The Impact of Market Orientation on Business Performance

This essay will start to explore and define the meaning of customer orientation in depth. The marketing concept and the marketing mix will help discover after what it means to be a customer focused firm. This will occur through the scrutiny of the term in respect to product, price, place and promotion.

The main thing behind marketing in a business is finding the customer’s needs and produce the product/ services to satisfy their needs, this way the customer can choose what they would want included in their product/ service. A business that follows this rule is market-orientated.

Market orientation has three behavioral components( Narver and Slater (1990) customer and competitor orientation and interfunctional co-ordination. And also on two decision criteria;s long term profitability and focus. Deshpande´ et al. (1993) define customer orientation as set of belief that puts customer interest first . George Day (1994) also define market orientation as it represent superior skills in understanding and satisfying customers. The concept of market oriented culture is important to all level of the organizations (Day, 1990; Deshpande´ and Webster, 1989; Narver and Slater, 1990; Shapiro, 1988). Narver and Slater (1990) finding is that there is positive relationship between market orientation and profitability . and also they conclude that the business in which there are highest degree of market orientation is the business that associated with highest profitability . Slater and Narver (1994) says that market oriented business are understand revenues and cost dynamics of not only current but also future target customers. This is achieved by spending considearable time on meeting and talking with customers formally and informally. Market driven business

Customer orientation is one of the keys to successful marketing. Marketing concept has the positivity of facilitating customer orientation. Customer orientation oversees that the needs, wants and desires of the customers receive top consideration in all business activities (Kumar& Sharma1998). A business organization must have the needs of the customers at heart in conducting its activities. A good illustration can be when a company is making its decisions in various activities such as product development, advertisement and sales promotion. The company has to consider the needs of their customers and the impacts that the activities shall have on their customers. Company will have to answer some questions such as; what are the needs of our customers? How can we best meet their wants? Are the customers going to be satisfied with our services? These questions shall help the company streamline its activities and decisions towards satisfying the needs of its customers.

Thus, firms that have a Market Orientation understand the importance of utilizing information about both customers and competitors when developing strategy. These firms can utilize knowledge about their competitors (e.g. product, prices and strategies) and knowledge about a customer segment to produce a market offering for a certain segment more efficiently and effectively than their competition (Glazer 1991). The factor that determines the degree to which Market Orientation allows a firm to develop competitive advantage is the degree to which having a Market Orientation is unique, or rare, among competitors. Studies suggest that, indeed, a market Orientation is rare (Jaworski and Kohli 1993; Narver and Slater 1990). In addition, research suggests that market orientation contributes not only to competitive advantage, but also sustainable competitive advantage (Hunt and Morgan 1995).

Market orientation refers to how the end market receives the value added product. To be successful a value chain must be receptive to the demands of the market orientation. This can be monitored through customer feedback processes. (Sturgeon, 2001)

If anyone says a car is nothing without the gear then it can be said that a business is completely meaningless without marketing. It is the main activity to run a business, to utilize a goal, to expand the aim, to achieve the targets and finally to get the profit. As a significant part of a business, marketing needs to track the suitable process to gain the objective. Using the marketing materials, measuring the advantages and disadvantages of marketing orientation, noticing the influence over marketing are elaborated in marketing principles. How to convince client properly using various kinds of advertising, promoting and offering are also described in marketing principles. Marketing principles show the difference between global marketing and familial marketing as well. Finally the marketing can give a complete path to the success. It also provides the energy to fight the problems and struggles in business.

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

This paper discusses upon the importance marketing in the formulation of corporate strategies. Marketing plays a dynamic role in building corporate strategy. Although it is been criticised that there is lack of quality research work done in this field, marketing has evolved significantly with the changing business environments. Marketing plays a key role in competitive strategy, but the inputs from the marketing functional level won’t solely suffice the decision makers at the corporate levels. Significant inputs from all the strategic business units, which are aligned to the same set of goals, are necessary in formulating a good competitive strategy. The company’s vision and mission must be communicated to all the business units and the culture of customer orientation must be instilled within them to get all the units to work in the same direction.

With marketing orientation, a small business orbits it's proper choices across the would like and requirements from the marketplace, such as potential prospects. A company which is marketing-orientated has got the commitment to valuing customers and also the customers’ needs. Actually, it can actually give rise to the change of The Happy Gardening Company lifestyle.

Businesses can develop new products based on either a marketing orientated approach or a product orientated approach. According to Jaworski and Kohli (1993), marketing orientation is ‘the organization-wide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current and

Few ideas behind the marketing concept, is that marketers are out to satisfy the wants and needs of customers. Secondly, customer orientation is the best way to ensure the long-term profitability of the business, if customers are satisfied then they would keep on coming back. Therefore, they can hold on to the customer and make them loyal

According to market orientation, an organization creates a business strategy that can lead their company to go beyond their competitors .same as this JD sports which is a well known retailer, keep the balance of its marketing mix to fulfill the needs of consumers in order to achieve business growth. In this case study JD sports has adopted the strategies for placing , Pricing and positioning the brand which has resulted a good growth in business. JD continuously adapting and changing their marketing mix through a focus on customer’s needs, which helped JD to stay ahead of their competitors .

Inter-functional coordination, a third component of market orientation, coordinates a firm’s resources and market-related activities. Because customer and competitive orientations are two primary ways that service firms use to cope with markets (Zhou et al. 2009), this study focuses on the customer and competitor orientations and regards inter-functional coordination as a control variable.

1. Describe the various stages in the evolution of company orientations toward the marketplace. Why is it important to have a Holistic Marketing Concept Orientation? Chapter 1, Session #1 Handout.