Impact of customization and innovation on hospitality firms’ performance

This study examines how process innovation and customization, both individually and in combination, improve hospitality firms’ financial and non-financial performance. The paper investigates both process innovation and customization as important firm-level capabilities that have the capacity to improve the performance of hospitality firms due to the nature of their operations. This paper uses data from hospitality firms operating in Ghana. The study finds that hospitality firms’ customization capability allows hospitality firms to benefit from using the customer as a key resource and as a production partner to provide the desired value for customer satisfaction. This study further finds that process innovation and customization produce higher levels of firm performance when they are deployed together as they have complementary properties. This study, therefore, offers that customization capability should target at improving innovation capability in order to achieve higher overall firm performance for hospitality firms.