu and Singh
(1999)
Investigate the association between marketing
culture and dimensions of performance in UK
service sector
Survey of 500 service rms from banking, hotel,
tourism and airline industries (UK)
Each marketing culture dimension contributes to at least one of the three
performance measures examined, although their relative explanatory
inuences vary according to the specic performance dimension
Appiah-Adu et al.
(1999)
To empirically investigate the relationship between
UK airline rms’ marketing culture and business
performance
Survey of marketing directors of 95 UK airline
rms
There is a strong relationship between marketing culture and business
performance. All six of marketing culture dimensions contribute to
performance measures examined
Appiah-Adu et al.
(2000)
Examine the relationship between marketing culture
and customer retention is UK tourism rms
A survey of marketing directors in 250 hotel and
tourism rms (UK)
All marketing culture dimensions, with the exception of organisation, exerted
a strong positive impact over customer retention
McNeil et al. (2001) Explore the reliability of Webster’s (1990)
instrument for measuring the marketing culture of
an organisation
Survey of 1,400 full-time Western Australian
employees of a large public sector organisation
All marketing culture dimensions were found to have high reliabilities in
terms of both the actual and ideal marketing culture of surveyed
organisation. Of concern was the lower alpha reliability of the service quality
dimension
Karatepe et al. (2005) examines the potential effects of service quality,
interpersonal relationships, selling task,
organisation, internal communication and
innovativeness on marketing culture through the use
of Webster’s (1992,1993) standard marketing culture
instrument. Also, investigates the factor structure of
the marketing culture scale
405 usable questionnaires (response rate of 54%).
Unit of analysis: front-line employees in four- and
ve-star Turkish hotels
Interpersonal relationships, selling task, internal communication and
innovativeness exert signicant positive effects on marketing culture,
whereas service quality and organisation do not have any signicant impact
on marketing culture. CFA results lend further credence to the six-factor
structure of the marketing culture scale through the deletion of several items
from each dimension, excluding innovativeness
Singh and Shanker
(2012)
Investigates the difference in marketing culture
existing in the public sector banks vis-a-vis private
sector banks in India and their marketing
implications
108 questionnaires out of the 120 were collected
from both sector banks. Unit of analysis:
employees from different levels of hierarchy in
both banks
There are signicant differences in perception of employees about service
quality, internal communications, organisation, interpersonal relationship and
selling activity, although there is no signicant difference for the
innovativeness dimension of marketing culture. Overall, marketing culture
also differs signicantly between the public and private banks
Halac et al. (2013) Investigate employees’ and mangers’ perceptions of
multidimensional structure of marketing culture and
their effects on perceived long-term customer
satisfaction. New dimensions were added to
Webster’s measurement scale
Survey of 474 teachers and principals from 17
Turkish schools
Service quality, interpersonal relationships, professionalism and
innovativeness dimensions of marketing culture have signicant effects on
long-term customer satisfaction
Al-Mohammad et al.
(2014)
To examine the validity and reliability of marketing
culture measurement scale developed by Webster
(1990,1993) in the context of Jordanian tourism
restaurants industry. Further, to assess the impact of
marketing culture, and its dimensions, over
Jordanian restaurants’ performance
A sample of 334 of tourism restaurants’ managers
and employees (Jordan)
Marketing culture dimensions are found to be seven rather than six
dimensions as proposed by Webster. A new dimension is found, named as
management–front-line interaction. The structural ndings indicate that the
marketing culture “construct” has a positive and signicant effect on
restaurants’ performance; meanwhile, only three out of the seven of its
dimensions exerted a positive and signicant effect on restaurants’
performance: innovativeness, management–front-line interaction and
organisation, respectively
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Fourth, although earlier research has shown similar results to those reached by Webster
(1990,1993) in relation to scale dimensions and impacts (e.g. Appiah-Adu and Singh,
1999;Appiah-Adu et al., 1999,2000;McNeil et al., 2001), later research has shown some
contradicting ndings. For instance, Karatepe et al. (2005) found that interpersonal
relationships, selling task, internal communication and innovativeness exert signicant
positive effects on marketing culture, whereas service quality and organisation do not
have any signicant impact on marketing culture. Conrmatory factor analysis (CFA)
conducted by Karatepe et al. (2005) lent further credence to the six-dimension structure
of the marketing culture scale, only through the deletion of several items from each
dimension, excluding innovativeness. In addition, Halac et al. (2013) attempted to add
more dimensions to the scale. Their results indicated that service quality, interpersonal
relationships, professionalism and innovativeness dimensions of marketing culture had
signicant effects on long-term customer satisfaction.
Interestingly, the new dimension of professionalism introduced by Halac et al. (2013)
did pose an impact over customer satisfaction, whereas some original dimensions of the
scale did not. Furthermore, empirical analysis conducted by Al-Mohammad et al. (2014)
has resulted in the deletion of four items out of the scale’s original 34 items. Further, the
remaining 30 items were loaded on seven dimensions rather than six as suggested by
Webster. Al-Mohammad et al. (2014) termed the new dimension “management–
front-line employees interaction”. They further found that only three out of the seven
dimensions exerted a positive and signicant effect on organisations’ performance;
innovativeness, management–front-line interaction and organisation, respectively.
Interestingly, some of the contradicting results were reached in tourism/tourism-related
contexts (e.g. Karatepe et al., 2005;Al-Mohammad et al., 2014).
Previous observations derive several arguments. First, and after almost 25 years of
its introduction, Webster’s “marketing culture measurement scale” is still a valid and
useful instrument for measuring marketing culture in contemporary organisations,
particularly tourism organisations. However, further examination of the scale is
required to explore the existence of new dimensions of marketing culture, and to
understand the dynamics of the relationships between those dimensions. Second, the
examination of the scale and its relationships in different contexts seems to give
different results. This requires further exploration of the scale in new and different
contexts, as that constructs and dimensions developed in a particular context cannot be
totally transferred and generalised to another one (Karatepe et al., 2005). Third, although
some previous results have shown no impact of some marketing culture dimensions
over organisations’ performance (e.g. Halac et al., 2013;Al-Mohammad et al., 2014), such
impact could be exerted indirectly through the interactions that take place between the
dimensions themselves. Although no previous empirical research has attempted to
explore such interactions, the fact that Webster’s “marketing culture measurement
scale” was exible enough to accommodate and exert new dimensions suggests that
some relationships might exist amongst the scale’s original and “new” dimensions.
2.2 Jordanian tourism restaurants: the need for marketing culture
Tourism is one of the largest contributors to Jordan’s gross domestic product and one of
its largest foreign currency earners. According to Central Bank of Jordan (2011), tourism
revenues mounted around $2.55 billion for 2013 (Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities,
2013a,2013b). The industry employed an estimated direct workforce of 42,000 besides
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an indirect 120,000 job opportunities, while income from tourism accounted for almost
17 per cent of the balance of payments current account (Nazzal, 2013). Competition in
tourism in Jordan is relatively open and based on the underlying price and quality of
services, rather than personal networks or market protection (Jordan National
Competitiveness Team, 2007). In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of
literature on tourism in Jordan (Allan, 2013). Considerable part of research in tourism
industry has focussed on marketing-related issues and topics such as service quality
(e.g. Al Saleem and Al-Juboori, 2012), customer satisfaction and loyalty (e.g. Al-Majali,
2012;Muala and Al Qurneh, 2012), consumer tourist behaviour (Mustafa, 2012;Allan,
2013) and the application of information technology in tourism marketing (e.g.
ALsarayreh et al., 2011). Such research has afrmed the importance of marketing to the
survival and success of Jordanian tourism in a globally competitive industry (Muala and
Al Qurneh, 2012;Khasawneh and Abu Dalbooh, 2014).
The restaurant industry in Jordan is closely tied to tourism (Jordan National
Competitiveness Team, 2007;Al Saleh, 2008), and keeping the industry robust is in line
with the government’s stated policy of turning Jordan into a boutique destination for
Western tourism (Al Saleh, 2008). According to Jordan Restaurants Association (2011),
there are 675 restaurants classied as tourism restaurants in Jordan, from which 159 are
located in Amman. The majority of classied restaurants are less than three-star. The
biggest share of more than three-star tourism restaurants is in Amman (82). Review of
the academic and professional literature underlines several challenges facing Jordanian
tourism restaurants:
• the increased competition due to considerable investments in new restaurants,
particularly in the capital Amman;
• the generally weak quality of services provided by restaurants;
• the changing tastes of demanding customers;
• the general lack of skilled labour; and
• the increasing costs of running the business (Al Saleh, 2008;Fischer et al., 2009;
Abu Alroub et al., 2012).
Facing such challenges requires Jordanian tourism restaurants to pay more attention to
human resource management and marketing. Both functions should enable tourism
restaurants of dealing with most of addressed challenges (Fischer et al., 2009;Abu
Alroub et al., 2012).
