As a consequence of deregulation in the airline industry, market forces rather than public
service considerations increasingly dictate services to and from airports in Europe’s
peripheral areas. The new market advocates market-driven management practices as a
means of satisfying airline customers and implies that airports that adopt a more marketorientated
approach than their rivals will perform better. This study investigates the
theoretical foundations of a market orientation, which can be defined as the organisationwide
generation, dissemination and response to market intelligence. The main aim of this
study is to examine the relationship between market orientation and the performance of
airports in Europe’s peripheral areas.
The research methodology was implemented using a questionnaire-based survey that was
administered to the managers of 217 airports in 17 different countries. Usable responses
from 86 airports were received and analysed.
The findings of this study suggest that airports wishing to outperform competitors can do so
by adopting a market orientation and should seek to continually monitor and improve the
way in which they gather, disseminate and respond to market intelligence. This will be
particularly effective when market turbulence is high and/or when the focus of the airport is
on developing leisure services. In addition, market orientation was found to have a positive
effect on performance because it means that airports are more likely to be innovative in
their approach to marketing. This means that airport managers should try to develop a
market-orientated culture with innovative marketing practices in mind, and visa versa. The
fact that independently-owned airports have significantly higher levels of market
orientation than regionally-owned or nationally-owned airports suggests that independent
ownership is more conducive to the development of a market orientation.
The findings of this study do have a number of limitations, the most notable being that they
are restricted to airports in Europe’s peripheral areas. It is recommended that future research should be conducted on airports worldwide in order to investigate differences
between a wider range of airport types and geographical regions. In addition, the findings
of this study suggest that a stakeholder orientation is important for airports seeking to
improve their performance, especially smaller airports that are publicly-owned. It is
recommended that future studies should investigate antecedents to and consequences of a
stakeholder orientation. Future studies should also investigate whether a stakeholder
orientation has a greater effect on performance than a market orientation does, and whether
the two types of orientation complement each other.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CRANFIELD1/oai:dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk:1826/1842 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Halpern, Nigel |
| Contributors | Pagliari, R. |
| Publisher | Cranfield University |
| Source Sets | CRANFIELD1 |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or dissertation, Doctoral, PhD |
| Format | 2907625 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | © Cranfield University 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright owner. |
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