Title: Examining strategic group membership and firm performance in the global hotel industry

Authors: Wei He; Tantatape Brahmasrene

Addresses: College of Business, Purdue University Northwest, 1401 SUS 421, Westville, Indiana 46391, USA ' College of Business, Purdue University Northwest, 1401 SUS 421, Westville, Indiana 46391, USA

Abstract: The increasing complexity of global competitive environment requires a comprehensive approach that integrates business practices and strategic management theory to investigate firms' performance. Following strategic group and competitive advantage theory, content analysis is adopted as a fundamental tool to investigate and categorise the competitive methods employed by multinational hotel firms in the new millennium era. The resulted differentiation-based strategic groups are further examined to explore the strategic sources of intra-industry performance differences in the global hotel industry. The results suggest that strategic group membership is an important predictor of hotel firms' performance. The patterns of commitment to strategic group membership have significant impacts on multinational hotel firms' business performance. These findings advance the current research on strategic group-performance relationship through discovering the important role played by strategic group commitment in the context of a globalised service industry.

Keywords: competitive advantage; strategic planning; competitive method; strategic group; strategic group membership; SGM; strategic group commitment; firm performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSEM.2019.103169

International Journal of Services, Economics and Management, 2019 Vol.10 No.3, pp.208 - 228

Received: 12 Nov 2018
Accepted: 29 Apr 2019
Published online: 21 Oct 2019 *

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