THE IMPACT OF PRODUCT-MARKET STRATEGY-ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE FIT ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE.

A fundamental proposition underlying strategic marketing theory explanations of business performance is that fit between a firm's organizational culture and its product-market strategy impacts its performance outcomes. However, due to the difficulties involves in assessing fit among complex multidimensional phenomena, such as organizational culture and product-market strategy, we have little or no empirical knowledge regarding this important proposition. Our purpose in this research is to draw on available approaches from the marketing, strategy, and management literatures to empirically assess the performance outcomes of this theoretically important fit relationship. Our study provides the first empirical assessment of the customer satisfaction and cash flow outcomes of fit between product-market strategy and organizational culture. In addition, we provide methodological insights into how such holistically framed fit-performance relationships in strategic marketing theory may best be assessed. In common with most theories of organization, marketing theory views firm performance as a function of the firm's ability to adapt to its environment (e.g., Day and Wensley 1988). The marketing literature suggests that important components of firm's ability to adapt to their environment are the firm's product-market strategy (e.g., Day and Wensley 1988) and its organizational culture (e.g., Deshpande and Webster 1989). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]