Phase I: Exploratory Phase

The research first stage was designed mainly to investigate the variations between the main four telecommunications operators in the market with regard to the adoption of marketing orientation. Thus, it is planned to determine the adopted marketing orientation ‘level’ (Ruekert, 1992) or ‘degree’ (Tesar et al., 2000) for each firm in the market.

Figure 3.4 highlights the anticipated outcome of phase (I) represented in a classification of the telecommunications operators regarding their adopted level of marketing orientation.

99 Figure 3.4: Classification of TSPs: the Adopted level of Marketing Orientation

As an initial and preparatory practical stage of research, investigating the key informant persons in each firm who have professional backgrounds related to the issues being evaluated is a considerable goal (Frechtling & Sharp, 1997) at this stage of the study.

Hence, the exploratory phase intended to achieve two main objectives: (i) a comprehensive image for the provision of telecommunications service in Jordan (PTSJ) with regard to the adoption of marketing orientation levels for the different telecommunications operators, and (ii) this phase was designed to enable the researcher to identify the key informants for the main phase of research, the managers’ semi-structured interviews.

3.6.1.1 Applied Instrument/Phase I

Sampling

In marketing research, both qualitative and quantitative methods may choose their samples purposively. According to Maxwell (1997, p.87), purposive sampling is the most appropriate technique in cases where particular participants are selected deliberately because of the important information they can provide that cannot be gained so well from other choices. Such a technique may be a practical and an efficient tool when used properly, and can be just as effective as - and even more efficient than - random sampling (Tongco, 2007). Moreover, such a technique is preferred when the researcher has already decided what needs to be known and defined the qualities the informant(s) should or should not have, which is based on identifying people who can

TSPs with less level of Marketing Orientation

TSPs with high level of Marketing Orientation

TSP (A) TSP(B) TSP (C) TSP(D)

100 and are willing to provide the information by virtue of knowledge or experience as Tongco (2007) argued.

Consequently, a judgmental (purposive) sample of 48 participants was planned to be selected from the main marketing departments from the main four operators in Jordan’s telecommunications market. Although each telecommunications operator has many different branches and agents in the different provinces and regions in Jordan, marketing managers, supervisors and marketing staff from the central marketing departments in the capital, Amman, were targeted particularly. The justification of such a technique is that the issue being evaluated in phase (I) is managed mainly by firms’

main departments not their branches. Thus, such participants seem to be more able to express issue related to the firm’s vision or strategy as in the case of marketing orientation aspects.

Measurement Tool

In marketing orientation literature, there is no specific ideal measure construct.

However, the adoption of the two dominant scales of Kohli and Jaworski (1990) and Narver and Slater (1990) was the common approach that was used broadly in measuring marketing orientation. While Vorhies and Harker, (2000) used all 32 items of Kohli and Jaworski’s (1990) construct for assessing marketing orientation within the Australian context, on the other hand, Avlonitis and Gounaris (1997) selected just 15 items from the same original scale as the researchers considered they are the most appropriate variables for their study in Greece’s market. Similarly, Ngai and Ellis (1998) adopted 14 items from Narver and Salter’s (1990) original measure.

Other scholars followed the adoption of those two popular scales in a single study (e.g.

Mahmoud, 2011; Mokhtar et al., 2009; Hinson et al., 2008; Farrel & Oczkowski, 1997);

the approach which was followed in this research. Hence, the researcher used a combination of selected items of both MKTOR (Narver & Slater, 1990) and MARKOR (Kohli et al., 1993) that are commensurate with the context of provision of telecommunications service marketing in Jordan (PTSJ) as a service market covering the four basic dimensions of marketing orientation (Zebal & Goodwin, 2011):

customer emphasising, information generation, information coordination and action initiation (responsiveness).

101 Many previous marketing orientation (MO) studies were dedicated to assessing different aspects of the causal relationship between marketing orientation and business performance. Such research used scales that in general comprise three sorts of items:

marketing orientation, organisational performance, and moderating variables. The inclusion of marketing orientation and organisational performance variables in those scales was vital to measure this relationship (i.e. MO-organisational performance). On the other hand, the adoption of moderating variables (e.g. environmental turbulence and competitive intensity) was justified by the likelihood of moderating influence of these factors which affect the relationship between marketing orientation and business performance (Bunic, 2007). In such studies, the use of moderating variables was associated with assessing the causal relationship of marketing orientation and business performance. Thus, positive or negative relationships of moderators and marketing orientation were formulated as hypotheses to be examined within causal qualitative-style research (e.g. Kumar et al., 2011).

This research is based on a fundamental proposition in marketing strategy represented in the positive association between marketing orientation and firms’ performance (McNaughton et al., 2002). This assumption has received widespread support in the literature for its reliability and validity in many different contexts which was confirmed by the extensive body of research conducted on marketing orientation (Mokhtar et al., 2009; Dikmen et al., 2005; Panayides, 2004; Vorhies & Harker, 2000; Avlonitis &

Gounaris, 1999, 1997; Jaworski & Kohli 1993; Greenley, 1995). Consequently, this research was not designed to re-measure this relationship; on the contrary, the research framework assumes the presence of this association, and the main purpose of the research focused on investigating the mechanisms (not on the causal link) by which firms achieve customer satisfaction and customer retention, then to evaluate the variation of marketing orientation adoption on these processes.

Accordingly, the adopted questionnaire was developed with the aim of determining the adopted level of marketing orientation of the four telecommunications operators excluding the evaluation of the causal relationship between marketing orientation and organisational performance. Thus, the questionnaire excluded the causal relationship-related items - i.e. organisational performance and moderators factors - and focused on evaluating the degree (Bunic, 2007; Ngai & Ellis, 1998) or the level (Avlonitis &

Gounaris, 1999,1997; Ruekert, 1992; Keith, 1960) of marketing orientation for each

102 firm comprising the main dimensions of this orientation; i.e. customer orientation, information generation, information coordination and responsiveness.

Respondents were asked to express their agreement or disagreement with the 28-item questionnaire (Appendix E); 15 items (A1, A2..., A15) measured the attitudinal aspects of marketing orientation and 13 items (B1, B..., B13) assessed the behavioural dimensions of marketing orientation, represented by a seven-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree; 7= strongly agree).

It is worth noting that, while the original scales developed by Jaworski and Kohli (1993) and Avlonitis and Gounaris (1997) used a five-point Likert-type scale, in this research the scale extent was increased to a seven-point scale in order to achieve a better presentation of the variations among the views of the respondents.