The analysis of the European Union retail banking industry and its market orientation

Résumé

The general objective of the thesis is to analyze the influence market orientation on the business performance in commercial bank sector. In the recent years, market orientation has been considered t be a key issue for business success. Narver and Slater (1990) and Jaworski and Kohli (1993) are the main studies that identify market orientation as the determinant of a company's profitability, however it necessary deeper studies to build valid scales and models: the relationship between market orientation and organizational performance it is not enough proved and the conclusions of researches are very diverse and contradictory. Market orientation is critical for commercial banks' superior performance and long-term competitive advantages, in an increasingly multinational financial environment. To underpin the development of a single market for financial services and harness the full potencial benefits of the Euro, the European banking industry (European Commission, European Central Bank and private financial institutions) is creating a Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA), with the belief that will efficiently contribute to economic growth of the EU27. In this sector, significant differences of development along Europe are analyse the banking industry in objectives of this study are: 1) to review the concept of market orientation, 2) to analysed the banking industry in Europa, 3) to identify the model from the literature, defining the link between market orientation and business performance, 4) to identify the measure instrument of market orientation's scale, 5) to estimate and test the structural equation model, and 6) to analyse the results. The nature of the research is positivistic, empirical, descriptive, and exploratory. In the descriptive and exploratory theoretical and empirical work related to the different components of market orientation scale. This thesis has as a strength the widest market study of commercial bank in Europe considering all states members. Selection of the participating companies was carried out using the convenience sampling method. For the collection of data, a telephone survey supported by fax, email and telephone was designed and applied to the banks in four different countries, obtaining a total of 218 completed surveys, with the participation of banks of all sizes, located in France, Poland, Hungary and Spain.