Linking Market Orientation and Service Relatedness to new Service Development: The Case of Italian Small Accounting Firms

Small and Medium Accounting Practice Firms (SMPs) are crucial in helping SMEs to keep their businesses economically and financially sustainable. Even though there is an increasing importance of SMPs for fostering SMEs daily activities, a general lack in terms of literature has been recognized. Innovation in service sector is characterized by distinguished features and literature on product innovation cannot be applied verbatim. Several studies have recognized the importance of Market Orientation to support product innovation, while less attention has been paid on the service industry. Moreover previous studies seem to consider product innovation as a general construct without considering the impact of the relatedness. Applying the Person-Environment theory (PE), this study analyzes the impact of Market Orientation (MO) on New Service Development (NSD), distinguishing new services according to their relatedness to already provided ones. A logistic regression on a sample of 960 full filled questionnaires has been used. Results show that Market Orientation has a significant different impact between related and unrelated diversification. The study aims to contribute to existing literature helping a better understanding of diversification activities in SMPs. At the same time the study wants to offer empirical evidence that could lead to recognize best practices in NSD.