Market-based organizational learning: Factors effecting market-based organizational learning in lodging enterprises and their effects on marketing performance

For an enterprise to survive in an harsh competitive environment, it should adopt a continuous improvement focus. Any fact or institution related to human beings can not exist if it poses a passive manner against change. This situation has stunning effects in today?s work environment where intense competition takes place. The most critical fact for an enterprise operating in a constantly changing and developing environment is ?learning?. If it wants to adopt to changes smoothly, learning of an individual can be referred as the acquisition of knowledge and transform this knowledge into behavior in order to live in harmony with the external environment whereas learning of an organization contains acquisition of information through employees, spread this information throughout the organization, and interpretation of this information to maximize its value in order to act in harmony with the external environment. Organizational learning is a term which has its roots in organizational culture, competition strategy and organizational memory. As a function of organizational culture, strategy and organizational memory; individuals, groups and the organization itself characterizes the ?processing the information? behavior which is made up of acquisition, spreading and interpretation of information. Therefore, inputs for organizational learning should be referred as organizational culture, strategy and efficiency of organizational memory, where organizational learning process refers to transformation of the information gathered. Learning can be in any form. However in today?s work-life where intense competition takes place, overcoming the difficulties in tracking recent activity changes in the organizations? external environment is more essential. These activities can be referred as constant changes in customers? needs and desires, industrial changes, changes in legal environment and other competitors. Ongoing changes in market conditions forces companies to learn from the market they live in and institutionalize ?organizational learning? as a means to reach continuous improvement goal in a dynamic market. It is essential for the lodging industry to define a frame for ?market-based organizational learning? where market conditions rapidly change and competition is fierce. Analysis of causal effect relationship between market-based organizational learning capabilities (inputs), actions (processes) and performance (output) of lodging enterprises is important to define the content of market-based organizational learning and the factors affecting it. With the above mentioned importance in mind, a survey was conducted among 3, 4 and 5 stars hotels and special licensed lodging enterprises that are located throughout Turkey to analyze the relationships between the variables of market-based organizational learning and to define a theoretical framework for the subject. A re-test of the theory and evaluation of unexpected results that may occur because of demographical factors were the main goals of this study. Significant relationships were observed that are in line with the theory of market-based organizational learning as a result of the field study conducted. Impact of ?service differentiation strategy? variable over ?acquisition of information? and ?organizational memory? over ?interpretation of information? variable were high. No significant effects of ?spreading market information throughout organization? behavior which is examined under use of information process, on marketing performance were observed. Therefore the variable does not have significant effect on market-based organizational learning as expected. It shows us that market-based organizational learning is not covering the whole enterprise but covers only functional units, which may be concluded as the efficiency is mostly bound to managerial staff and specific units.