This article was downloaded by: [McGill University Library]

On: 10 December 2014, At: 11:05

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,
UK

Journal of Marketing for Higher

Education
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wmhe20

SERVMO: A Measure for

Service-Driven Market
Orientation in Higher
Education
a
B.H. Voon
a
MARA University of Technology , Sarawak, Malaysia
Published online: 08 Sep 2008.

To cite this article: B.H. Voon (2008) SERVMO: A Measure for Service-Driven Market
Orientation in Higher Education, Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 17:2,
216-237, DOI: 10.1080/08841240801912583

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08841240801912583

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the
information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.
However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,
or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views
expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the
Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with
primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any
losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,
 and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or
indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the
Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,
sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014
 SERVMO: A Measure for Service-Driven
1540-7144
0884-1241
WMHE
Journal of Marketing for Higher Education
Education, Vol. 17, No. 2, Feb 2008: pp. 0–0

Market Orientation in Higher Education

B.H. Voon
JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
Voon
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

ABSTRACT. With the intensified pace of globalization and increasing

customer expectations, the higher education sector, like other economy
sectors, faces increasing competition in terms of serving customers better.
Service has been recognized as an effective tool for a competitive advan-
tage. Thus, there is always a need for a more effective way of improving
service, specifically in higher education. For this, a strategic and service-
oriented marketing construct that is empirically operationalized and tested
is deemed necessary. However, this measure of customer-perceived market
orientation for service has yet to be developed for academic and practical
purposes.
This paper presents the scale development for a service-driven market
orientation (SERVMO) in higher education using data from Malaysian
institutions of higher learning. The perceptions of senior students were ana-
lyzed and the results show that the proposed multi-dimensional construct
consists of six components, namely customer orientation, competitor orien-
tation, inter-functional orientation, performance orientation, long-term ori-
entation, and employee orientation. This construct is closely correlated
with service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Some key
implications and future research are also discussed.

KEYWORDS. Service-driven market orientation, higher education and

Malaysia

B.H. Voon, MARA University of Technology, Sarawak, Malaysia.

Address correspondence to: B.H. Voon, University Technology MARA
Sarawak, Jalan Meranek, 94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia.
(E-mail: bhvoon@ sarawak.uitm.edu.my).
Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, Vol. 17(2) 2007
Available online at http://jmhe.haworthpress.com
© 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
216 doi:10.1080/08841240801912583
 Voon 217

INTRODUCTION

To many marketing scholars and practitioners the marketing concept is

central in service quality management. Though marketing philosophy has
long been emphasized in business administration (Drucker, 1954), the
formal operational definition of this strategic concept was extensively
researched only in the early 1990s (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990, Narver and
Slater, 1990, Jaworski and Kohli, 1993; Deshpandé, Farley and Webster,
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

1993). In fact, there are still refinements being made or proposed, directly
or indirectly, and especially to suit specific industries and increase the
construct’s comprehensiveness (Siu and Wilson, 1998; Gray et al., 1998;
Noble, Sinha and Kumar, 2002; Krepapa et al., 2003; Lings, 2004).
Furthermore, a more service-driven construct for service-oriented organi-
zations like the institutions of higher learning is essential.
In terms of the research methods, the existing academic literature on
market orientation mainly focuses on the quantitative approaches like
questionnaire survey, adopting or adapting the earlier established opera-
tional definitions, particularly to confirm and refine the components and
items. Thus, there is a need to for appropriate and rigorous qualitative
investigations, like Critical Incident Technique, to identify and develop
the more appropriate and contextual market orientation dimensions and
items. This is essential for the strategic services sector like higher educa-
tion. The currently used organizational-defined market orientation mea-
sures (i.e. MKTOR and MARKOR) should be supplemented with the
customer-defined measures in order to assess the contribution of market
orientation on service quality advancement (e.g. Webb, Webster and
Krepapa, 2000).

FROM MARKETING CONCEPT

TO CUSTOMER-PERCEIVED MARKET ORIENTATION

The marketing concept has been discussed since way back in the 1950s
(e.g. Drucker 1954; Felton 1959) and emphasizes satisfying customers’
needs through the concerted or integrated efforts of all departments in an
organization, for the sake of the organization’s performance or profitability.
Though there are numerous definitional variations for the marketing
concept, the central element is all about putting the interest of the custom-
ers or target market first and serving them well and profitably. An inte-
grated marketing organization is significant for marketing effectiveness
 218 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

and an organization needs to be staffed in such a way that marketing

analysis, planning, implementation and control can be carried out (Kotler
1977). Good understanding of the customer needs and wants require con-
tinual learning (Albrecht and Zemke, 1985). Drucker (1954) and Levitt
(1960) indicated clearly the need for market orientation in business man-
agement and administration. It can be seen as a cornerstone of marketing
thought (Morgan, 2004). Drucker (1954) advised that marketing is not a
specialized functional activity, but rather the whole business seen from
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

