Introduction
In this essay , we will briefly outline different theoretical concepts of orientations in marketing followed by an attempt to compare and contrast the marketing orientations of two of the biggest companies in the world, namely Apple Inc., the number one most valuable brand in the world , valued at over $246 billion (BrandZ, 2015) and Foxconn Technology Group, a contract technology company producing the iPad and the iPhone for Apple (Wikipedia, 2015).
Main Body
Pickton (2014) highlights 6 different marketing orientations namely, production, product, sales, customer, market and societal orientations stating that although they are ‘ascribed to …specific eras, usually making production the earliest and market the most
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Ultimately achieve the goal of increasing profits. !!
Product Orientation
A product orientated company believes that producing high quality, innovative items or products with the best features and functional features make it a superior that will automatically sell and that customers will like it as well. The issue with this kind of approach is that just having a ‘better’ product does not imply it will automatically sell well – it will still need to satisfy customers’ needs and wants and of course, the customer needs to know where and how to buy your product (Pickton, 2014).
Sales Orientation
Sales orientated companies focus is to sell to the target market. They will have a large salesforce attempting to sell stock and make targets. They will be mostly interested in their own needs focusing on the transaction but not interested in further realationsships with their customers.
Customer Orientation
A customer oriented marketing strategy actually puts the customer first. A business will look at customers needs, attempting to increase sales through customer loyalty and a positive image.
Customer orientation does not take into account the competitions in the market the business occupies unlike Market orientation, discussed below.
Market Orientation
Market orientation requires a business to focus both on customers and its’ competition in addition to coordinate all internal business function inclusing HR, finance, operations, IT and
Market orientation is a methodology of business which emphasize on recognizing as well as fulfilling the wants and demands of its consumers. It is company reaction towards the customers. It is an approach that emphasis on delivering the products designed appropriately to meet the needs or requirements of customers.
A wide range of companies today prefer to adopt the marketing orientated approach to sell their new products rather than using product orientation before.In fact,marketing orientation also helps such companies to earn more profits in the long time.According to Jobber and Ellis Chadwick (2013),marketing orientation focuses on customers need as the primary drivers of organizational performance.However,this is not always the case.Product orientation still be used by some senior executives and this method can help these companies to sell more products and even acquire reliable reputation in the customers.In this essay,first the history of marketing concept development will be discussed and the specific definition of the two kinds of marketing concept will be given respectively.Then these two concepts will be compared by using some examples.The final part will investigate why although marketing orientation is very popular in modern society,some enterprises still adopt the product orientated approach to extend their new products.
This essay will look at the two marketing techniques an organisation can follow these include; marketing orientation, which would mean that companies focus is on their consumers and the activity in the market, they will look at what the currents demands are and focus their product/service around this, most companies which provide a service will follow this method as their business model will typically be around a meeting a customer’s needs to generate business and new leads via marketing that meets the wants of what the consumers are looking for. The second method is product orientation; this is a business approach or philosophy in which whatever a company makes or supplies is the focus of the management 's attention. Companies who deliver food products may fall under product orientation as the focus may only be on creating a quality product which would then sell itself to the customers. These twp methods are aurgualbly oppositive ends of the spectrum and the focus of this report will be to take a deeper look into each of these models, highlighting th advantages and disadavatages of both, also looking at what steps a business will take to ajust their orientation.
Marketing is a big concept that is difficult to define or know the meaning of one side or a specific angle because of the company's reliance on it in many aspects and complex issue for successful company strategy. There are several and many different definitions and meaning of the concept market and one of that definition is marketing is including the management of the relationship of customers in a way that benefits the company and stakeholders, it is a section inside the company where they create communication and evaluate the value of customers.(American Marketing Association,2004). Marketing orientation is a concept that focuses on techniques, including the usual management of strategic design, which is to build a comfortable
They were concentrated on selling. This period of time was known as the sales era. A marketing orientation centered around sales represented a major milestone in modern businesses. Firms had to put in more of an effort if they wanted to find out the desires of their future potential customers. The importance of selling makes it crucial to businesses of the modern world and it has become a very complex system. In order to sell effectively firms need a systems approach which would include the roles of selling, how to enable selling and how to develop sales capabilities.
According to Voon (2006), the organization who has provide services without doing much research through market orientation has less impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty as compare to the organizations who provides service-driven market orientation. Another researcher also deduce that the there is always very strong relationship between market orientation and service quality. The company which provides their services to the customers after doing proper market orientation, their performance in the market will improve and the company earns huge reputation among the
Sales orientation is the belief that people will buy more goods and services if aggressive sales techniques are used and that high sales result in higher prices (Lamb et al., 2014).
