Sylvie Rolland

Customer orientation and organizational innovation: the case of environmental management practices

This study aims to investigates the effect of three customer orientation components - customer information-processing, responsiveness and values and norms - on a firms decision to adopt environmental management practices. Consistent with the literature on strategy and industrial marketing, the authors also examine the moderating effect of marketplace characteristics.

The benefit of social media: Bulletin board focus groups as a tool for co-creation

Bulletin board methodology emerged at the end of the 1990s and is becoming the most frequently used qualitative study technique. This interactive approach groups a community of participants in a private or public online forum for a duration that varies from several days to several months. Discoveries, exchanges of view, personal opinions and group reactions are all part of the power and interest of the internet in this era of social media. This article presents the principles of bulletin board development, and specifics to aid understanding of this tool within social networks and to help organisations adapt to a paradigm shift in marketing in which consumer-respondents are co-creators of meaning and knowledge.

Customer orientation and firm's business performance

The purpose of this study is to develop a better theoretical and empirical understanding of the causal and contextual mechanisms explaining the relationship between customer orientation and business performance.

An Empirical Investigation of the Effect of Customer Orientation on the Business Performance of French Firms: A Firm-Level Analysis of Direct and Moderation Effects

Is customer orientation a driver of better firm performance? To answer this question, we examine the impact of customer orientation on the business performance of more than 7,500 French firms. Our findings show that customer orientation significantly improves business performance, as measured by the logarithm of the profit per employee and the logarithm of EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation) per employee. Additionally, there is an indirect impact that varies according to the market environment. The findings imply that the positive influence of customer orientation on firm profitability per employee and EBITDA per employee increases in growing, highly competitive and uncertain markets.