the customer’s point of view. Market-oriented firms coordinate their

activities around the goal of satisfying the customer needs. Parasuraman,
Berry and Zeithmal (1983) argued that service firms needed the market-
ing skills. Service organizations, like institutions of higher learning, need
to understand the customer-defined quality in order to improve further
(Joseph, Yakhou and Stone, 2005).
Major management and marketing literature reveal that market orientation
is about continuous and organization-wide gathering, and disseminating and
responding to market information to satisfy the target customers’ needs prof-
itably (Drucker, 1954; Kotler, 1977; Shapiro, 1988; Narver and Slater, 1990;
Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Deshpandé, Farley and Webster, 1993). Basi-
cally, the philosophy of market orientation reflects an organization-level
culture, and a set of shared values and beliefs about putting the customer
first in business planning (Deshpandé, 1999).
Levitt (1960) suggested that businesses must be viewed as customer sat-
isfying processes. The customer’s perspective is vital in quality assessment
(Garvin, 1984; Hill, Lomas and MacGregor, 2003). These views are in line
with the concept of market orientation, and indeed hinted for the need for
customer-defined and customer-perceived market orientation for service
excellence. The service provider’s behaviours can best be evaluated from
the customer’s vantage. In fact, the empirical works of Deshpandé, Farley
and Webster (1993) indicated the need for a customer-oriented market ori-
entation, which is believed to be a necessary perspective in service quality
management (e.g. Krepapa et al., 2003; Webb, Webster and Krepapa 2000).
Matthing et al. (2004) also suggested that a service-centered view on new
service development should be captured through customer involvement.

THE SERVICE-DRIVEN MARKET ORIENTATION

The market orientation theories and measures are instrumental in

enhancing service quality management and can be incorporated into
 Voon 219

developing a market orientation construct that is pro-service, and embed-

ded with the necessary service behaviours and culture. As the service
concept consistently emphasizes the customer perspective, this proposed
construct is conceptualized and developed based on the customers’ (stu-
dents’) perceptions in the higher education setting. This extended version
of market orientation, which is more service-oriented is termed service-
driven market orientation (SERVMO). The author defines it as:
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

The set of beliefs, behaviours, and cross-functional processes that

seriously focuses on continuous and comprehensive understanding,
disseminating as well as satisfying the current and future needs of
the target customers for service excellence.

The conceptualization and operationalization of SERVMO are mainly

based on various marketing literature, coupled with the qualitative explo-
ration of market-oriented service practices using the Critical Incident
Technique. The market orientation scales of Narver and Slater (1990) as
well as Deshpandé and Farley (1998) are adapted with appropriate
rewording and extra care taken in order to capture customer perceptions.
Services marketing and service management literature show the need for
an employee orientation (e.g. Siu and Wilson, 1998; Lings, 2004; Voon
and Kueh, 2004). The six components of a service-driven market orienta-
tion are discussed as follows:
Customer Orientation. High performance organizations are always
close to customers; in fact the customers intrude into every nook and
cranny of the various business functions (Peters and Waterman, 1982).
Putting the customer first is the heart of the marketing concept and cus-
tomer focus is the central element of market orientation (e.g. Drucker,
1954; Keith, 1960; and McNamara, 1972). Service organizations should con-
duct their business on the basis of customer needs satisfaction (Parasuraman,
Berry and Zeithaml, 1983). This is necessary, as customers have become
increasingly sensitive to service quality (Liou and Chen, 2006). The
expressed as well as the latent needs and wants of customers need to be
well understood and fulfilled so as to attend the desired level of service
quality and satisfaction.
Competitor Orientation. All organizations should not ignore the need
to compete. They must try to understand and master competition. Many
strategic marketing scholars tend to agree that market orientation should
also include the concept of competitive orientation (e.g. Gatignon and
Xuereb, 1997; Morgan and Strong, 1998). Market-oriented organizations
 220 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

have a good understanding of the competitors, both current and potential,

to serve the same markets (Narver and Slater, 1990). This behavioural
component includes intelligence generation, and dissemination and
responsiveness to intelligence regarding competitors’ actions (Kohli,
Jaworski and Kumar, 1993).
Inter-functional Orientation. Coordination and teamwork among
different functional units and employees is necessary for effective and
efficient business administration. Hence, achieving service excellence is
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

definitely not the sole responsibility of the marketing department. Market

orientation theory stresses inter-functional coordination. Deng and Dart
(1994) point out that all parts of the organization must accept responsibil-
ity for serving the market and the organization’s climate or culture must
stress service quality throughout the entire organization (Schneider and
Bowen, 1993).
Long-term Orientation. Providing long-term directions for organiza-
tions was among the main elements in the early marketing concept (e.g.
Felton, 1959) and market orientation emphasized the long-term perspec-
tive as well. The customer orientation includes the element of long-term
customer satisfaction and relationships (Deng and Dart, 1994). Organiza-
tions, especially the private and profit-oriented firms, have the objective
of maximizing their profits or striving for survival (Narver and Slater,
1990) in the long-run. In the context of higher education, the forward
looking and futuristic orientation of serving the target market is even
more crucial, as there is always a societal obligation to produce good,
dynamic and competent graduates.
Performance Orientation. The marketing concept emphasizes organi-
zational performance. Service management experts like Heskett, Sasser,
and Hart (1990) agree that the service concept is results-oriented.
Performance orientation is clearly seen in the definitions of Narver and
Slater (1990), where the primary aim of market orientation is to create
superior customer value. Service organizations must always be seriously
thinking about excellence (Crosby, 1996), as there are many people
and processes which need to be well managed for service excellence.
Emphasizing quality and excellence is one of the key elements of market
orientation in service.
Employee Orientation. Competent, empowered and motivated employ-
ees are important assets to all organizations, including the institutions of
higher learning. People are the prime focus in service quality manage-
ment (Crosby, 1996) because the products are produced by people who
perform the necessary services. Employees, or the internal customers,
 Voon 221

FIGURE 1. The service-driven market orientation and its dimensions.

Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

play an important role if an organization hopes to continuously satisfy the

market or customer needs, wants, and desires (e.g. Schneider and Bowen,
1993; Lings 2004). This is even more profound in the services-oriented
organizations like universities or colleges, where there are many
customer-contact employees. Employee orientation should be considered
as one of the market orientation components (Shapiro, 1988; Siu and
Wilson, 1998; Lings, 1999). As service itself is intangible, employees are
responsible for transforming the service into a concrete offering and thus
they are called the bearers of the service (Grönroos, 1978).

METHODOLOGY

This descriptive research attempts to develop a new scale called

SERVMO. The study identifies the various service-driven market orienta-
tion dimensions and their relationships with service quality in a higher
educational setting. The relationships among the respective service-driven
 222 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

market orientation dimension, overall market orientation and several

service performance indicators were investigated. Cross-sectional data on
the perceptions of students were used for the quantitative analysis. The
units of analysis were individual senior students sampled from four
consenting public and private institutions of higher learning in Malaysia.

Instrumentation
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

The research instrument (questionnaire) was developed systematically,

based on the relevant marketing literature on market orientation measure-
ment, coupled with the application of Critical Incident Technique, to gen-
erate the service-driven market orientation items in the higher educational
setting. Critical Incident Technique was employed to collect and document
critical incidents that were market-oriented in serving the customers for
identifying the dimensions, and the respective items that were used to
design the questionnaire. The critical incidents were carefully read and
sorted according to some pre-determined or hypothesized market orienta-
tion dimensions based on literature review. The pre-determined dimen-
sions were customer orientation, competitor orientation, inter-functional
coordination, performance orientation, long-term orientation, and
employee orientation. New dimensions and items were identified. There
was a systematic process for achieving the acceptable levels of intrajudge
and interjudge agreements. Intra-judging was done by the researcher and
another qualified colleague. They read to one another the incidents in
order to confirm the agreed dimensions and items. A reliability of at least
85% was required (Bitner, Booms and Tetreault, 1990; Bitner, Booms
and Mohr, 1994). The sorting went through an interjudging process by
another qualified colleague in the field of services marketing.
The main variable, service-driven market orientation, was measured
based mainly on the five originally hypothesized components and the
Narver and Slater items (1990), as well as the newly developed items
from the qualitative exploration. The customer-perceived service quality
was measured using the SERVQUAL scale of Parasuraman, Berry and
Zeithaml (1983). The seven-point Likert scale was used to measure the
customers’ (students’) perceptions of the various service-driven market
orientation items, and service quality (i.e. 1 = Strongly Disagree and 7 =
Strongly Agree). Customer satisfaction was a single-item measure, so as
to safeguard the unidimensionality of the service outcome. Nunnally and
Bernstein (1994) suggested that unidimensional measures are appropriate
when the issue to be measured is measurable at the single attribute level.
 Voon 223

Customer loyalty was a two-item measure which included enquiring

about the respondents’ repurchasing intention and recommendation inten-
tions to others (Boulding et al., 1993).
The instrument was tested before launching. Firstly, the instrument
was pre-tested by administering the questionnaire to ten marketing
experts to check the content validity of the newly proposed service-driven
market orientation and the adapted service quality constructs. Their con-
structive comments were taken into consideration when improving the
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

wording of the various items as well as deciding whether to add or leave

out some of the items. Extra care (e.g. on wordings) was needed to ensure
that the respondents were qualified and informed enough to answer. The
face or content validity check was also run on a convenience sample of 37
final year bachelor degree students (majoring in marketing). The ques-
tionnaires, which aimed at seeking students’ perception as to whether
each statement described the respective factors or dimensions of the service-
driven market orientation, were distributed to the students in classes.
Respondents were asked to rate to which extent the statements described
the corresponding factors using a scale of 1 to 5 with “1” being “does not
describe the factor at all” and “5” being “describes the factor perfectly.”
They also suggested additions and deletions of necessary items.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

This survey research aims to gauge student perception of the service and
marketing practices of the institutions of higher learning. It is a perceptual
study from the customers’ viewpoint, appropriate for this service research.
The following section presents the development and refinement of the
SERVMO scale for measuring a service-driven market orientation
(Appendix A). The psychometric properties of the scale were discussed.
These include the various reliability and validity aspects of the scale. Reli-
ability tests were done through the internal consistency checks with the
help of the useful indicators, namely the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients.
Split-half analysis (the sample was randomly divided into two groups) was
also performed to check the stability of the newly proposed measure. The
results show that the SERVMO scale is reliable in terms of internal consis-
tency and stable across two split-half samples. Factor analyses (explor-
atory and confirmatory) were done to quantitatively identify the factors or
dimensions of the newly proposed multi-dimensional construct. The
research findings show that SERVMO is made up of six components.
 224 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

In this empirical study, the respondents were made up of students in

public and private institutions of higher learning who have at least one
year of experience with the institutions. A few institutions in Malaysia
agreed to participate in the study. Out of the 600 questionnaires distrib-
uted randomly to classes of students, 590 were returned (response rate
was 98.3%). However, only 558 were usable questionnaires for final anal-
ysis. The demographic characteristics of the respondents are presented in
Table 1.
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

