The Importance Of Marketing Orientation

Marketing Orientation

Marketing orientation is a business model that focuses on delivering products designed according to customer desires, needs, and requirements, in addition to product functionality and production efficiency (i.e., production orientation). As stated by Bernard J. Jaworski and Ajay K. Kohli in the “Journal of Marketing”, marketing orientation is “The organization-wide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current and future customer needs, dissemination of the intelligence across departments and organization wide responsiveness to it.”

From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution until the 1950s, companies focused on maximizing economies of scale and minimizing production costs. Since high quality products were

Marketing-oriented companies revolve around internal business processes that gather, synthesize, and package market intelligence into integrated marketing communications programs (i.e., advertising campaign, new product launch, promotional offer, etc.). Furthermore, it involves a brand planning its marketing activities around a singular concept — the customer — and supplying products to suit diverse tastes.

Competitive analysis is also a significant component of market orientation. Generally, companies gather this information using market research, consumer surveys, and focus groups with prospective customers to identify needs, preferences, as well as competitor strengths and weaknesses. Since its introduction, marketing orientation has been reformulated and repackaged under numerous names including customer orientation, marketing philosophy, and customer intimacy.

Marketing Orientation Components

Components which define a marketing orientated organization

Similar to a production-oriented company, one of the primary goals of marketing-oriented or customer-oriented businesses is long-term profitability. Nevertheless, organizations that follow a marketing orientation model realize that delivering superior customer value through product innovation, as well as products and services tailored to customer needs, directly correlates with generating revenue.

Benefits of Marketing Vs. Other Orientations

Many businesses function as if their sole purpose is to provide jobs and income for the owners and employees of the business. They use their knowledge and capabilities to produce one or more products and services which they expect customers to buy. Their orientation is to produce as much as possible in the belief this will increase sales. This is called the production orientation. And they use marketing as a way of attracting customers to buy what they in the company want to make or offer.

The production orientation is practically the opposite of the marketing orientation. It is rare, without outside assistance or a crisis situation, that a typical business leader would stop and think, “Are the products and services we offer what customers want to buy, or should we offer or do something different?” And this question usually does not get asked until sales are way down and the company has limited resources to make significant