The influence of market orientation on marketing competency and the effect of internet‐marketing integration

The Internet technology has been recognised as a key business resource and is increasingly being used and integrated into firm’s marketing activities. This study explored the relationship between market orientation and marketing competency and investigated the role of the Internet marketing integration in the market orientation‐marketing competency linkage. From an analysis of a survey data from 47 manufacturing firms involved in exporting and 33 travel agencies, four dimensions – Providing Customer Value, Competitor Orientation, Management Commitment and Customer Retention were extracted from factor analysis result of market orientation. However, this study found that Competitor Orientation and Management Commitment influenced marketing competency of the firm. Compared to the previous study, the integration of the Internet marketing did not seem to moderate the influence of market orientation on marketing competency. In addition, the Internet‐oriented profiles of the Malaysian exporters and travel agencies were constructed using characteristics in terms of its size, age in operations, the importance of different regional market to the firm, level of market orientation, and market area responded, which can be used for future research.