The normality of the data was checked. The Skewness and Kurtosis
results were close to zero, as evidenced by the acceptable level of normal-
ity. The Mahalanobis distances (D2) method was also used to check the
multivariate normality. The D2 for each subject was obtained and plotted
against the quantiles of the χ2 distribution. The respective scatter plots of
chi_sq vs di_sq, with R2 fit, were performed accordingly and yielded

TABLE 1. Demographic characteristics of

respondents (N = 558)

Demographic Characteristics N %

Gender:
Male 228 40.9
Female 330 59.1
Age (in years):
17–19 89 15.9
20–22 281 50.4
23–25 133 23.8
More than 25 55 9.9
Race:
Native 434 77.8
Non-Native 124 22.2
Institution:
Public 391 70.1
Private 167 29.9
Student status:
Full-time 535 95.9
Part-time 23 4.1
Course/Degree:
Business 231 41.4
Non-business 327 58.6
Level of study:
Diploma 347 62.2
Bachelor 197 35.3
Postgraduate 14 2.5
 Voon 225

satisfactory results for multivariate normality. The results show that

SERVMO, with its six components, and service quality, with its five
dimensions, had Skewness and Kurtosis values of near zero, whereas the
D2 method also shows R2 values of greater than or about 0.9. Thus, nor-
mal distributions were assumed for all the variables of interest.
Developing a reliable and valid instrument is critical in social sci-
ences like marketing. This is to ensure that the instrument measures
what it intended to measure, without error. Initially, the reliability of
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

the constructs was assessed. Cronbach alphas of the initial constructs

were computed and unreliable questions dropped from the scales
before further analysis (e.g. Churchill, 1979; Gray et al., 1998). Seven
items were deleted and 55 retained for the factor analysis. Exploratory
Factor Analysis was performed, followed by the Confirmatory Factor
Analysis.

Reliability Analysis
Reliability of a measure is its ability to yield consistent results. This
study employed the internal consistency method coupled with split-half
of the samples to assess the reliability of SERVMO. The internal consis-
tency method requires only one administration and is said to be the most
general and effective means for field studies (Sureshchandar et al., 2001).
This method shows the inter-correlations among the items that constitute
a scale. The internal consistency was estimated using the Cronbach coef-
ficient alpha (Churchill, 1979) and the resultant overall coefficient alpha
of 0.95 was much higher than 0.70, the threshold suggested by Nunnally
and Bernstein (1994). Furthermore, the results from the randomly split-
half subsamples (DeVellis, 2003) also produced similar findings for scale
reliability (Table 2). The alphas remained fairly consistent across the two
samples; thus it can be comfortably assumed that these values are not
distorted by chance (DeVellis, 2003). These findings testified that all the
six scales are internally consistent and have acceptable reliability in their
original form.
Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify items that appeared to
best measure the various dimensions of SERVMO. Low loading items
(less than 0.5) and cross loadings items exhibiting poor discriminant valid-
ity were removed (e.g. Gray et al., 1998). The factor analysis procedure
using principal component and varimax rotation provided a six-factor solu-
tion that explained 55.7% of the variance. The eigenvalues associated with
each of the six-factor solutions were greater than 1.00. The value of Bartlett’s
 226 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

TABLE 2. Reliability analysis on SERVMO

The Dimensions No. of Sample 1 (N = 288) Sample 2 (N = 270)

and Lems items
Cronbach Item-to-Total Cronbach Item-to-Total
Alpha Correlation Alpha Correlation

Customer Orientation 6 0.87 0.84

(CUS)
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

2 Customer 0.620 0.540

service commitment
monitoring
4 Understanding of 0.714 0.704
customer needs
5 Delivering quality 0.731 0.656
service to customers
6 Measuring 0.738 0.672
customer satisfaction
7 Knowledge on 0.639 0.612
customer preferences
8 After-sales service 0.552 0.564
Competitor Orientation 5 0.85 0.80
(COM)
17 Responsiveness 0.578 0.531
to competitors
18 Knowledge on 0.693 0.607
competitors
19 Strategic 0.725 0.647
customer targeting
22 Passion for 0.704 0.582
service advantage
23 Passion for 0.648 0.530
service differentiation
Inter-functional 5 0.83 0.80
Orientation (IO)
27 Employee 0.578 0.532
communication for
service
28 Information 0.563 0.449
distribution on
satisfaction
29 Interdepartmental 0.626 0.667
employee relationship
30 Interdepartmental 0.717 0.656
activities coordination
31 Interdepartmental 0.653 0.615
communication

(Continued)
 Voon 227

TABLE 2. (Continued)

The Dimensions No. of Sample 1 (N = 288) Sample 2 (N = 270)

and Lems items
Cronbach Item-to-Total Cronbach Item-to-Total
Alpha Correlation Alpha Correlation

Performance 5 0.87 0.82

Orientation (PO)
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

32 Service 0.736 0.615

excellence pursuit
33 Top management 0.702 0.644
commitment on
service
34 Measuring 0.786 0.654
service performance
35 Service 0.681 0.707
performance monitoring
42 Walk the talk on 0.607 0.489
service
Long-term Orientation (LO) 7 0.87 0.85
44 Investment on 0.558 0.533
service
(e.g. infrastructure)
49 Towards long-term 0.683 0.579
service satisfaction
51 Emphasis on 0.598 0.582
long-term survival
52 Long-term service 0.665 0.658
planning
53 Continuous service 0.709 0.714
improvement
54 Long-term customer 0.639 0.607
service
55 Service excellence 0.687 0.664
consistency
Employee Orientation 4 0.83 0.82
(EMO)
57 Staff training for 0.673 0.685
service excellence
58 Staff motivation and 0.667 0.683
joyfulness
59 Staff recruitment 0.691 0.665
and adequacy
61 Staff choice for 0.625 0.565
service excellence
Overall coefficient alpha 32 0.95 0.94
 228 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

test for sphericity was 14,276.96 (significant at 0.001 level) and the
Kaiser-Meyer-Okline (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy was very
high at 0.96. Results of the factor analysis are reported in Table 3.
Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test whether the six dimen-
sions model suggested by the exploratory factor analysis was a good rep-
resentation of service-driven market orientation. The results show a good
model fit (χ2 = 1139.80, df = 449, χ2/df = 2.54, CFI = 0.92, RMSEA =
0.053) with t-values for each of the loadings significant at p = 0.01. The
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

χ2 value is rather high because it is said to be sensitive to sample size. The

other fit indices are also highly satisfactory. Therefore, it is confirmed
that the 32 items can be well loaded into the six factors respectively.

Unidimensionality Analysis
Unidimensionality of SERVMO was also assessed, as it is a mandatory
condition for the construct validity and reliability checking (Gerbing and
Anderson, 1988). It ensures that all items measure the underlying theoret-
ical construct. For unidimensionality checking, a measurement model was
specified for each construct and CFA was run for all constructs. The
results could show unidimensionality in reference to the latent construct
(Kumar and Dillon, 1987). The study used the goodness of fit index, Con-
firmatory Fit Index (CFI) to test for unidimensionality (Sureshchandar
et al., 2001). Value of 0.90 and above show no evidence of a lack of uni-
dimensionality. The results in Table 4 show that the CFI indices are 0.92
and above, implying that there is strong evidence of unidimensionality
among the six constructs. These six multi-item components are the sub-
dimensions for the multi-dimensional construct called SERVMO.

Validity Analysis
Validity refers to the ability of a scale to measure the intended concept.
According to Sekaran (2000), the three main categories of validity tests
are content validity, construct (convergent and discriminant) validity and
criterion-related validity. Evidence of construct validity exists when the
pattern of correlations among variables conform to what is predicted by
theory. The following section presents the tests on convergent, discrimi-
nant, criterion and concurrent validities of the SERVMO scale.
Convergent validity. Convergent validity refers to the degree of agree-
ment between two or more measures of the same construct. This conver-
gent validity was examined through simple correlations among its six
components. The results in Table 5 show that the correlations among the
 Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

TABLE 3. Factor Analysis on SERVMO

The Dimensions and Items Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4 Factor 5 Factor 6
Customer Orientation(CUS)
2 Customer service commitment monitoring 0.616
4 Understanding of customer needs 0.727
5 Delivering quality service to customers 0.718
6 Measuring customer satisfaction 0.750
7 Knowledge on customer preferences 0.656
8 After-sales service 0.505
Competitor Orientation (COM)
17 Responsiveness tocompetitors 0.669
18 Knowledge on competitors 0.748
19 Strategic customer targeting 0.697
22 Passion for service advantage 0.644
23 Passion for service differentiation 0.591
Inter-functional Orientation (IO)
27 Employee communication for service 0.536
28 Information distribution on satisfaction 0.520
29 Interdepartmental employee relationship 0.687
30 Interdepartmental activities coordination 0.670
31 Interdepartmental communication 0.652
Performance Orientation (PO)
32 Service excellence pursuit 0.567
33 Top managementcommitment on service 0.535
34 Measuring service performance 0.636
35 Service performance monitoring 0.638
42 Walk the talk on service 0.502

(Continued)

229
 Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

230
TABLE 3. (Continued)

The Dimensions and Items Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4 Factor 5 Factor 6

Long-term Orientation (LO)

44 Investment on service (e.g. infrastructure) 0.614
49 Towards long-term service satisfaction 0.542
51 Emphasis on long-term survival 0.590
52 Long-term service planning 0.697
53 Continuous service improvement 0.661
54 Long-term customer service 0.611
55 Service excellence consistency 0.590
Employee Orientation (EMO)
57 Staff training for service excellence 0.732
58 Staff Motivation and joyfulness 0.770
59 Staff recruitment and adequacy 0.683
61 Staff choice for service excellence 0.615
Eigenvalue 18.00 2.17 1.97 1.58 1.30 1.14
Variance (%)
(Total 55.7%) 38.40 4.61 4.13 3.37 2.76 2.43
 Voon 231

TABLE 4. Construct validity for SERVMO

Alpha Range of loadings CFI ▲ TLI

Customer Orientation 0.91 0.63 – 0.78 0.99 0.98 0.98

Competitor Orientation 0.92 0.63 – 0.78 0.92 0.92 0.84
Inter-functional Orientation 0.92 0.56 – 0.80 0.96 0.95 0.91
Performance Orientation 0.68 0.63 – 0.79 0.97 0.97 0.95
Long-term Orientation 0.86 0.59 – 0.77 0.96 0.95 0.93
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

Employee Orientation 0.87 0.69 – 0.76 1.00 1.00 0.99

Note: All construct loadings are standardized estimates and significant at 0.0 level.

