The effect of marketing competency, organizational culture on business strategy and performance of pharmaceutical retailers in peninsular Malaysia

This study was an attempt to examine the effect of moderating factor variables namely, marketing competency and organizational culture on the relationship between business strategy and performance of pharmaceutical retailers. This study used contingency models and the study approach was quantitative. To achieve the objective of the study, data were collected from 150 pharmaceutical retailers in Peninsular Malaysia. Simple linear regression analysis was then performed to look at the causal effect between the items in the business strategy and performance. After that, multiple regression analysis was performed to identify the moderating effects of marketing competency and organizational culture on the relationship between business strategy and performance. The findings from the linear regression analysis show that specialization and low cost strategy have positive impacts on the performance of pharmaceutical retailers while the channel expansion strategy did not give a positive result on the performance of pharmaceutical retailers. After performing the multiple regression analysis, it was found that the moderating variables, namely marketing competency and organizational culture positively moderate the relationship between business strategies and performance. The same result was recorded for organizational culture which positively moderates business strategy and performance relationship. This study contributes to the understanding of the role of business strategy, marketing competency and organizational culture in the success of a business entity. In addition, this study will benefit academics to obtain more knowledge on small businesses, particularly the pharmaceutical retailers.