Back to Hotel Strategic Management 101: An examination of hotels' implementation of Porter's generic strategy in China

Abstract

The market-position view (MPV) of the firm in Porter’s generic strategy hypothesizes that the exploitation of differentiation and cost-leadership can create competitive advantage for a firm, which then has a better chance of outperforming other firms in a homogeneous industry. However, this notion has not been tested in the Chinese hotel industry. In response to this gap, this study empirically examines the relationships between the generic strategies of differentiation and cost leadership and hotels’ organizational performance. The results suggest that differentiation is the only significant generic strategy that influences customer satisfaction in the Chinese hotel industry. These findings have important academic and practitioner implications, which are then discussed.