Market Orientation

As a Business philosophy, market orientation is a management frame of mind. Discuss the core elements that need to be present to ensure such an orientation can prosper and flourish.

A business philosophy is the primary principle that forms the operation and existence of a business. This can be defined through the market orientation of the business. The term “market orientation” refers to the degree to which a firm implements the marketing concept (McCarthy and Perrault, 1984). There are various definitions of market orientation, A business that takes the approach of being customer focused, with full co-ordinated organisational support and positive profitability. The three major components of market orientation – 1) customer orientation, 2) competitor focus, and 3) cross-functional coordination - are long-term in vision and profit-driven. By Stanley F. Slater, John C. Narver.

  1) Customer Orientation:

The challange of any business is to determine what the customers want and to be customer focused, which is the core philosophy if marketing.   A business needs to understand the customer, to do so they need to become customer orientated, this can be accomplished by the undertaking of various techniques that take in account a customer’s needs and creating value for them on a regular basis. A business will also need to continually improve their customer orientation as a strategic measure which should provide a competitive edge and future development of the company. Customer needs are current and future this should allow a business to echoes Houston (1986) in that it urges organizations to anticipate needs and initiate steps to meet them. Employees throughout the organization need to spend time with customers, and involving customers to be part of key decisions this will allow for different views and ideas on a business being customer orientated as well as customer satisfaction by a business showing the customer their interest and want to satisfy their needs,...