Considerable empirical research in the context of Jordanian tourism sector in general,
and tourism restaurants in particular, has underlined the importance of both functions
(e.g. Taji, 2005;Al-Rousan and Badaruddin, 2010;Abu Ghazaleh, 2011;ALsrayreh et al.,
2011;Bashar and Al-Ajloni, 2012;Akroush et al., 2013;Masadeh, 2013). Noticeably,
marketing-related research in the particular domain of Jordanian tourism restaurants
has focussed on several concepts such as service quality (e.g. Al-Rousan and
Badaruddin, 2010;Abu Alroub et al., 2012), strategic marketing (e.g. Taji, 2005),
consumer satisfaction and behaviour (e.g. Al-Rousan and Badaruddin, 2010;Abu
Alroub et al., 2012;Bashar and Al-Ajloni, 2012), communication (e.g. Alsarayreh et al.,
2011), internal marketing (Akroush et al., 2013) and marketing culture (Al-Mohammad
et al., 2014).
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Of particular interest in this context is the research conducted on marketing culture
by Al-Mohammad et al. (2014). The purpose of that research was twofold. First, the
research aimed to examine the reliability and validity of Webster’s (1990) marketing
culture measurement scale in the service context of Jordanian tourism restaurants.
Second, the research attempted to examine the effect exerted by marketing culture, and
its dimensions, on restaurants’ performance. Al-Mohammad et al. (2014) argued that,
based on challenges facing the industry, marketing culture was a vital requirement for
Jordanian restaurants success. Two major empirical ndings of their research were as
follows: rst, the 34 items measuring marketing culture dimensions were reduced to 30,
and second, 4 items were deleted for their impact on scale reliability. Furthermore, and
most importantly, the remaining 30 items were loaded onto seven dimensions rather
than the original six proposed by Webster (1990). The new dimension was termed
“management–front-line interaction”. Second, although the overall marketing culture
concept had a direct impact on restaurants’ performance, only three dimensions of
marketing culture had a separate direct impact on performance, i.e. “innovativeness”,
“management–front-line interaction” and “organisation” (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014).
Although their research has underlined a signicant impact of marketing culture over
Jordanian restaurants’ performance, other results warranted further research not only
for their academic signicance but also for the practical implications on Jordanian
tourism restaurants.
3. Research problem
Empirical research has underlined some inconsistency in relation to the application of
Webster’s “marketing culture measurement scale” in tourism industry context (e.g.
Karatepe et al., 2005;Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). With particular emphasis on
Al-Mohammad et al.’s (2014) ndings in the context of Jordanian tourism restaurants,
only three marketing culture dimensions had a direct signicant impact over
performance. Such result could be attributed to the industry’s nature and type of
performance measurement used. Nevertheless, and in relation to the fact that new
dimensions have been lately added to, or exerted from, the scale (Halac et al., 2013;
Al-Mohammad et al., 2014), a question arises as to whether Webster’s marketing culture
dimensions can affect Jordanian restaurants’ performance indirectly, through the
interaction that takes place between the dimensions themselves? Further, and in the
particular context of Jordanian restaurants industry, how does the new dimension, i.e.
“management–front-line interaction”, relate to the other dimensions of marketing
culture? This paper aims to answer those questions.
4. Research objectives
Based on relevant marketing culture, tourism marketing and business performance
literature review, the research objectives of this paper are as follows:
• to develop a multidimensional model of marketing culture and tourism
restaurants’ performance;
• to reveal the most inuential interrelationships of the marketing culture
dimensions and their strongest effect on tourism restaurants’ performance;
• to explore the associations between the new dimension of “management–
front-line interaction” and other marketing culture dimensions; and
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• to provide tourism restaurants with a multidimensional model of marketing
culture dimensions and their contributions to performance, which restaurants’
managements can benet from in making managerial and marketing decisions to
enhance restaurants’ performance.
5. Proposed model and hypotheses development
Figure 1 underlines the paper’s proposed model. The model suggests a number of causal
associations between the different dimensions of Webster’s marketing culture
dimensions. In addition to those dimensions, another dimension is proposed, i.e.
“management–front-line interaction”. The model suggests that the proposed direction of
associations between marketing culture dimensions will ultimately affect organisation’s
performance. The hypotheses derived from proposed model are developed based on
previous research and authors’ perspectives. The following subsections provide for
theoretical build-up of proposed model hypotheses.
5.1 Organisation and interpersonal relationships
The “organisation” dimension of marketing culture refers to how organised employees
are (McNeil et al., 2001). The dimension expresses employees’ level of personal
organisation, planning, time and work-space management (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014).
The level of employees’ organisation in doing their required tasks and jobs should have
a direct effect over their job performance. Accordingly, this should also reect on how
the organisation treats those employees. Previous empirical research on “organisational
support” theory in tourism industry has suggested that tourism organisations should
support and empower employees who possess the right job qualities (Yavas et al., 2010;
Karatepe, 2013). In the context of this paper, and in relation to the proposed model in
Figure 1, the “interpersonal relationships” dimension of marketing culture refers to the
way employees are treated by the organisation (McNeil et al., 2001). It includes attention
to employees’ feelings, recognition of employees as invaluable assets to the rm,
adoption of an “open-door policy” within the organisation and encouragement to
express opinions to higher management (Luk, 1997). As such, “interpersonal
relationships” represents a manifestation of organisational support to employees. The
availability of sufcient support provided by the organisation suggests that the
organisation values employees’ contributions (Karatepe, 2013). Although employees’
Service
Quality
Interpersonal
Relationships
Organisation
Selling
Task
Internal
Communicat ion
Restaurant
Performance
Management
-Front-line
Interaction
Innovativeness
H
2
H
1
H
3
H
4
H
5
H
6
H
7
H
8
H
10
H
9
Figure 1.
The proposed
research model:
marketing culture
and restaurant
performance
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“organisation” is a required contribution for any business, let alone tourism services, it
can be proposed that:
H1. “Organisation” has a positive and signicant effect on “interpersonal
relationships”.
In relation to Figure 1, “interpersonal relationships” exerts direct effect over the three
dimensions of marketing culture, namely, “management–front-line interaction”, “selling
task” and “internal communications”. With regard to “management–front-line
interaction”, and in the particular context of Jordanian tourism restaurants, it was a new
dimension that resulted from exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and CFA of Webster’s
(1990) marketing culture measurement scale. It involves the level of managers’ emphasis
on front-line employees in terms of hiring, interaction and development (Al-Mohammad
et al., 2014). Front-line employees in service organisations, whether they actually render
the service or simply interact with customers face-to-face or voice-to-voice, are the main
actors in the delivery of service quality (Bettencourt and Brown, 2003). Their
intersections with customers largely determine consumer’s perceptions of their service
experience (Brady and Cronin, 2001). Accordingly, the new, exerted dimension
underlines the importance placed by Jordanian restaurants on front-line employees who
interact directly with customers. Previous research in tourism industry has underlined
the importance of supporting, motivating and developing front-line employees (Walters
and Raybould, 2007;Yavas et al., 2010). Horovitz and Panak (1994) suggest that the
“interpersonal relationships” dimension nurtures close work relations between
subordinates and supervisors, which may be mirrored in employees’ relationships with
their customers. Accordingly, and in the particular context of Jordanian tourism
restaurants:
H2. “Interpersonal relationships” has a positive and signicant effect on
“management–front-line interaction”.
With regard to the “selling task” dimension, it refers to how employees are helped to
adopt a marketing approach to their jobs (McNeil et al., 2001). It includes employees’
active and creative search for new customers, and management’s recognition of such
effort through encouragement and reward (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). The “selling
task” dimension is important, as it represents the collaborative effort between
management and employees to achieve better job performance. Such collaboration
requires close relationships within the organisation. Further, it requires continuous ow
of information between management and employees on issues related to customer
interaction quality. Earlier, “interpersonal relationships” was suggested to bring closer
relations between management and its employees, through communication, reward and
motivation (Walters and Raybould, 2007;Yavas et al., 2010). Further, it facilitates the
passage of information on quality matters within the rm (Horovitz and Panak, 1994;
Luk, 1997). Accordingly:
H3. “Interpersonal relationships” has a positive and signicant effect on “selling
task”.
With regard to the “internal communications” dimension, it refers to how employees are
made aware of management expectations of them and their opportunity to become
involved in standard setting (McNeil et al., 2001). It involves stating employees’
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responsibilities clearly, training and motivating them to undertake such
responsibilities. Further, it involves employees’ understanding of organisation’s
mission and objectives, in addition to encouragement of employees, especially front-line
ones, in setting job standards (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). Internal communication is of
particular importance to service organisations in general, and tourism organisation in
particular, as that a good communication system not only helps the organisation pass
along orders from superiors but also helps junior employees share their thoughts. This
can transfer the service culture, share the experience, promote policies, pass relevant
information and can even communicate opinions (Cheng-Ping and Wei-Chen, 2008).
Consequently, both individual and organisational performances are improved (Ianos,
2012;Postruznik and Moretti, 2012). In relation to the proposed model, “internal
communications” is all about quality information exchange between organisation and
its employees. For such exchange to take place, close work relations between
management and employees are required. As underlined earlier, such requirements are
nurtured by the values of “interpersonal relationships” (Horovitz and Panak, 1994;Luk,
1997). Accordingly:
H4. “Interpersonal relationships” has a positive and signicant effect on “internal
communications”.
5.2 Innovativeness: multiple associations
Tourism is a huge industry with rapid changes in trends and customer preferences
which makes it necessary for all the applicable innovative approaches to be thoroughly
researched for the optimal mix of prot maximisation (Pirnar et al., 2012). In relation to
Figure 1, the “innovativeness” dimension refers to how receptive the organisation and
employees are to change (McNeil et al., 2001). It includes employees’ receptiveness to
ideas for change, organisations’ receptiveness to change and organisation’s
accommodation of technological advances (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). Considerable
research has underlined the importance of innovation to the survival and success of
tourism organisations (e.g. Vila et al., 2011;Sandvik et al., 2014).
