Customer Orientation and Marketing Innovation: A Study of SMES Performance in East Coast Malaysia

Abstract

SME is one of the government's initiatives to reduce the poverty rate in Malaysia and reduce the income gap between the rural and urban population. Therefore, entrepreneurs play an important role in managing the business as well as improving business income and performance. There are a few indicators in measuring the business performance. Thus, this study conducted to identify the influence of customer orientation and marketing innovation towards SME's performance. A theoretical framework is developing to give a clear picture on the area study. A set of questionnaires was distributed to the 283 SMEs entrepreneurs randomly in East Coast Malaysia. Then, the collected data was analysed by using Smart-PLS. The value of internal consistency, convergent validity, coefficient of determination, R-square, etc. were discussed. Then, hypothesis testing was conducted and the result shows that customer orientation has no relationship with business performance, meanwhile marketing innovation has relationship with business performance. This study is vital as it can give good information to academicians, consumers, businesses, and policy makers.

The impact of customer-focus on the performance of business organizations: evidence from SMEs in an emerging West African economy

“…Customer-focus involves addressing the needs and anticipations of current and potential customers by developing a wide-ranging insight of customer needs and then conveying recognized value to customers (Islamgaleyev et al ., 2020). Business organizations such as SMEs can implement customer-focus as a strategic orientation that identifies their capability to develop and convey improved customer value through the processing of market insight (Aziz et al ., 2021). The anticipated results of a customer-focus strategy consist of the creation of value for the customer which brings about customer loyalty and business organization performance (Madhani, 2020).…”