Quantitative Questionnaire Construction (Survey Questionnaire)

This research project addressed 23 variables altogether. Questions for this study have been generated from previous empirical studies and from the researcher’s experience (see Appendix A for a copy of the survey questionnaire). In this study existing scales that were available in the literature were used for most of the variables considering their

widely recognition and acceptability in the market orientation literature. Existing scales were used in this study for all the four components of market orientation (customer emphasis, intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and intelligence responsiveness). The other existing scales that were used in this study include senior management characteristics of top management emphasis and risk aversion; organisational characteristics of centralisation, formalisation, and market based reward system; interdepartmental dynamics of interdepartmental conflict and connectedness; external factors of competition, market turbulence, technological turbulence; economic performance of business performance; and non-economic performance of employees’ organisational commitment and esprit de corps.

Scales that were not well constructed in the literature needed to be developed for the measurement of some variables including senior management characteristics of management training and formal marketing education; organisational characteristics of political behaviour; external factors of general economy; non-economic performance of customer satisfaction and repeat customer. Therefore, the first step entailed the development ofnew scales for these items. In this connection, these items were viewed as constructs and were operationally defined in order to develop scales.

The researcher generated a large number of items for each of the above constructs. Several items were reverse-scored in order to minimise response set bias. These items were tested for clarity and appropriateness in a self-administered pre-test with 20 managers from marketing and non-marketing departments. These managers were asked to complete the questionnaire and indicate any ambiguity or difficulty that they experienced in responding to the questions. Some items were eliminated and some others were modified on the basis of their feedback. Consultations with two academics in Australia and two academics in Bangladesh were made prior to, and during, the operationalisation of these scales. The items that were developed and refined were subjected to another pre-test involving 30 managers and a reproducibility test discussed later in this chapter.

In order to measure the overall market orientation of the consumer goods manufacturing companies in Bangladesh a 24-item scale was used. As mentioned earlier market orientation entails four components: customer emphasis, intelligence/information

generation, intelligence dissemination/interfunctional coordination and intelligence responsiveness/taking action. Customer emphasis was measured by a 4-item CUSTOR (customer orientation) scale developed by Gray et al. (1998), and the rest of the three elements were measured by a 20-item MARKOR scale developed by Kohli et al. (1993).

The reason for using the CUSTOR scale for this study was because it is a ‘parsimonious’ measure of customer orientation, which was developed from Narver and Slater (1990) and Deng and Dart’s (1994) 8-item scale (Gray et al., 1998). The MARKOR scale was used for this study because the convergent, discriminant and nomological validity was provided for this scale (Kohli et al., 1993). In addition, the authors (Jaworski and Kohli, 1993; and Kohli et al., 1993) reported the results of two single informant samples and reliability alpha coefficient (Cronbach, 1951) of between .89 to .96 for market orientation and of between .71 to .82 for intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and intelligence responsiveness. Again, the MARKOR scale is well accepted in the market orientation literature (Raju et al., 1995; Pitt et al., 1996; Balabanis et al., 1997; Caruana et al., 1997; Bhuian 1997 and 1998; Pulendran et al., 2000; Cervera et al., 2001).

Two separate scales were used to measure top management emphasis on market orientation and risk aversion. For both top management emphasis and risk aversion, 8 items (4 plus 4 respectively) were adopted from Jaworski and Kohli (1993).

Organisational characteristics of centralisation and formalisation were measured by 4 and 3 items respectively developed by Aiken and Hage (1966; 1968) and another variable, market based reward system, was measured by a 4-item scale developed by Jaworski and Kohli (1993).

Interdepartmental dynamics of interdepartmental conflict and connectedness were measured by 5 and 4 items respectively. All these scale items in this purpose were adopted from Jaworski and Kohli (1993).

The above scales of Aiken and Hage (1966; 1968) and Jaworski and Kohli (1993) were used in this study because of their wide acceptance and use in the market orientation

literature (Bhuian 1998; Avlonitis and Gounaris, 1999; Farrell, 2000; Harris 2000; Pulendran et al., 2000; Carvera et al., 2001).

External factors of market turbulence and technological turbulence were measured on 4 plus 4 item scales that had been developed by Jaworski and Kohli (1993), because of their wide use (Bhuian 1998; Pulendran et al., 2000). Competition was measured by a 7- item scale to better fit the competitive situation in Bangladesh. Of these items, three of them were adopted from the COMPOR scale developed by Gray et al. (1998), three of them were adopted from the work of Jaworski and Kohli (1993), and the rest was adopted from the work of Narver and Slater (1990).

In order to measure business performance, eight widely recognised scale items were derived from the work of a variety of authors, as these items were successfully used in developing countries for measuring business performance (Bhuian, 1998; Appiah-Adu, 1998b; Akimova, 2000). These items include return on investment (Walker and Ruekert, 1987), Profit (McCarthy and Perreault, 1993), sales growth (Douglas and Craig, 1983), Market share (Collins, 1990), sales volume (Burke, 1984), and revenues, product quality, and financial position (Bhuian, 1992).

Finally, employees’ constructs of organisational commitment and esprit de corps were measured by two different scales (4 plus 4 items) developed by Jaworski and Kohli (1993). These scales were used considering their wide acceptance in the market orientation literature.

The following variables were measured by using the newly developed scales. Senior management characteristics of management training and formal marketing education were measured by 4 plus 4 scale items, organisational characteristics of political behaviour was measured by a 3-item scale, external factors of the general economy were measured by a 3-item scale, and customer response constructs of customer satisfaction and repeat customer were measured by two separate scales containing 6 and 4 items respectively.

A 5 point Likert scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) was used in this study for all the scale items as this scale is easy to prepare and interpret, and also simple for

respondent to answer (Zikmund, 2000). In addition, an interval scale is more powerful than a nominal scale, as it allows a researcher to make stronger comparison and conclusions (Churchill, 1983).