The Impact of Market Orientation on Business Performance

“Marketing strategies can have a broad impact on the business in terms of instilling a marketing orientation among all those in the firm: the way of thinking or philosophy of the whole organization. However, marketing strategies can alternatively be seen as dealing only with the development of competitive advantages directly associated with the marketing function such as customer loyalty and distribution channel control. In the latter case, the domain is sometimes even further restricted by sole attention to the various element of the marketing mix rather than the more general issues of customer and channel relationships. There are two key

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.

A market orientated company is one that organizes its activities, products and services around the needs and requirements of its customers. Burton Snowboards use market orientation because it is Customer focused. Jake Burton creates Burton Snowboards for the love of the sport. He practically invented snowboarding and transforms it to a world-class sport. The company focused in riders for its products developments and always wanting feedbacks from them to satisfy customer's needs and wants.

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

The company orientation was initially toward the Product Concept, where it was thought that a good product, with attractive features and correct market placement would attract buyers. Since a better understanding of marketing concepts has been gained through this subject the company will be shifting to the Holistic Marketing Concept as it looks to build brand equity.

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 .

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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