Innovation in tourism industry may be attained by means of new services, new target
groups and consumers, new channels of distribution, new promotion tools and
strategies, new marketing applications or new infrastructures (Peters and Pikkemaat,
2006). In the context of this paper, Figure 1 proposes that “innovativeness” is affected by
three marketing culture dimensions, namely, “management–front-line interaction”,
“selling task” and “internal communications”. The following paragraphs, and
hypotheses, expose the effects exerted by those dimensions over “innovativeness”.
Many scholars maintain that understanding customer needs and requirements
constitutes an essential foundation for sustained competitiveness through innovative
new products and services (Magnusson et al., 2003). According to Santos-Vijande et al.
(2013), real innovative culture exists when, in addition to the commitment of the
company’s executives, employees, including front-line employees, participate actively
in the development and launch of new services. Front-line employees are in direct
contact with customers, they are exposed to customers’ complaints and suggestions.
Accordingly, they could possess many ideas for improved and new products (Matthing
et al., 2004). Although “management–front-line interaction” focusses on front-line
employees in terms of hiring, interaction and development (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014),
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it should allow organisations to capture front-line employees’ insights and ideas, which
could reect on organisations’ “innovativeness”. Hence:
H5. “Management–front-line interaction” has a positive and signicant effect on
“innovativeness”.
According to Crespell and Hansen (2008), the positive effect of work climate on
innovativeness and rm performance calls for managers to act and capitalise on
effective interventions. Supervisors and middle managers should be continually trained
to improve their people skills, so they can play the supportive role that fosters creativity
among employees. Employees should be given a reasonable amount of freedom and
resources to exercise their creativity and explore new paths (Crespell and Hansen, 2008).
In tourism context, several authors have underlined the importance of employees’
involvement and empowerment as antecedents of innovation (e.g. Vila et al., 2011;
Grissemann et al., 2013). For instance, and amongst other “rm-internal dimensions”,
Grissemann et al. (2013) identied employees’ involvement as a dimension inuencing
innovation behaviour in Alpine hospitality rms. Further, Pirnar et al. (2012) suggested
that “continuous training and periodical updates of tourism staff” can help in tourism
innovation. In this paper, the “selling task” dimension of marketing culture involves
employees’ active and creative search for new customers, and managements’
recognition of such effort through encouragement and reward (Al-Mohammad et al.,
2014). Such endeavours are anticipated to affect the extent of innovation in Jordanian
tourism restaurants. Hence:
H6. “Selling task” has a positive and signicant effect on “innovativeness”.
In addition to the above, innovativeness requires effective communication within the
organisation. Underlining the importance of internal communication to innovativeness,
Crespell and Hansen (2008) suggested that upper management should seek team
cohesion by aligning people around clear vision for organisation and giving them a
sense of purpose. It should also set an effective system to collect ideas and follow them
through until implementation. Further, employees should be given a reasonable amount
of freedom and resources to exercise their creativity and explore new paths.
All such requirements are consistent with particular items composing the “internal
communications” dimension of marketing culture, i.e. employees’ understanding of
organisation’s mission and objectives, training and motivating employees to undertake
their assigned responsibilities, supervisors statement of their expectations from
employees and encouragement of employees in setting job standards (Al-Mohammad
et al., 2014). Internal communication is all about exchanging ideas and information
between employees and managers, so that a common understanding is established and
better performance is achieved. Smith (2005) suggested that any tourist rm
management should share information with employees, for them to feel important for
the organisation and feel a sense of participation. Furthermore, Meng-Lei et al. (2009)
proposed that for hospitality organisations to achieve high service innovation
performance, they rst need to develop knowledge-sharing behaviours. Accordingly, in
the context of Jordanian tourism restaurants:
H7. “Internal communications” has a positive and signicant effect on
“innovativeness”.
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Figure 1 also proposes that “innovativeness” exerts a direct effect over “service quality”.
“Service quality” refers to the provision of quality of service provided to customers. It
includes top management commitment towards, and specication of, exceptional
service. It further includes employees’ focus on customer needs, desires and attitudes, in
addition to meeting organisation’s expectations (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014).
“Innovativeness” is about making the necessary changes to better meet customer
expectations; changes encompass bringing new, better quality products more t to
customers’ needs and requirement. Accordingly, “innovativeness” should lead to better
“service quality”. Previous research in tourism context has underlined such argument
(e.g. Scheidegger, 2006;Meneses and Teixeira, 2011;Lin, 2013). For instance, Meneses
and Teixeira (2011) declared that the use of innovation in the tourism sector intends to
increase the competitiveness of the rms through the increase of the productivity and
improving quality service and/or introducing new products. Further, Scheidegger (2006)
suggested that for the most mature tourism economies, innovation can be the way to
offer new and higher-quality products/services and thus compete with new markets.
Hence, and consistent with previous research (Scheidegger, 2006;Meneses and Teixeira,
2011;Lin, 2013):
H8. “Innovativeness” has a positive and signicant impact on “service quality”.
According to Figure 1, “innovativeness” further exerts a direct effect over organisation’s
performance. Employees in an innovative organisation are open to changes and give
proposals to change. Furthermore, the organisation is among the rst to introduce
changes in business processes and new products (Moretti, 2011). Accordingly,
innovativeness should have a positive impact over organisation’s performance. Ample
empirical research has underlined such effect (e.g. Sonji et al., 2007;Postruznik and
Moretti, 2012). In the tourism domain, Sandvik et al. (2014) found a positive relationship
between innovativeness and protability of Norwegian hotels. Further, Lin (2013) found
a direct relationship between innovation and Chinese tourism rms’ performance. In
addition, Al-Mohammad et al. (2014) underlined a direct positive impact of
innovativeness over Jordanian restaurants’ performance. Accordingly:
H9. “Innovativeness” has a positive and signicant impact on restaurants’
performance.
Finally, Figure 1 proposes a direct effect of “service quality” dimension over
organisations’ performance. Such proposition is based on the logical argument that
quality services will lead to more satisfaction and, consequently, more sales and better
market and nancial performance. Such argument nds ample empirical support in
previous research (e.g. Appiah-adu and Singh, 1999), particularly tourism research (e.g.
Lopez and Radzi, 2012;Lin, 2013). Accordingly:
H10. “Service quality” has a positive and signicant effect on restaurants’
performance.
6. Research methodology
6.1 Research population and sample
According to Jordan Restaurants Association (2011), there are 159 restaurants classied
as tourism restaurants in Amman, capital of Jordan. Out of those restaurants, 82 tourism
restaurants are classied as three-star and above, three-star (52), four-star (29) and
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ve-star (1).These 82 restaurants were chosen as research population according to three
criteria. First, they share characteristics in terms of location and classication by the
Ministry of Tourism and Antiquates. Second, they compete against each other on
relatively the same group of customers within Amman. Third, they have a reasonable
multicultural diversity in terms of the restaurant’s country of origin and types of
customers. Restaurants’ contact details were obtained from Jordan Restaurants
Association where they enjoy a full membership. When they were contacted, only 52 of
them agreed to participate in the survey. Hard copies of the research questionnaires
were distributed and personally delivered to participating restaurants by one of the
researchers who worked in the industry. Consistent with previous empirical research
(e.g. Singh and Shanker, 2012;Halac et al., 2013), the unit of analysis was “the employee”
represented by restaurant managers and other employees who are directly involved in
internal service operations. Examining the surveyed restaurants’ organisational
structures revealed that they do not have sophisticated ones and they are at due to the
nature of restaurants’ services provided; employees and managers are involved in their
daily operations. Further, restaurants’ employees were perceived to be most suitable to
judge restaurants’ marketing culture, and the dynamics between its dimensions.
Accordingly, the main criteria upon which employees were selected to participate in the
research survey were that employees should be involved in the restaurant’s main
operations and should be fully employed rather than on a part-time contractual job
basis.
6.2 Measurement items
The research questionnaire was developed based on relevant literature review of
marketing culture and performance. Items measuring the questionnaire’s constructs
were adapted from previous research. With regard to the marketing culture construct
and dimensions, the 34 items of marketing culture measurement scale developed by
Webster (1990,1993,1995) were adopted. With regard to restaurant performance, four
nancial-based measurement items were adopted from the literature to operationalise it
(e.g. Appiah-Adu and Singh, 1999;Sin et al., 2005). A small section was also included in
the questionnaire to study the respondents’ characteristics. The four nancial measures
are the most commonly used by the restaurants managements to assess their
performance as well as the most recognised from the employees’ perspectives. Appendix
shows constructs’ measurement items and their sources.
6.3 Questionnaire administration and data collection
The research instrument was piloted using personal interviews with key tourism
restaurant managers to reveal their ability to understand it and to test its
appropriateness for the research purposes. Although English language is widely spoken
in Jordan, especially in the restaurants industry, our questionnaire was originally
constructed in English and then translated into Arabic based on the translation
guidelines provided by Malhotra (2010). Then, two bilingual PhD holders in business
who are familiar with the Jordanian business culture translated our questionnaire from
English to Arabic. Then, back translation was employed until the nal version was
produced in Arabic. Finally, both the English and Arabic versions were piloted prior to
the primary data collection process. Then, both versions were offered to the
respondents. Condentiality was assured to the respondents using two methods; rst,
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they were assured of the condentiality issue at the beginning of the questionnaire, and
second, the data collection process was carried out personally by one of the researchers
and he assured the condentiality issue during the process of delivering and returning
the questionnaires. Also, the respondents were able to answer the questionnaire
questions, as they are educated, experienced and familiar with the restaurants’ nancial
performance measures. Further, during the pilot study, there was no indication that the
respondents would encounter any difculty to answer the research questions. The
questionnaire was delivered to 52 tourism restaurants operating in Amman where
the research objectives were explained to the contacted managers and employees.
The primary data collection process was carried out using a highly structured
questionnaire that was adapted from relevant works of literature. The marketing
culture dimensions, namely, service quality, interpersonal relationships, selling task,
organisation, internal communication and innovativeness, were all measured on
ve-point Likert-type scales, ranging from 1 “very much” to 5 “not at all”. Managers and
employees were asked to indicate the importance placed upon marketing culture in their
restaurant as a usual business practice in the restaurant’s internal business
environment. With regard to performance, items used to measure it were sales volume,
protability, return on investment and market share. Each manager/employee was
asked to assess his/her restaurant’s current performance in the Jordanian market
relative to its major/close competitors with respect to four items of nancial
performance (Appendix). The employees responses were made on a ve-point Likert
scale ranging from 1 “better than” to 5 “worse than” major/close competitors. The
respondents were reminded twice: via personal contacts and telephone calls,
respectively. The delivered questionnaires to the 52 restaurants were 550, from which
360 were returned; the response rate was 65.5 per cent. The valid and useable
questionnaires for data analysis were 334 (92.7 per cent) from the returned
questionnaires.
6.4 Respondents characteristics
The results of the research sample characteristics show that the great majority of the
respondents are males, young, educated and reasonably experienced in the restaurants
industry, as shown in Table II. The results indicate that 86.6 per cent of the respondents
are males, and 49.3 per cent are aged between 24 and 28 years. Also, the respondents are
educated; 38.9 per cent have bachelor’s and 8.7 per cent have graduate degrees. With
regard to their experience, only 12 per cent of them have less than one year of experience,
27.2 per cent have from 1 to 3 years, 22.5 per cent have from 4 to 6 years, 15.9 per cent
have from 7 to 9 years and 22.5 per cent have more than 10 years of experience in the
restaurants industry. The results also show that 49.4 per cent of respondents’ salary
ranges between £226 and £450 per month, which is considered to be an average income
by Jordanian standards of living. Further, 19.2 per cent have a salary less than £226, 19.5
per cent have salary ranges between £451 and £675, 6 per cent have salary ranges
between £674 and £900 and 6 per cent have salary more than £900.
6.5 Constructs validity and composite reliability
The normality test for the data collected was performed by testing the skewness and
kurtosis. A common rule of thumb to test for normality is used to run descriptive
statistics to reveal skewness and kurtosis. The skewness or kurtosis of each item should
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be within ⫹2to⫺2 range when the data are normally distributed. A more stringent
criterion to test the normality of the data is ⫹1to⫺1 range, which is adopted in our
research (Hair et al., 1998;Field, 2000). As shown in Appendix, the skewness and
kurtosis test values for all the research items were within the range of ⫹1to⫺1,
providing evidence of the data normality. The validity of the research instrument was
assessed through face, content, convergent and discriminant validity. The face validity
is evidenced through the pilot work of the research instrument with leading tourism
restaurants’ managers as well as two academics from reputable business schools in
Jordan who checked the relevance and appropriateness of the questionnaire to achieve
the research objectives. Content validity is evidenced by explaining the methodology
used to develop the research questionnaire (Churchill, 2001), which included the
following:
• examining the previous empirical and theoretical work of marketing culture and
performance; and
• conducting the pilot study before starting the eldwork.
Table II.
Research sample
characteristics
Sample characteristics Frequency (%)
Respondent’s gender
Male 229 86.6
Female 105 13.4
Respondent’s age (years)
Less than 23 33 9.9
24-28 138 49.3
29-33 79 23.7
34-38 45 13.5
More than 39 39 11.7
Respondent’s educational level
Secondary school and less 58 17.4
Diploma 117 35.0
Bachelor’s degree 130 38.9
Master’s degree 26 7.8
Post-graduate degree 3 0.9
Respondent’s years of the experience in the restaurants industry
Less than 1 40 12.0
1-3 91 27.2
4-6 75 22.5
7-9 53 15.9
More than 10 75 22.5
Respondent’s salary
Less than £225 64 19.2
£226-£450 165 49.4
£451-£675 65 19.5
£674-£900 20 6.0
More than £900 20 6.0
Total 334 100
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With regard to construct validity, as recommended by Hair et al. (1998), EFA and CFA
are used to assess construct validity. To assess the EFA, four commonly used
assumptions were followed (Hair et al., 1998;Field, 2000); sampling adequacy
(Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure greater than 0.5); the minimum eigenvalue for each
factor to be one; considering the sample size, factor loading of 0.40 for each item was
considered as the threshold for retaining items to ensure greater condence and
eliminate items with low correlations; and varimax rotation was used, as it is a good
general approach that simplies the interpretations of factors (Field, 2000, p. 449).
Consistent with previous research in the eld of marketing culture (e.g. McNeil et al.,
2001;Singh and Shanker, 2012;Halac et al., 2013), varimax rotation was used in this
study to reveal the unidimensionality of the marketing culture dimensions. According to
the statistical theory, the marketing culture dimensions are not expected to be
correlated, but in reality, and in the social sciences research, it is very difcult to nd
constructs or variables uncorrelated (e.g. zero correlation). The majority of marketing
culture previous research used varimax rotation, and there is some co-linearity, but it is
not high among the marketing culture dimensions providing some evidence that this
assumption is not violated. Further, composite reliability (CR) and average variance
extracted (AVE), shown in Table IV, support using varimax rotation, indicating that the
marketing culture constructs are distinct from theoretical and statistical perspectives.
To assess the CFA, goodness of measurement model t using structural equation
modelling (SEM) were followed (Chau, 1997, p. 318): chi-square (pⱖ0.05),
goodness-of-t index (GFI ⱖ0.90), adjusted goodness-of-t index (AGFI ⱖ0.80);
normed t index (NFI ⱖ0.90), non-normed t index (NNFI ⱖ0.90), comparative t
index (CFI ⱖ0.90), standardised root mean-square residual (SRMR ⱕ0.08) and root
mean square error of approximation (RMSEA ⬍0.10) (Garver and Mentzer, 1999).
Using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), all the research items were
subjected to EFA to reveal the unidimensionality of the research constructs, which are
shown in Table III. For all the research constructs, an index of Kaiser’s measure of
sampling adequacy (overall MSA ⫽0.88) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity chi-square
(pⱕ0.000) suggested that factor analysis is appropriate for analysing the data. The
results of EFA indicate that the research items were loaded on eight factors which
provide general empirical support to the research constructs literature. Based on the
eigenvalue greater than 1, an eight-factor model was derived that explains 60 per cent of
the total variance. The results of the EFA analysis revealed seven dimensions of
marketing culture rather than six dimensions which are proposed in the original
operationalisation of Webster (1993). The seven dimensions are service quality,
interpersonal relationships, selling task, organisation, internal communication and
innovativeness, as well as a new dimension was found and named as “Management–
Front-line Interaction”. A closer examination of the EFA results reveals that there are
seven dimensions of marketing culture and some items were loaded on other
dimensions, which is relatively different from the previous work. In addition, items IR5
(organisation) and ST1 and ST2 (selling task) were loaded on one factor which is named
as “Management–Front-line-Interaction and coded as “MI”. SQ4 and SQ6 (service
quality), ST7 (selling task) and IC6 (internal communication) items were deleted during
the EFA analysis due to weak factor loadings. SQ7 and SQ8 items of service quality
were loaded on interpersonal relationships, and IC1 (internal communication) loaded on
organisation. It is also important to note that the four performance measures were
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Table III.
