Porter strategies for enhancing marketing ambidexterity in tourism and hotel organizations: The moderating role of technological vigilance

The existing paper explores the pivotal role of Porter’s marketing strategies in maximizing marketing ambidexterity among employees within tourism and hotel organizations. This paper also seeks to verify the moderating role of technological vigilance in the relationship between these strategies and marketing ambidexterity. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from 194 employees in the marketing and sales departments of tourism organizations and 188 employees in the marketing and technology development departments of hotel organizations in Greater Cairo. These responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) based on multi-group analysis. Results revealed a significant positive effect of focus strategy on marketing ambidexterity, greater than the effect of cost leadership and differentiation strategies on achieving marketing ambidexterity for the tourism organization employee sample. Similarly, results showed that technological vigilance enhanced the positive impact of cost leadership strategy on maximizing marketing ambidexterity for the tourism organization employee sample. The results also showed the significant impact of the differentiation strategy on marketing ambidexterity in favor of the hotel organization employee sample. Technological vigilance was measured by monitoring technological innovations in the hotel and tourism sector and assessing hotel organizations' ability to adopt new technology flexibly and efficiently. Its impact was also analyzed using statistical interactions within SEM, allowing for a more precise examination of the extent to which it enhances the relationship between marketing strategies and ambidexterity. From this perspective, the study results showed that the three strategies combined enhance the ability of hotel and tourism establishments to master the elements of marketing ambidexterity, as their implementation requires exploitative and exploratory practices to achieve market competitiveness. Findings recommend that tourism and hotel organizations focus on enriching their employees’ skills in specialized marketing strategies (e.g., invest in developing technological awareness) to support effective marketing performance.