The Effect of Market Orientation on Service Innovation: A Study on the Information and Communication Technology (Ict) Sector in Jordan

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of market orientation on service innovation in Jordanian Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Sector. Customer orientation, competitor orientation, interfunctional coordination, intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and intelligence responsiveness were the components of market orientation in this study. The population of this study was defined as all Intaj members that are included within Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Sector in Jordan which are 184 companies till February 2011. Primary data were collected from 50 companies by disseminating 300 questionnaires to the key respondents who were the employees within marketing and sales departments in that fifty companies. Multiple regression analysis was used to fulfill the research objective. The findings indicated that there is a high level of implementation of (1) market orientation and (2) service innovation within selected companies, and that there is a statistically significant effect of market orientation on service innovation, as well as all market orientation components have statistically significant positive effect on service innovation except for intelligence generation, and the most important (influential) independent variable within market orientation construct to influence service innovation was competitor orientation. According to the findings of this study, a number of recommendations were presented to enhance service innovation processes in ICT sector, Such as: (1) Jordanian ICT companies must be careful about the actions and activities of their current competitors without neglecting the threat of potential competitors, (2) Jordanian ICT companies should direct more of their capabilities toward benefiting their customers as much as possible, in addition to broaden the area of customer participation, (3) modifying the organizational structure of Jordanian ICT companies to facilitate inter-functional coordination activities, in addition to institute organized databases to perform this task smoothly, (4) to be careful about the quality of collected information and appreciate its value before intelligence dissemination, (5) as well as maximizing the importance of communication between all functional departments and then translate that culture into behaviors, (6) and then develop a deliberate response system on timely basis.