Characteristics of Market Orientation

A market-oriented organizations continuously gather information about customers, competitors, and markets. Views that information from a total business perspektive. Decides how to deliver superior customer value. and takes actions to provide value to customers. an organizations is market oriented has both a culture committed to customer value and a process of creating superior value for buyers. Market orientation requires a customer focus, intelligence about competitors, and cross-functional coorporation and involvement. this initiative extend beyond the marketing function in an organization.

Customer Focus

the marketing concept has proposed a customer focus for half a century, yet until the 1990s that emphesis had a limited impact on managers as a basis for managing a business. there are many the similarities between the marketing concept and market orientation, although the marketing concept implies a functional (marketing) emphasis. The important difference is that market orientation is more than a philosophy since is consists of a process for delivering customer value. The marketing concept advocated starting with customer needs and wants, deciding which needs to meet, and involving the entire organizations in the process of satisfaying customers. The market-oriented organization understands customers' preferences and requirements and evectively deploys the skill and resouces of the entire organization to satisfy customers. Becoming customers oriented requires finding out what values buyer want to help them satisfy their purchasing objectives. Buyes's decisions are based on the attributes and features of the product that over the best value for the buyer's use situation. The buyer's experience is using the product is compared to his or her expectations to determine customer satisfaction.

Competitor Intelligence 

A market-oriented organization recognizes the importan of understanding is competition as well as the customer :

the keys questions as whice competitors, and what tecnologies, and whether target customer perceive them as alternate satisfiers. Superior value requires that the seller identify and understal the principal competitors' short-term strengths and weekness and longterm capabilities and strategies

Failure to identify and respon to competitive thereats can create serious consequences for a company. For example , Western union did not difine its competitife area as telecomunications , consentrating in stead on telegraph services, adn eventually the 100-year-old company was outflangked by fax technology. Had western union been market oriented, its managements might have better understood the chages taking place, recognizd the competitive threat, and developed strategies to counter that threat.

Cross-Fungtional Coordination
market -oriented compenies are effective in getting all business functions to work together to provide superior customer value. These organization are succesful in removing the walls between functions, marketing talk with manufacturing and finance. Cross-functional teamwork guides the entire organization toward providing superior customer value.

Performance Implications
companies that are market oriented begin strategiv analysiswith a penetrating view of the market and the competition. Moreover , an expandng body of research findings points to a strong relationship between market orientaion and superior performance. Compenies that are market oriented display favorable organization perfomance compared with companies that are not market oriented. The positive market orientation/performance relationship has been found in several U.S. and European studies.