The construction industry in most countries in the world is one of extreme
competitiveness, with high risks and generally low profit margins when compared to
other areas of the economy (Mochtar and Arditi, 2001). Indeed, the construction
industry is a very “crowded” industry characterised by a high entry-rate. Any
interested person with little capital investment can easily enter the industry. Therefore,
construction companies constantly look for ways to outbid their competitors and
explore less “crowded” areas of construction that may provide increased profits. Given
these conditions, marketing is imperative for the construction company who wants to stand out from the crowd and thereby create competitive advantage (Arditi et al.,
2008; Chen and Mohamed, 2008).
Marketing has been defined by Pettinger (1998) as the competitive process by which
goods and services are offered for consumption at a profit. Similarly, Harris et al. (2006)
described marketing as: