Purpose

The motivation for this study comes from decision making related to strategic marketing orientations in international markets. The authors examine if customer orientation and customer relationship orientation perform as two distinct constructs in driving firm innovativeness, and how together they support business growth among export firms. This study aims to suggest a customer-centric strategy for export firms that drive innovativeness and growth.

Design/methodology/approach

An international corporation specialized in company information services provided a list of the contact information of Italian companies. The authors sent an email request to respond to an online survey and received 416 effective responses from firms operating in export markets. The authors propose and empirically test a model in which customer orientation, customer relationship orientation and innovativeness predict business growth. This model controls for the effects of firm size, industry and customer type (B2B vs. B2C).

Findings

The study findings suggest that customer orientation and customer relationship orientation are two distinct strategic orientations driving innovativeness. However, they do not directly affect business growth. Instead, they require the innovativeness of an exporter to materialize as business growth.

Practical implications

The results of the study recommend business strategies focusing not only on customer needs and satisfaction but also on retaining current customers and building customer relationships in international markets. Firms can learn from international customers and develop effective customer-centric strategies to spread the acquired information into the internal decision-making as it contributes to firm innovativeness and business growth in international markets.

Originality/value

This study is one of the pioneering studies combining customer orientation and customer relationship orientation, showing their theoretical and empirical divergence. This study is also among the first which tests how the two strategic orientations together with innovativeness promote business growth among export firms. The authors add understanding of the synergistic effects both of using customer information and developing deeper relationships on firm innovativeness and performance among exporters.

中文翻译：

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以客户为中心的战略推动国际市场的创新和业务增长

目的

本研究的动机来自与国际市场战略营销方向相关的决策。作者研究了以客户为导向和以客户关系为导向在推动公司创新方面是否表现出两种不同的结构，以及它们如何共同支持出口公司的业务增长。本研究旨在为推动创新和增长的出口公司提出以客户为中心的战略。

设计/方法/方法

一家专门从事公司信息服务的国际公司提供了一份意大利公司的联系信息清单。作者发送了一封电子邮件请求回复在线调查，并收到了来自出口市场经营公司的 416 份有效回复。作者提出并实证测试了一个模型，在该模型中，客户导向、客户关系导向和创新性可以预测业务增长。该模型控制了公司规模、行业和客户类型（B2B 与 B2C）的影响。

发现

研究结果表明，客户导向和客户关系导向是推动创新的两个截然不同的战略导向。但是，它们并不直接影响业务增长。相反，它们需要出口商的创新才能实现业务增长。

实际影响

研究结果建议的业务战略不仅关注客户需求和满意度，还关注保留现有客户和在国际市场上建立客户关系。公司可以向国际客户学习并制定有效的以客户为中心的战略，将获得的信息传播到内部决策中，因为它有助于公司在国际市场上的创新和业务增长。

原创性/价值

本研究是结合客户导向和客户关系导向的开创性研究之一，显示了它们的理论和实证差异。这项研究也是第一个测试这两种战略方向以及创新如何促进出口公司业务增长的研究之一。作者增加了对使用客户信息和发展更深层次关系对企业创新和出口商绩效的协同效应的理解。