EFA and CFA
results for the
research constructs
Research constructs measurements and items Factor analyses results
Marketing culture and restaurants’ performance dimensions
EFA factors
loadings
CFA factors
loadings
Service quality (SQ): Eigenvalue ⫽1.69; CR ⫽0.84; AVE ⫽0.65
SQ1 Restaurant specically denes what exceptional service is 0.81 0.77
SQ2 Restaurant top management is committed to providing
exceptional service
0.83 0.88
SQ3 Employees meet the restaurant’s expectations 0.66 0.63
SQ5 Employees focus on customer needs, desires and attitudes 0.51 0.72
Interpersonal relationships (IR): Eigenvalue ⫽2.53; CR ⫽0.73; AVE ⫽0.51
SQ7 Employees give attention to detail in their work 0.51 0.60
SQ8 Employees believe that their behaviour reects the
restaurant’s image
0.62 Deleted
IR1 Restaurant is considerate about employees’ feelings 0.55 0.63
IR2 Employees are treated as an important part of the restaurant 0.75 0.68
IR3 Employees feel comfortable in giving opinions to top
management
0.68 0.65
IR4 Managers have an ‘open-door’ policy 0.56 Deleted
Management–front-line interaction (MI): Eigenvalue ⫽1.83; CR ⫽0.74; AVE ⫽0.50
MI1 Management interact with front-line employees 0.76 0.60
MI2 Restaurant places emphasis on hiring the right people 0.70 0.72
MI3 Restaurant provides skill-based and product knowledge
training to front-line staff
0.53 0.77
Selling task (ST): Eigenvalue ⫽1.45; CR ⫽0.76; AVE ⫽0.52
ST3 Employees pursue new business aggressively 0.66 0.65
ST4 Restaurant encourages creative approaches to selling 0.68 0.70
ST5 Restaurant gives recognition to high achievers in selling 0.76 0.68
ST6 Employees enjoy pursuing new accounts 0.50 0.62
Organisation (OR): Eigenvalue ⫽1.54; CR ⫽0.76; AVE ⫽0.53
OR1 Each employee is well-organised 0.67 0.61
OR2 Careful planning is a characteristic of every employee’s daily
routine
0.52 Deleted
OR3 Employees prioritise their work 0.60 Deleted
OR4 Employees’ work area is well-organised 0.78 0.72
OR5 Each employee manages time well 0.80 0.76
IC1 Restaurant has an approved set of procedures and policies
which is given to each employee
0.68 0.63
Internal communication (IC): Eigenvalue ⫽9.50; CR ⫽0.82; AVE ⫽0.54
IC2 Supervisors clearly state what their expectations are of other 0.82 0.71
IC3 Each employee understands the mission and general
objectives of the restaurant
0.77 0.78
IC4 Front-line staff are encouraged to become involved in
standard-setting
0.75 0.79
IC5 The restaurant focusses efforts on training and motivating
employees
0.65 0.62
(continued)
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loaded on one dimension, which is related to restaurant performance. The four items
(SQ4, SQ6, ST7 and IC6) deleted during the EFA analysis indicate a potential weak
practice in these aspects of marketing culture, and tourism restaurants are invited to
improve them because they affect customer satisfaction which subsequently affects
restaurant performance.
To conrm and validate the ndings that emerged from using EFA, the eight-factor
model was evaluated by CFA using EQS (6.1) software. As shown in Table III, measures
of goodness-of-t were met. One of the study objectives is to retain the items that have
high loadings to maintain face validity, as the modication indices suggest that some
items have more in common with each other than the specied model allows. Therefore,
consistent with the extant literature, offending items were sequentially deleted until the
standardised loadings and the t indices revealed that no improvement could be
attained through item deletion. In addition, following guidelines outlined by Voss et al.
(2003), a series of shortened versions of the scale were compared using
2
difference test,
AGFI and model Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Based on the guidelines outlined
by Voss et al. (2003), the item deletion process stops if the deletion process compromises
the construct validity, and when one or two possible results occur:
• the
2
difference test shows no difference;
• the AGFI does not increase; and
• model AIC does not improve.
Therefore, the indices of the CFA baseline model were as follows: chi-square ⫽869,
AIC ⫽3247, AGFI ⫽0.834; the indices of the alternative model1 after deleting items IR4,
OR2 were as follows: chi-square ⫽662, AIC ⫽3001, AGFI ⫽0.856; and the indices of the
alternative model2 after deleting SQ8, OR3 were as follows: chi-square ⫽587, AIC ⫽
2,820, AGFI ⫽0.860. Based on the guidelines outlined by Voss et al. (2003), the best CFA
Table III.
Research constructs measurements and items Factor analyses results
Marketing culture and restaurants’ performance dimensions
EFA factors
loadings
CFA factors
loadings
Innovativeness (IN): Eigenvalue ⫽1.32; CR ⫽0.81; AVE ⫽0.52
IN1 All employees are receptive to ideas for change 0.62 0.63
IN2 Restaurant keeps up with technological advances 0.74 0.70
IN3 Restaurant is receptive to change 0.81 0.71
Restaurants performance (RP): Eigenvalue ⫽1.44; CR ⫽0.82; AVE ⫽0.53
RP1 Achieving restaurant’s protability volume 0.58 0.60
RP2 Achieving restaurant’s sales volume 0.74 0.75
RP3 Achieving restaurant’s return on investment 0.75 0.74
RP4 Achieving restaurant’s market share rate 0.72 0.70
Sampling adequacy (Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure greater than 0.5): 0.88
Model GFIs:
desired level
2
pⱖ0.05
NFI ⱖ
0.90
NNFI ⱖ
0.90
CFI ⱖ
0.90
GFI ⱖ
0.90
AGFI ⱖ
0.80
SRMR ⱕ
0.08
RMSEA ⬍
0.10
Model indices
results
587, p⫽0.000 0.900 0.911 0.915 0.905 0.860 0.052 0.050
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model is the third model, which is used in the subsequent analysis. Four items were
deleted during the CFA analyses, which were from the marketing culture construct. The
deleted items are IR4, OR2, OR3 and SQ8. The deletion of these items seems to be
reasonable, as deleting these items resulted in a better CFA model and deleting them
during the CFA analysis indicates other aspects of weak practices of marketing culture
in tourism restaurants in Jordan. One of the major ndings of this study is that
marketing culture dimensions are seven rather than six as proposed by the original
developer of the scale (Webster, 1990 and 1993).
Convergent validity is examined by using the Bentler-Bonett NFI (Bentler and
Bonett, 1990). All of the constructs have NFI values above 0.90. Furthermore, as shown
in Table III, indication of the measures’ convergent validity is provided by the fact that
all factor loadings are signicant and that the scales exhibit high levels of internal
consistency (Fornell and Larcker, 1981;Gerbing and Anderson, 1988). Also, as shown in
Table III, the values of CR and AVE for each construct are all above the threshold
suggested by Bagozzi (1980), i.e. 0.70 and 0.50, respectively. In our research, the
discriminant validity is established by rst, the absence of signicant cross loadings
that are not represented by the measurement model (i.e. congeneric measures). The
absence of signicant cross-loading is also an evidence of constructs unidimensionality
(Gerbing and Anderson, 1988); and second, to establish the evidence for the discriminant
validity among the constructs, we compared the shared variance among the constructs
with AVE from each construct. The discriminant validity is established between two
constructs if the AVE of each one is higher than the shared variance. Comparing the
shared variance and AVE values showed in Tables III and IV, where the diagonal values
are the AVEs, our results indicated a support for the discriminant validity among the
latent variables in our model.
6.6 Common method variance
Where self-report questionnaires are used, common method variance (CMV) may be of
concern. This concern is strongest when both the dependent and independent or
explanatory variables are perceptual measures derived from the same respondent
(Podsakoff and Organ, 1986). CMV is “variance that is attributable to the measurement
method rather than to the constructs the measures represent” (Podsakoff et al., 2003,
p. 879). CMV may cause systematic measurement error and further bias the estimates of
the true relationship among theoretical constructs. It can either inate or deate
observed relationships between constructs which may lead to both Type I and Type II
errors (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986;Podsakoff et al., 2003).
Table IV.
Shared variance
among the research
constructs
Research constructs SQ IR MI ST OR IC IN RP
SQ (M ⫽1.76, std ⫽0.73) 0.65
IR (M ⫽2.11, std ⫽0.75) 0.17 0.51
MI (M ⫽2.07, std ⫽0.80) 0.08 0.22 0.50
ST (M ⫽2.17, std ⫽0.78) 0.13 0.23 0.24 0.51
OR (M ⫽2.25, std ⫽0.81) 0.03 0.11 0.10 0.08 0.53
IC (M ⫽2.14, std ⫽0.83) 0.11 0.13 0.13 0.14 0.03 0.54
IN (M ⫽2.09, std ⫽0.71) 0.10 0.22 0.17 0.17 0.10 0.17 0.52
RP (M ⫽2.21, std ⫽0.72) 0.06 0.13 0.14 0.10 0.11 0.07 0.15 0.53
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Authors of CMV support post-hoc statistical tests to test the presence of CMV effect.
Harman’s one-factor test and CFA are among the most widely used tests to examine the
effect of CMV in a research survey (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Consequently, all the
marketing culture and restaurants performance items were loaded into an EFA, using
unrotated principal components factor analysis, but constrained the number of factors
to “one”. The following two indicators were monitored to identify whether a substantial
amount of CMV was present:
(1) If a single factor emerges from the EFA and dominates the EFA model, then
CMV is of concern and affects construct validity.
(2) If one general factor accounts for the majority of the covariance among all the
entered items, i.e. if it explains more than 50 per cent of the explained variance in
the EFA model, then CMV is also of concern (e.g. Podsakoff and Organ, 1986;
Podsakoff et al., 2003;Krishnan et al., 2006).
The EFA revealed the presence of eight distinct factors with eigenvalue greater than 1.0,
rather than a single factor. The eight factors together accounted for 60 per cent of the
total variance; the rst (largest) factor did not account for a majority of the variance (it
accounted for only 24 per cent). Thus, no general factor was apparent and dominant,
indicating that CMV was not of concern and did not affect construct validity. The same
procedure was performed with principal component analysis with varimax rotation,
which revealed the presence of eight distinct factors with eigenvalue greater than 1.0,
rather than a single factor; the rst (largest) factor did not account for a majority of the
variance (it did not exceed 24 per cent).
