Market-Orientation and Corporate Performance

Abstract

Market-orientation is generally referred to the basic orientation that governs the relationship of a firm with its market and, more particularly, with its customers. Now, in many firms, MO is treated like the marketing concept. This traditional view of MO has two main drawbacks: first of all it overlooks market actors other than customer (i.e. distributors, competitors and prescribers). Then, this functional perspective leads to confine the concept of MO to the activities generally conducted by the marketing function, underestimating the value creation potential of other functions. This confusion about the scope of the MO concept is in part explained by the lack of clarity on the definition of the marketing concept which, especially in American literature, is treated as operational marketing: the 4 Ps. By converse, the concept of MO has three dimensions and that a distinction should be made between the MO as a management philosophy (culture), as a tool of strategic thinking (analysis) and as a commercial activity of the company (action).

Keywords

• market-orientation
• marketing orientation
• corporate performance
• manufacturers-distributors relationships
• market-driven management
• global corporations
• global markets