Product is the essential factor to create the market, thus it’s also a starting point in creating a marketing mix. A business should clearly figure out what their product is, what benefit
When compared to economics, production and operations, accounting and other business areas, marketing is a relatively old and distinct concept. According to the American Marketing Association, marketing is “planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives” (Lusch 261). Led by marketing scholars from several major universities, the development of marketing was in large part motivated by the need to dissect in greater detail these relationships and behaviors existing between the sellers and consumers. This need to better understand these relationships and behaviors has truly developed the field of Marketing, ranging from the Old-School tactics used in the developmental stages of marketing, to the technological strategies using Television and other electronics of today’s generation, and even to tactics and strategies scholars believe Marketers will begin to use in the future.
LO1.1: Marketing: is defined as a ‘business orientation whose target is to satisfy consumers’ needs or wants at standard levels of revenues and costs’ (Loudon et al., 2010, p.2) (Dudovskiy, 2014).
It is widely accepted that with the development of commodity economy, marketing is becoming more and more significant for companies in terms of competition. It is generally believed that marketing can be characterized into many types, for example, consumer orientation, marketing orientation (MO), demand orientation and product orientation(PO). Nevertheless, most companies are in face of some problems when they transform their business strategy from PO to MO. This essay aims to present these problems and give some recommendations to deal with them. This essay is divided into three main sections, firstly, it will describe the concept of MO and PO respectively, then it will analyze the dominant problems for companies to implement MO in place of PO. Finally some conclusions will be drawn as to determine the role of MO in business and find out the solutions for companies to perform better in the future.
Marketing oriented organisations have the major attribute of staying closer to consumers and ahead of their competitors. The fundamental objective of these organizations is to attract customers and outdo their rivals in the market. The characteristics of these organisations include shared values in terms of strategy, stakeholders and the organisation. All the decisions made by these companies consider the customers first before anything else as they share common value of superior quality of products (Guiltinan 1996, p.67). They also have an organisational structure that has a few layers and their policies are straightforward. The strategy of the market-oriented organisations is long term, participative and flexible to accommodate new ideas. The expectations of shareholders are considered first before making any significant decision. Dell exhibits these strategies in that their marketing strategies involve targeting where they know who is buying their computers and where these people are going and are thus considerate of their customers (Nancy, 2001, p.79). Dell also has to track results from advertising to see whether the process is effective, after which the company makes necessary adjustments. It also keeps track of its
Market orientation is an approach by a business or firm that focus on identifying and meeting customers wants and demands. There are many market orientation used by a firm or business such as production, product and sales orientations to make sure their business going in the right direction and to gain high profits. However, nowadays market orientation has evolved and change from the production, product and sales orientation to a marketing orientation which is their focus change to the customer. Customers are a main subject or actor in buying and selling process. They will be determined factor in the direction of the firm. This is because the main reason firm produce or make a product is to fulfil customer wants. The firm will not gain any revenue or profit if they fails to attract any customers to use their product. In the end they will make a loss and needs to close their business. Consumer-centric model is about to create customers love and keep the customers close to the firm. This essay will explain the meaning of consumer-centric model and the importance of consumer-centric approach in marketing. Besides, this essay also will include reasons of evolution of market orientation and lastly, how consumer-centric model works.
A market orientation requires a firm to redefine the roles of each function within a firm. Narver and Slater (1990) argued that a seller’s creation of each value for buyers is analogous to a symphony orchestra in which the contribution of each subgroup tailored and integrated by a conductor. Thus in addition to traditional activities, marketing should perform a guiding and coordinating role to make sure that the rest of company delivers on customers’ expectations and its promise (Kotler1997). In other words, a market orientation becomes instrumental in coordinating the activities of all departments, with the marketing function playing a pivotal role in success of the firm because everyone is involved in marketing activities. Thus a market orientation forces a firm to restructure its organization system. As inter functionally coordinated function action prevails within a firm and the responsibilities of each function are redefined, the boundaries between each function become blurred.
The Marketing concepts have evolved a lot since the early ages with different orientations in different stages worldwide. The major focus of the Companies in earlier times were on the production technique thus being able to achieve economies of scale, but it had to be coupled with high demand for the product or service in addition to some certainty that the taste of the customers won’t change rapidly, this was called the “Production orientation”. The production orientation went on until the 50’s, until the suppliers figured out that if their product is of high quality then the consumers would buy and consume it, this was called “product orientation”. During those times “Sales Orientation” also occurred in which the focus of the companies was on maximizing the sales of an already existing product through promotion techniques without taking into consideration the needs