In addition to the above-mentioned procedures, CFA test was conducted on
one-factor model. All the marketing culture and restaurants performance items were
loaded on one factor to examine the t of the CFA model. According to Mossholder et al.
(1998), if CMV is largely responsible for the relationship among the variables, the
one-factor CFA model should t the data well. The ndings of the CFA analysis showed
that the single-factor model did not t the data well (
2
⫽3397, p⫽0.00, NFI ⫽0.48;
NNFI ⫽0.52; CFI ⫽0.54; GFI ⫽0.65; AGFI ⫽0.61; SRMR ⫽0.09; RMSEA ⫽0.13). A
comparison between single-factor model and eight-factor model t indices, shown in
Table III, revealed that CMV was not of concern in this research. Consequently, the
results of these analyses suggest that CMV was not of great concern and, thus, was
unlikely to confound the interpretations of results. This was also supported by the fact
that questionnaire items possessed both convergent validity and discriminant validity,
in addition to the fact that t indices of the research’s SEM empirical model tted well
with data.
6.7 Structural model and hypotheses testing
The analysis of the proposed model was conducted by one model of structural path
analysis which is shown in Figure 2. The analysis began by creating a direct path
from organisation to interpersonal relationships, and a direct path was created from
the later to each of management–front-line interaction, selling tasks and internal
communication as well as running a direct path from each of management–
front-line interaction and internal communication to selling task to innovativeness,
respectively. Finally, a direct path was run from innovativeness to each of service
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quality and restaurant performance as well as running a direct path from service
quality to restaurant performance.
Table V shows the structural path model goodness of t measures and the
structural paths results. As shown in Table V, the goodness-of-t measures indicate
that the model has an excellent t to the data. The structural ndings indicate that
all the research hypotheses are supported (H1-H10). Organisation (

⫽0.34, t⫽
6.70) has positively and signicantly affected interpersonal relationships, providing
support for H1. Interpersonal relationships has positively and signicantly affected
each of management–front-line interaction (

⫽0.47, t⫽9.96), selling task (

⫽
0.28, t⫽6.24) and internal communications (

⫽0.37, t⫽7.29), providing support
for H2,H3 and H4, respectively. Each of management–front-line interaction (

⫽
0.70, t⫽6.10), selling task (

⫽0.15, t⫽3.42) and internal communications (

⫽
Organisation Service
Quality
Interpersonal
Relationships
Management
-Front-Line
Interaction
Innovation
Selling
Task
Restaurant
Performance
Internal
Communications
0.34*
0.47*
0.28*
0.37*
0.70*
0.15*
0.21*
0.83* 0.11*
0.29*
Figure 2.
The empirical
research model:
marketing culture
and restaurant
performance
Table V.
Summary of
structural path model
results: marketing
culture and
restaurant
performance
Hypotheses Variables in the paths model

a
T-value*
H
1
Organisation ¡interpersonal relationships 0.34 6.70
H
2
Interpersonal relationships ¡management–front-line
interaction
0.47 9.96
H
3
Interpersonal relationships ¡selling task 0.28 5.24
H
4
Interpersonal relationships ¡internal communication 0.37 7.29
H
5
Management–front-line interaction ¡innovativeness 0.70 6.10
H
6
Selling task ¡innovativeness 0.15 3.42
H
7
Internal communication ¡innovativeness 0.21 5.12
H
8
Innovativeness ¡service quality 0.83 7.92
H
9
Innovativeness ¡restaurant performance 0.29 5.71
H
10
Service quality ¡restaurant performance 0.11 2.24
Model GFIs:
desired level
2
pⱖ
0.05
NFI ⱖ
0.90
NNFI ⱖ
0.90
CFI ⱖ
0.90
GFI ⱖ
0.90
AGFI ⱖ
0.80
SRMR ⱕ
0.08
RMSEA ⬍
0.10
Model indices
results
64.42 0.922 0.900 0.940 0.958 0.896 0.065 0.092
Notes:
a
Standardised beta coefcients; *signicant at p⬍0.05
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0.21, t⫽5.12) has positively and signicantly affected innovativeness, providing
support for H5,H6 and H7, respectively. Innovativeness has positively and
signicantly affected each of service quality (

⫽0.83, t⫽7.92) and restaurant
performance (

⫽0.29, t⫽5.71), providing support for H8 and H9, respectively.
Service quality (

⫽0.11, t⫽2.24) has positively and signicantly affected
restaurant performance, providing support for H10.
The structural ndings indicate that interpersonal relationships exerted the
strongest effect (

⫽0.47, t⫽9.96) on management–frontline-interaction, and the later
exerted the strongest effect (

⫽0.70, t⫽6.10) on innovativeness. Figure 2 shows that
the path of organisation-interpersonal relationships-management–front-line
interaction-innovativeness is stronger than both the path of organisation-interpersonal
relationships-selling tasks-innovativeness and the path of organisation-interpersonal
relationships-internal communication-innovativeness. This nding holds crucial
insights for tourism restaurant management which should focus on
management–employees interaction quality as a major driver of both innovativeness
and performance. In other words, restaurants’ performance depends largely on their
ability to have innovativeness in place, and the quality of interactions between
management and its employees are major determinants of innovativeness. Additionally,
as shown in Figure 2, the path of innovativeness-service quality-restaurant nancial
performance is stronger than the path of innovativeness-restaurant nancial
performance. This nding holds the fact that, although innovativeness exerted a strong
and signicant effect on restaurant performance, innovativeness is a major driver of
service quality and the later affects performance. Therefore, service quality is still the
critical link between innovativeness and restaurant performance where innovativeness
exerted a substantial effect on service quality; service quality is a key antecedent of
restaurant performance.
7. Results discussion
Building on previous research (Karatepe et al., 2005;Al-Mohammad et al., 2014), this
paper has argued that Webster’s “marketing culture measurement scale” was
exible enough to accommodate new dimensions, and that such exibility might
allow for some effects to take place between the scale’s dimensions. Empirical
ndings of this paper came to support previous arguments. Opposing the original
loadings proposed by Webster (1990,1993,1995), the items that loaded on other
dimensions (Table III), and the creation of a new dimension termed “management–
front-line interaction” (Table III), support this paper’s argument that marketing
culture consists of several dimensions that interact in a complicated manner to
affect business performance.
With regard to the new dimension, and while management “interacts” with all
employees within the organisation, respondents gave special attention to the interaction
that takes place between management and front-line employees, hence, the new
dimension “management–front-line interaction”. The new dimension consisted of items
related to management’s hiring, training and interaction with restaurants’ front-line
employees. Previous research has underlined the importance of such actions. For
instance, Yavas et al. (2010) underlined that, in addition to providing organisational
support to their employees, hotel managers should recruit individuals with the relevant
personality traits for front-line service jobs. Further, both Brady and Cronin (2001) and
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Gounaris and Boukis (2013) have underlined the importance of front-line employees’
satisfaction for better organisational performance. Gounaris and Boukis (2013)
emphasised that company’s management has to recognise the multiple parameters that
affect job satisfaction such as job description and content, supportive training and
working climate and conditions as well as remuneration. Accordingly, and in relation to
previous research, the “management–front-line interaction” dimension, with its three
items, seems to be valid and justied in the context of Jordanian tourism restaurants
industry.
As for the paper’s proposed model, empirical results provided sound support to the
model’s ten hypotheses. The results have underlined the importance of employees’
“organisation” as a starting point for consequent interrelationships between marketing
culture’s dimensions. Employees are the cornerstone for any organisation, and their
importance is paramount in service organisations because of the inseparability of
service (Gounaris and Boukis, 2013). Their organisation in the jobs and tasks required
from them leads to better performance, which makes them more valued by their
employers (Yavas et al., 2010). Previous research has emphasised the impact of
employees’ “organisation” over organisational support (i.e. Yavas et al., 2010;Karatepe,
2013). Although “interpersonal relationships” represents a manifestation of
organisational support, it was argued the organised employees will get more support
from their organisation. This argument was supported by the acceptance of the rst
hypothesis where “organisation” had a positive impact over “interpersonal
relationships”.
As for “interpersonal relationships” itself, it proved to be an important marketing
culture dimension in Jordanian restaurants. It includes attention to employees’ feelings,
recognition of employees as invaluable assets to the rm, adoption of an “open-door
policy” within the organisation and encouragement to express opinions to higher
management (Luk, 1997). Accordingly, “interpersonal relationships” values closer
management–employees relationships and information sharing (Horovitz and Panak,
1994). Noticeably, it had multiple impacts over “management–front-line interaction”,
“selling task” and “internal communication”, respectively. Interestingly, the strongest
impact of “interpersonal relationships” was over “management–front-line interaction”.
Such result further underlines the importance placed by respondents on front-line
employees in Jordanian restaurants. Although front-line employees are in direct contact
with customers, their commitment and performance are vital to restaurants’ success or
failure (Brady and Cronin, 2001;Bettencourt and Brown, 2003). Accordingly,
respondents feel the need for closer relationships, support and information sharing with
those employees.
The second strongest impact of “interpersonal relationships” was over “internal
communications”. “Internal communications” is all about exchanges of quality
information in relation to restaurants’ mission, goals, job responsibilities and standards
(Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). In the context of Jordanian restaurants, respondents feel
that communication within restaurants requires certain level of organisational support,
i.e. “interpersonal relationships”, driven by restaurants’ managers. Organisational
support should create a climate of trust between management and employees, where
information ow and effect can be stronger. Finally, “interpersonal relationships” had
the least signicant effect over the “selling task” compared to the previous two
dimensions. “Selling task” includes employees’ active and creative search for new
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customers, and management’s recognition of such effort through encouragement and
reward (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). Despite the comparatively low impact of
“interpersonal relationships” over “selling task”, the signicance of such impact
underlines the importance of selling task to Jordanian restaurants. It further underlines
respondents’ acknowledgement of the importance of organisational support,
collaboration and trust as motivating factors for restaurants’ employees in their
interaction with, and search for, customers.
The sequence of “interpersonal relationships” effects in the above order suggests
certain assumptions about the priorities of Jordanian restaurants’ management. First,
the highest priority of Jordanian restaurants’ management is given to achieving better
service quality and performance, hence, the focus on management–front-line
interaction. This could be understandable, as the evaluation of management itself is
mostly based on performance and nancial results. Second, Jordanian restaurants’
management gives second priority to internal communication within the organisation.
While it could be argued that internal communication should be given the highest
priority as a driver for more employees’ commitment and better performance. The fact
that Jordanian business culture in general is high on power-distance index might make
communication more focussed on orders and responsibilities rather than motivation and
support, hence, the lower level of support when compared to “management–front-line
interaction”. Third, and similar to most of service organisation, customers usually come
to restaurants, not the opposite. Consequently, Jordanian restaurants’ management puts
less emphasis on restaurants’ employees’ role in attracting new customers, i.e. “selling
task”. They might feel that such responsibility is not of employees working in
restaurants. Rather, other methods might be used for attracting new customers, such as
advertising and outdoors personal selling.
Empirical ndings of this paper further indicate that the three dimensions
affected by “interpersonal relationships” exerted different levels of impact over
Jordanian restaurants’ “innovativeness”. The strongest impact was exerted by
“management–front-line interaction”. Consistent with previous research (i.e.
Matthing et al., 2004;Santos-Vijande et al., 2013), this nding underlines the
importance respondents’ place on interaction with front-line employees as a major
source, and implementer, of new ideas of change. It further justies previous nding
with regard to the highest impact of “interpersonal relationships” over
“management–front-line interaction”. In other words, Jordanian restaurants’
management gives the highest priority to interacting with, and supporting,
front-line employees, as they represent a crucial source of new product’s ideas. With
regard to “internal communications”, it exerted the second strongest impact over
“innovativeness”. Such result suggests that the acceptance of change provided by
innovativeness requires strong communication, and coordination, between
restaurants’ managers and employees. However, and in relation to earlier
assumptions, while communication itself is important for new idea collection, the
actual development of new products comes from management not employees.
Accordingly, communication’s role is to get ideas from employees, introduce the
new products to them and motivate them to introduce such products to customers,
rather than involving employees themselves in the actual new product development
process. Finally, “selling task” had the least impact over “innovativeness”. This
nding gives support to previous arguments that Jordanian restaurants’
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management perceive employees as a possible source of new ideas, but, mostly, as
an implementer of change rather than an initiator of it.
As for “innovativeness” itself, and consistent with previous research (e.g. Meneses
and Teixeira, 2011;Lin, 2013;Postruznik and Moretti, 2012), it exerted signicant
impacts over both “service quality” and restaurants’ nancial performance. Noticeably,
though, the impact of “innovativeness” over “service quality” was considerably stronger
than that over performance. Innovation is usually associated with introducing new
products or improvements to existing products to better suite customers’ preferences,
which potentially leads to higher levels of satisfaction. Accordingly, “innovativeness”
should have a strong impact over restaurants’ service quality. However, and with regard
to its moderate direct impact over restaurants’ performance, new service introduction
and service development require nancial investments which might require time to be
recovered, hence, the moderate impact over nancial performance (Al-Mohammad,
2010). In addition to “innovativeness”, the impact of “service quality” over restaurants’
nancial performance was noticeably low. A possible justication for such results
might be respondents’ perceptions that managing and improving service quality
requires nancial investments which affect restaurants’ nancial results on the short
run (Claver et al., 2006). Consequently, the assessment of the impact of both
“innovativeness” and “service quality” over restaurants’ performance could be more
relevant using non-nancial measures. Previous empirical research on marketing
culture scale supports this suggestion. For instance, both dimensions exerted strong
impacts over customers’ long-term satisfaction and retention (Appiah-Adu et al., 2000;
Halac et al., 2013). Although such measures are not nancial in nature, both customer
satisfaction and retention have their direct impact over organisations nancial
performance (Al-Mohammad, 2010).
Finally, it should be noted that service quality might have a stronger impact over
other types of performance measurements such as customer satisfaction, retention and
loyalty. Finally, upon reviewing the paths successfully tested in the model, the path
consisting of the association between “organisation”-“interpersonal
relationships”-“management–front-line interaction”-“innovativeness”- “service quality”
was the strongest amongst other paths. This nding holds crucial insights for tourism
restaurant management which should focus on management–employees interaction
quality as a major driver of innovativeness, service quality and performance. In other
words, restaurants’ performance depends largely on their ability to have innovativeness
in place, and the quality of interactions between management and its employees are
major determinants of innovativeness.
8. Conclusions and implications
Several conclusions can be drawn from previous empirical results. First, and most
importantly, marketing culture is a dynamic concept. It is not just a set of
dimensions affecting performance individually, as suggested by previous research
(e.g. Webster, 1993,1995;Appiah-Adu and Singh, 1999;Appiah-Adu et al., 2000).
Rather, marketing culture represents a set of interdependent dimensions interacting
with each other and, consequently, affecting performance. Second, Webster’s
marketing culture scale itself is open to change depending on context, purpose and
time. Although earlier research has shown similar results reached by Webster (1990,
1993) in relation to scale’s items, dimensions and impacts (e.g. Appiah-Adu and
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Singh, 1999;Appiah-Adu et al., 2000;McNeil et al., 2001), later, more recent research
has underlined that the scale can witness considerable change in terms of number of
items deleted, dimensions’ number and dimensions’ own impacts over performance
(Halac et al., 2013;Al-Mohammad et al., 2014). Third, and in the particular context of
Jordanian restaurants industry, front-line employees and their interactions with
management are vital for restaurants’ ability to accommodate change and
innovativeness. The creation of a seventh marketing culture dimension termed
“management–front-line interaction” (Al-Mohammad et al., 2014) supports this
conclusion. Fourth, and with regard to innovativeness itself, it exerts both direct and
indirect effect over Jordanian restaurants’ nancial performance. Although
previous empirical ndings have underlined its direct impact over performance
(Lopez and Radzi, 2012;Lin, 2013), innovativeness’s indirect impact takes place
though its strong impact over service quality, which consequently affects
performance.
Fifth, “interpersonal relationships”, or the manner of how management treats
employees, represents a vital marketing culture dimension in Jordanian restaurants.
Its importance stems from its strong and direct effects over the other three
marketing culture dimensions, namely, “management–front-line interaction”,
“selling task” and “internal communication”. These effects have been underlined by
previous research in different contexts (e.g. Ianos, 2012;Postruznik and Moretti,
2012), but not in the context of Jordanian restaurants. Finally, while both of
“innovativeness” and “service quality” exerted modest, if not weak, impacts over
restaurants’ nancial performance, the contribution of those two particular
marketing culture dimensions could be better assessed through non-nancial
measures. Previous empirical research shared similar suggestion (Halac et al., 2013;
Al-Mohammad et al., 2014).
8.1 Theoretical implications
The paper’s ndings and conclusions suggest a number of theoretical implications.
First, and with regard to the “marketing culture” concept itself, the concept requires
further research in different contexts and industries, as it seems to hold different
denitions according to different authors and research locales. From a business strategy
perspective, marketing culture is an essential part of tourism organisations’ corporate
culture that is embedded within the fabric of the organisation and acts as an enabler to
achieve long-term objectives. Furthermore, marketing culture is one of the most vital
organisational capabilities that assist tourism organisations to implement business and
marketing strategies successfully. Second, and with regard to Webster’s (1990)
marketing culture measurement scale, further research should be conducted to validate
the scale and, perhaps, discover and add new relevant dimensions to it. Tourism
organisations operate in a highly dynamic business environment; therefore, the
dynamism of the marketing culture concept and practice is a crucial element of success
in the tourism and hospitality industry. Consequently, the marketing culture concept
and its dimensions should be revisited and assessed periodically as an integral part of
successful change management programmes in tourism organisations. Third, and in the
particular context of Jordanian restaurant’s industry, considerable research should
address “front-line employees’ satisfaction” and “management interaction”, as that they
seem to represent vital contributors to restaurants’ innovativeness, service quality and
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performance. In the tourism and hospitality industry and due to tourism services’
unique characteristics, organisations should focus on the “quality” of front-line
employees and “satisfy” them as a key antecedent to “creating” tourists satisfaction and
loyalty, which are all essential to achieve long-term and strategic objectives. Having
said that, management interaction with front-line employees and customers as well as
innovativeness and service quality are major determinants of successful performance in
this industry.
8.2 Practical implications
Building on the paper’s conclusions, several managerial implications are suggested.