TABLE 5. Correlation analysis on SERVMO

CUS COM IO PO LO EMO

Customer Orientation 1
Competitor Orientation 0.540 1
Inter-functional Orientation 0.533 0.513 1
Performance Orientation 0.572 0.596 0.668 1
Long-term Orientation 0.555 0.591 0.568 0.703 1
Employee Orientation 0.509 0.407 0.558 0.578 0.539 1
SERVMO 0.785 0.757 0.796 0.858 0.844 0.738

Note: All correlation coefficients are significant at 0.01 level.

six components of SERVMO range from 0.407 to 0.703, and that all cor-
relations are significant at 0.01 level. In addition, each of the six compo-
nents is highly correlated (0.738 and above) with the overall measure of
SERVMO. The pattern of correlation indicates that the six components
are convergent on the same construct. The values of the Bentler-Bonett
coefficient (▲) of the six constructs and overall model were 0.92 and
above—evidence for convergent validity (Sureshchandar et al., 2001).
Discriminant validity. Theoretically non-relevant and dissimilar con-
structs should not be closely associated with the scores on the instrument.
Discriminant validity is established when two theoretically different vari-
ables are empirically found to be uncorrelated (Sekaran, 2000). Discrimi-
nant analysis was done using t-tests on the differences between pairs of
SERVMO components (Kumar et al., 1998). All the components signifi-
cantly differed from one another (P = 0.000). Kline (1998) suggested that
indicators of supposedly different constructs should not be so highly
 232 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

TABLE 6. Criterion validity for SERVMO

Service Quality Customer Customer Loyalty

Satisfaction

Customer Orientation 0.551 0.454 0.387

Competitor Orientation 0.525 0.444 0.419
Inter-functional Orientation 0.616 0.439 0.344
Performance Orientation 0.664 0.529 0.442
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

Long-term Orientation 0.635 0.491 0.531

Employee Orientation 0.675 0.460 0.369
SERVMO 0.764 0.588 0.526

Note: All correlation coefficients are significant at 0.01 level.

correlated (r > 0.85). Since the correlations among the components were
obviously less than 0.85 (Table 5), there was strong evidence for discrim-
inant validity.
Criterion validity. Criterion validity indicates how well the measures
of interest correlate with a meaningful outcome (e.g. Nunnally and
Bernstein, 1994). It was demonstrated by the significant correlations
between SERVMO and three service performance outcomes, namely the
customer-perceived service quality, customer satisfaction and customer
loyalty. Table 6 shows the satisfactory correlations where all the coeffi-
cients are positive and significant, indicating that they are well associated.

IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

The newly developed SERVMO scale for measuring a service-driven

market orientation has great potential for applications in service quality
management, especially in higher education. The empirical findings of
this study support the hypothesis that SERVMO, pronounced as ‘serve
more’, is a multi-dimensional construct consisting of six components. The
higher learning institutions need to ‘serve more’ in order to delivery
excellent levels of service quality, student satisfaction and student loyalty.
It is an extension of the contemporary market orientation, and has close
associations with customer-perceived service quality, customer satisfac-
tion and customer loyalty.
For improving the marketing effectiveness and efficiency in higher
education, continual development of a more definitive market orientation
 Voon 233

scale is still needed. In this study, the suggested SERVMO is a more

comprehensive and service-based market orientation comprising six well-
converged components, namely customer orientation (CUS), competitor
orientation (COM), inter-functional orientation (IO), performance orien-
tation (PO), long-term orientation (LO), and employee orientation
(EMO). Assessing how market-oriented an institution is will help the
institution in serving the target customers, from the customers’ viewpoint.
This is important, as truly customer-oriented organizations wish to know
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

how they perform from the customer’s vantage (e.g. Webb, Webster and
Krepapa, 2000).
The 32-item SERVMO is found to be a reliable measure which demon-
strates good validity in terms of content, construct and criterion validity.
The multiple fit indices for the measurement model are found to be good
(e.g. CFI >0.90). It has high correlations with the service-related con-
cepts. Thus, SERVMO can be used to generate organizational profiles of
market-oriented service practices.
The SERVMO measure covers the various critical values and behav-
iours in serving customers in a higher education setting. Its six valid and
reliable components outline the various critical requirements for delivering
market-oriented, as well as quality service. This newly proposed marketing
construct suggests that service providers, like institutions of higher
learning, need to be committed to fully understand and responding to the
real needs of customers. Nevertheless, mere customer orientation is not
enough. The service providers need to be competitor–oriented so as to
deliver better services that will be perceived as quality. Competitor orien-
tation comprises knowledge of competitors, responsiveness to competitors,
strategic customer targeting, and as a passion for service differentiation. It
is also stresses that institutions should be performance-oriented and
forward–looking to serve students. The employee perspective is also
stressed, as competent and motivated employees are always necessary for
service excellence.
Nevertheless, this newly proposed marketing construct in higher edu-
cation is developed from the customers’ perspective. This was intentional
as customers are believed to the right judge for service quality and service
culture (e.g. Joseph, Yakhou and Stone, 2005). The various items in the
construct were tailored in such a way that they were able to be judged by
customers acting as informed respondents, and thus can be considered
reliable and valid data. However, future research should validate this con-
struct from the employee’s viewpoint. Investigation in to other cultures
and service settings will be necessary too for improving the validity and
 234 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

reliability of SERVMO. In addition, longitudinal research will be useful

to ensure test-retest reliability of the scale and investigate its causal rela-
tionships with meaningful service criteria.
APPENDIX A. The 32 items for measuring the service-driven market
orientation (SERVMO)

