ABSTRACT

Companies are shifting their focus from internal capabilities such as product performance and technology innovation to more customer-oriented objectives. Otherwise, competitors may win customers by aligning their products or services more to customer preferences. This is one important factor for achieving long-term performance as companies can create and deliver products or services that are valued by customers. By winning customer acceptance, a company has a better opportunity to exist longer in the market. Therefore, improving customer-related performance is beneficial especially for the hotel industry as a people-oriented industry where direct contact with customers becomes a dominant characteristic. This study aims to analyse how competitive strategy and managerial use of the management accounting system (MAS) information may affect customer-related performance in the hotel industry. An online survey involving 116 hotel general managers (GMs) was conducted to collect data from 3- to 5- star hotels located in Indonesia. Additionally, in-depth interviews with 19 GMs were performed in order to enhance the validity of the research findings and make the discussion of the results more informative. Based on the analysis, the results revealed that managerial use of MAS information may enhance customer-related performance in the hotel industry after competitive strategy has been applied. This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between competitive strategy, managerial use of MAS information, and customer-related performance of hotel industry in Indonesia.