First, while restaurants’ managers should focus on all of their employees, special
attention should be paid to the selection and development of front-line employees,
who are in direct contact with customers, and who vitally contribute to restaurants’
change and innovation efforts. Front-line employees critically affect service quality
and restaurants’ performance. Consequently, restaurants’ managers should focus on
developing the right combination of human resource practices suitable to the
important role such employees are inclined to (Gounaris and Boukis, 2013). Second,
restaurants’ managers should foster innovativeness and encourage initiative and
change. Such efforts are rewarded with increased service quality and better
performance in general. Third, restaurants managers should apply different types
of performance measures. Although nancial measures are important, other
non-nancial measures can provide a more comprehensive and realistic view of
restaurants performance.
In addition to managerial implications, and appreciating the fact that tourism
industry is a large source of income for Jordan, this paper’s ndings could have some
implications for policymakers in Jordanian tourism industry. Jordanian both public
and private bodies responsible for tourism management and education (e.g.
Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Ministry of Higher Education, Jordanian
Restaurants Association, universities, tourism academies and schools) should
incorporate marketing culture and teachings into their policies for better
development of tourism industry. Accordingly, tourism managerial and educational
programmes should focus on human development, internal marketing, service
quality excellence and innovation. A sound marketing culture spread within the
whole tourism industry with all its different domains and sectors should create a
suitable atmosphere for managers and employees to develop and excel, which will
reect positively on public attitude towards such industry and towards its actual
contribution to public welfare and quality of life.
9. Contributions
The paper contributes to marketing’s both academia and practice, particularly in the
vital eld of marketing culture. From an academic perspective, the paper’s contribution
stems from two points. First, and contrary to previous empirical research conducted in
different contexts (e.g. McNeil et al., 2001;Karatepe et al., 2005;Singh and Shanker,
2012), the empirical examination conducted by this paper on Webster’s (1990) marketing
culture scale has resulted in seven dimensions rather than the original six. The new
dimension termed “management–front-line interaction” emphasised the importance
placed by respondents on hiring, interaction and development of front-line or
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front-ofce employees. Such nding holds great importance for service industries in
particular, due to the importance of interactions taking place between customers and
front-line employees in determining customers’ satisfaction, retention and loyalty
(Brady and Cronin, 2001;Bettencourt and Brown, 2003). It further holds important
implications, as it reveals that marketing culture is beyond the marketing department
and functions; rather, it is an organisational culture because the majority of its
dimensions are related to the organisation itself and not marketing in particular. Second,
although previous empirical research has examined the direct relationships between
marketing culture dimensions and business performance, or marketing effectiveness
(e.g. Appiah-Adu et al., 2000;Halac et al., 2013;Al-Mohammad et al., 2014), this paper
has examined the interrelationships among marketing culture dimensions and
performance in one model. This is thought to have made an important contribution to
the marketing culture literature, as it extended our understanding of marketing culture
complexities and its relationship with performance.
From a practical perspective, this paper represents the rst research effort
devoted to test marketing culture dimensions and examine their interrelationships
and impact on tourism restaurants’ performance in Jordan. Managers can benet
from this paper’s ndings in designing their marketing culture strategies and
programmes to achieve long-term objectives. For instance, “interpersonal
relationships”, “management–front-line interaction” and “innovativeness”
dimensions have exerted major effects and their paths are the strongest in the
empirical research model. This indicates that restaurants’ management should
focus on these dimensions as major drivers of marketing culture as well as
improving the other ones. The paper further holds value to international tourism
organisations planning to expand their operations in tourism restaurants in Jordan.
The paper’s ndings can help international tourism organisations in making the
right marketing and managerial decisions as well as designing marketing culture
strategies to achieve a long-term success in the Jordanian market.
10. Limitations and future research
Research limitations exist as a result of research design trade-offs. Theoretically,
this paper has examined marketing culture dimensions proposed by the original
developer (Webster, 1990). A potential fruitful area of future research is to examine
whether there are other dimensions of marketing culture that could affect
performance. For instance, internal marketing and internal service are potential
elements of marketing culture. Empirically, the paper’s ndings are
industry-limited: tourism restaurants in Jordan. Accordingly, ndings cannot be
generalised to other service industries without further examination. An area of
future research is to replicate research model on other service industries (inside and
outside the tourism industry) as well as conducting comparative studies with other
industries in developed and developing countries.
Further, this paper has examined the effect of marketing culture on business
performance using nancial measures. Future research could examine the potential
effect of marketing culture dimensions on business performance using other
non-nancial performance measures such as marketing measures, e.g. customer
retention, trust and satisfaction (Sin et al., 2005).
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In addition, although statistical analysis has resulted in a new marketing culture
dimension focussing on front-line employees, i.e. “management–front-line interaction”,
the importance of back-ofce employees to tourism organisations’ success must not be
undermined. Although they have no direct contact with customers, back-ofce
personnel’s performance affects the effectiveness and the efciency of operations.
Consequently, they also inuence service performance signicantly, albeit indirectly
(Gounaris and Boukis, 2013). Accordingly, future research could focus on marketing
culture dynamics from back-ofce employees’ perspective.
From a methodological perspective, while the unit of analysis in this paper was
the “employee” regardless of his/her managerial position, future research can
conduct comparative analysis between managers’ and employees’ perceptions with
regard to their organisation’s marketing culture and its impact over performance.
Furthermore, future research may examine marketing culture and its dimensions as
well as their potential effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty from customers’
perspectives. Finally, our study investigated marketing culture in tourism
restaurants without breaking them according to the nature of restaurants or country
of origin. Future research may investigate the marketing culture, scale and
dimensions based on the nature of restaurants (e.g. traditional, European-oriented,
American-oriented) as well as examining whether differences exist among them.
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tabid⫽70
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Appendix
Table AI.
Research constructs
measurements,
skewness and
kurtosis
Code Marketing culture measurements and items References Skewness Kurtosis
Service quality (SQ)
SQ1 Restaurant specically denes what exceptional service is Webster (1990,
1993,1995),
Appiah-Adu
and Singh
(1999)
0.961 0.983
SQ2 Restaurant’s top management is committed to providing
exceptional service
0.753 ⫺0.173
SQ3 Employees meet the restaurant’s expectations 0.532 ⫺0.520
SQ4 Restaurant systematically and regularly measures and
monitors employees’ performance
0.725 0.488
SQ5 Employees focus on customer needs, desires and attitudes 0.689 0.077
SQ6 Restaurant places emphasis on employees’
communication skills
0.440 ⫺0.116
SQ7 Employees give attention to detail in their work 0.512 ⫺0.236
SQ8 Employees believe that their behaviour reects the
restaurant’s image
0.696 0.099
Interpersonal relationships (IR)
IR1 Restaurant is considerate about employees’ feelings 0.670 0.551
IR2 Employees are treated as an important part of the
restaurant
0.838 0.540
IR3 Employees feel comfortable in giving opinions to top
management
0.627 ⫺0.003
IR4 Managers have an ‘open-door’ policy 0.522 ⫺0.330
IR5 Management interact with front-line employees 0.587 ⫺0.090
Selling task (ST)
ST1 Restaurant places emphasis on hiring the right people 0.678 0.088
ST2 Restaurant provides skill-based and product knowledge
training to front-line staff
0.765 0.316
ST3 Employees pursue new business aggressively 0.542 0.227
ST4 Restaurant encourages creative approaches to selling 0.659 0.195
ST5 Restaurant gives recognition to high achievers in selling 0.611 0.081
ST6 Employees enjoy pursuing new accounts 0.653 0.551
ST7 Restaurant rewards employees better than its competitors
with incentives to sell
0.518 ⫺0.216
Organisation (OR)
OR1 Each employee is well-organised 0.624 0.020
OR2 Careful planning is a characteristic of every employee’s
daily routine
0.451 0.051
OR3 Employees prioritise their work 0.365 ⫺0.318
OR4 Employees’ work area is well-organised 0.451 ⫺0.135
OR5 Each employee manages time well 0.346 ⫺0.256
Internal communication (IC)
IC1 Restaurant has an approved set of procedures and policies
which is given to each employee
0.656 0.439
IC2 Supervisors clearly state what their expectations are of
other
0.912 0.881
IC3 Each employee understands the mission and general
objectives of the restaurant
0.580 0.433
(continued)
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Corresponding author
Mamoun N. Akroush can be contacted at: mamoun.akroush@gju.edu.jo
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Table AI.
Code Marketing culture measurements and items References Skewness Kurtosis
IC4 Front-line staff are encouraged to become involved in
standard-setting
0.441 0.004
IC5 The restaurant focusses efforts on training and
motivating employees
0.619 0.328
IC6 Management share nancial information with all
employees
0.956 0.765
Innovativeness (IN)
IN1 All employees are receptive to ideas for change 0.591 0.299
IN2 Restaurant keeps up with technological advances 0.624 0.457
IN3 Restaurant is receptive to change 0.447 ⫺0.393
Restaurant performance (FP)
FP1 Achieving restaurant’s protability volume Appiah-Adu
and Singh
(1999);Vorhies
and Morgan
(2005)
0.355 ⫺0.015
FP2 Achieving restaurant’s sales volume 0.228 ⫺0.335
FP3 Achieving restaurant’s return on investment 0.353 ⫺0.122
FP4 Achieving restaurant’s market share rate 0.371 ⫺0.199
Note: Items SQ4, SQ6, ST7 and IC6 were deleted during EFA due to weak factor loadings
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