Customer Orientation (6 items)

Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

2 My University/College constantly checks its level of commitment to serving student needs.

4 My University/College serves us based on good understanding of our needs.
5 My University/College believes in delivering quality service to us.
6 My University/College regularly measures our satisfaction.
7 My University/College knows the changes in our preferences.
8 My University/College provides good after-sales service to us.
Competitor Orientation (5 items)
17 My University/College responds quickly to competitor’s actions that may threaten the
University/College.
18 My University/College seems to know its competitors well.
19 My University/College targets for students that it can serve better than its competitors.
22 My University/College always tries to be better than its competitors in serving the students.
23 My University/College always tries to be different from other universities/colleges to stay
competitive.
Inter-functional Orientation (5 items)
27 The employees of my University/College communicate and “talk” about how to serve us better.
28 Information on student satisfaction is freely distributed within my University/College (e.g.
notices, news letters).
29 The employees of different departments/units in my University/College seem to have
good relationships.
30 When there are activities involving various departments/units in my University/College,
we can see good coordination.
31 There is good communication between the different departments/units in my
University/College.
Performance Orientation (5 items)
32 My University/College strives for service excellence.
33 The top management is committed to delivering quality service.
34 My University/College systematically and regularly measures its service performance.
35 My University/College seriously monitors its service performance.
42 My University/College provides resources, not “talk only”, to enhance employee ability to
provide excellent service.
Long-term Orientation (7 items)
44 My University/College invests heavily for the sake of providing excellent services to the
students.
49 My University/College implements changes (e.g. new facilities) to satisfy us in long-term.
51 My University/College emphasizes its long-term survival.

(Continued)
 Voon 235

APPENDIX A. (Continued)
52 My University/College has long-term plans/goals in service.
53 My University/College emphasizes continuous improvement in managing its services/
products.
54 My University/College considers serving students well as a worthwhile long-term
investment.
55 My University/College consistently emphasizes service excellence.
Employee Orientation (4 items)
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

57 The employees of my University/College that serve us are well trained.

58 The employees of my University/College that interact with us are always motivated or
joyful.
59 My University/College recruits and hires sufficient staff for delivering quality service.
61 My University/College chooses suitable staff to interact or deal with us.

REFERENCES

Albrecht, K. & Zemke, R. (1990). Service America!: Doing Business In the New Econ-
omy. New York: Warner Books, Inc.
Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H. & Mohr, L. A. (1994). Critical Service Encounters: The
Employee’s Viewpoint. Journal of Marketing, 58 (October), 95–106.
Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H. & Teteault, M. S. (1990). The Service Encounter: Diagnosing
Favourable and Unfavourable Incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54 (January), 71–84.
Boulding, W., Kalra, A., Staelin, R. & Zeithaml, V. (1993). A dynamic process model of
service quality: from expectations to behavioral intentions. Journal of Marketing
Research, 30 (February), 7–27.
Chase, R. & Stewart, D. (1994). Make Your Service Fail-Safe. Sloan Management
Review, Spring, 35–44.
Churchill, G. (1979). A Paradigm for Developing Better Measures of Marketing Con-
structs. Journal of Marketing Research, XVI (February), 64–73.
Crosby, P. B. (1996). Thinking About Excellence. Journal for Quality & Participation, 19
(6), 70.
Deng, S. & Dart, J. (1994). Measuring Market Orientation: A Multi-factor, Multi-item
Approach. Journal of Marketing Management, 10, 725–742.
Deshpandé, R., Farley, J. U. & Webster, F. E. (1993). Corporate Culture, Customer Orien-
tation, and Innovativeness in Japanese Firms: A Quadrad Analysis. Journal of Market-
ing, 57 (1), 23–37.
Deshpandé, R. & Farley, J. U. (1998). Measuring Market Orientation: Generalization and
Synthesis. Journal of Market-Focused Management 2 (3), 213–232.
Deshpandé, R. (Ed.). (1999). Developing A Market Orientation. California: SAGE Publi-
cations.
DeVellis, R. (2003). Scale Development: Theory and Applications, 2nd ed. Thousand
Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Drucker, P. (1954). The Practice of Management. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
 236 JOURNAL OF MARKETING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

Esteban, Á., Millán, Á., Molina, A. & Martín-Consuegra, D. (2002). Market Orienta-
tion in service: A review and analysis. European Journal of Marketing, 36, 9/10,
1003–1021.
Felton, A. (1959). Making the Marketing Concept Work. Harvard Business Review, 55–65.
Garvin, D. A. (1984). What Does “Product Quality” Really Mean. Sloan
Management Review, Fall, 25–43.
Garvin, D. A. (1987). Competing on the eight dimensions of quality. Harvard Business
Review, November-December, 101–109.
Gatignon, H. & Xuereb J-M. (1997). Strategic Orientation of the Firm and New Product
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

Performance. Journal of Marketing Research, XXXIV(February), 77–90.

Gerbing, D. & Anderson, J. (1988). An Updated Paradigm for Scale Development Incor-
porating Unidimensionality and Its Assessment. Journal of Marketing Research, XXV
(May), 186–192.
Gray, B., Matear, S., Boshoff, C. & Matheson, P. (1998). Developing a better measure of
market orientation. European Journal of Marketing, 32 (9), 884–903.
Grönroos, C. (1978). A Service-Oriented Approach to Marketing of Services.
European Journal of Marketing,12 (8), 588–601.
Hair, J., Anderson, R., Tatham, R. and Black, W. (1998). Multivariate Data Analysis,
5th ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall International Inc.
Heskett, J. L., Sasser W. E. & Hart, C. W. (1990). Service Breakthroughs: Changing the
Rules of the Game. New York: The Free Press.
Hill, Y., Lomas, L. & MacGregor, J. (2003). Students’ perceptions of quality in higher
Education. Quality Assurance in Education, 11 (1), 15–20.
Houston, F. S. (1986). The Marketing Concept: What Is and What Is Not. Journal of
Marketing, 50 (April), 81–87.
Jaworski, B. J. & Kohli, A. K. (1993). Market Orientation: Antecedents and Conse-
quences. Journal of Marketing, 57 (July), 53–70.
Joseph, M., Yakhou, M. & Stone, G. (2005). An educational institution’s quest for service
quality: customers’ perspective. Quality Assurance in Education, 13 (1), 66–82.
Keith, R. J. (1960). The Marketing Revolution. Journal of Marketing, January, 35–38.
Kline, R. (1998). Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modelling. New York:
The Guilford Press.
Kohli, A. K. & Jaworski, B. J. (1990). Market Orientation: The Construct, Research Prop-
ositions, and Managerial Implications. Journal of Marketing, 54 (April), 1–18.
Kotler, P. (1977). From Sales Obsession To Marketing Effectiveness. Harvard Business
Review, November–December, 67–75.
Krepapa, A., Berthon, P., Webb, D. & Pitt, L. (2003). Mind the gap: An analysis of service
provider versus customer perceptions of market orientation and the impact on satisfac-
tion. European Journal of Marketing, 37 (1/2), 197–218.
Kumar, A. & Dillon, W. (1987). Some Further Remarks on Measurement-Structure Inter-
action and the Unidimensionality of Constructs. Journal of Marketing Research, XXIV
(November), 438–444.
Kumar, K., Subramanian, R. & Yauger, C. (1998). Examining the Market Orientation-
Performance Relationship: A Context-Specific Study. Journal of Management, 24 (2),
201–233.
 Voon 237

Levitt, T. (1960). Marketing Myopia. Harvard Business Review, July–August, 45–56.

Lings, I. (1999). Balancing Internal and external Market Orientations. Journal of Market-
ing Management, 15, 239–263.
Lings, I. (2004). Internal Market Orientation: Construct and Consequences. Journal of
Business Research, 55, 1–9.
Liou, Tian-Shy & Chen, Ching-Wen (2006). Subjective appraisal of service quality using
fuzzy linguistic assessment. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Manage-
ment, 23 (8), 928–943.
Matthing, J., Sandén, B. & Edvardsson, B. (2004). New service development: learning
Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 11:05 10 December 2014

from and with customers. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 15

(5), 479–498.
McNamara, C. (1972). The Present Status of The Marketing Concept. Journal of Market-
ing, 36 (January), 50–57.
Morgan, R. (2004). Market-Based Organizational Learning – Theoretical Reflections and
Conceptual Insights. Journal of Marketing Management, 20, 67–103.
Morgan, R. & Strong, C. (1998). Market Orientation and Dimensions of Strategic Orienta-
tion. European Journal of Marketing, 32, 1051–1073.
Narver, J. C. & Slater, S. F. (1990). The Effect of a Market Orientation on Business Prof-
itability. Journal of Marketing, 54 (October), 20–35.
Narver, J. C. & Slater, S. F. & MacLanchlan, D. L. (2000). Total Market Orientation,
Business Performance, and Innovation, Working Paper Series, Marketing Science
Institute, Cambridge, USA.
Noble, C. H., Sinha, R. K. & Kumar, A. (2002). Market Orientation and Alternative
Strategic Orientations: A Longitudinal Assessment of Performance of Performance
Implications. Journal of Marketing, 66 (October), 25–39.
Nunnally, J. C. & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric Theory, 3rd ed. New York:
McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Parasuraman, A., Berry, L. L. & Zeithaml, V. (1983). Service Firms Need Marketing
Skills. Business Horizons, November–December, 28–31.
Peters, T. J. & Waterman, R. H. (1982). In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s
Best-Run Companies. New York: Warner Books, Inc.
Schneider, B. & Bowen, D. (1993). The Service Organization: Human Resources
Management Is Crucial. Organizational Dynamics, Spring, 21 (4), 39–52.
Sekaran, U. (2000). Research Methods for Business: A Skill Building Approach, 3rd Ed.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Shapiro, B. (1988). What the Hell is ‘Market Oriented’? Harvard Business Review, 66, 119–25.
Siu, N. Y. M & Wilson R. M. S. (1998). Modelling Market Orientation: An Application in
the Education Sector. Journal of Marketing Management, 14, 293–323.
Sureshchandar, G. S., Rajendran, C. & Anantharaman, R. N. (2001). A holistic model for total
quality service. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 12 (4), 378–412.
Voon, B. H. & Kueh, K. (2004). Critical Service Requirements for a Market-Oriented
University: A Malaysian Case. Refereed proceedings of the SEAAIR Conference
2004, Wenzhou, China.
Webb, D., Webster, C. & Krepapa, A. (2000). An Exploration of The Meaning and Outcomes
of a Customer-defined Market Orientation. Journal of Business Research, 48, 101–112.