Editorial

Citation

Crosier, K. (2006), "Editorial", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 24 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/mip.2006.02024faa.001

Editorial

Viewpoint is back. In this issue, the Planning Director of a branding and marketing communications agency in London, and PhD in Philosophy, poses one question in particular that takes up a thread running through these pages for at least a couple of years. “Why is it”, asks Nick Southgate, “that marketing practitioners so rarely turn to their academic colleagues' wisdom?”

Not unexpectedly, part of the answer is that the density of the content of papers in the more scholarly academic journals can make it seem too much effort to extract potentially useful insights. Even to the well-educated and intelligent people who inhabit the intellectual wing of the marketing profession – the planners – are daunted. More accessible are the kind of textbooks written expressly to show first-year undergraduate students how theoretical principles can be applied to management practice. Nevertheless, as this absorbing piece warns us, the horizons of most seekers after marketing intelligence are fixed by the weighty tomes by the perennial gurus, or such deliberately popular texts as Freakonomics. The author of that blockbuster, Steven D. Levitt, is in fact a full Professor in the top-flight Economics Department of the University of Chicago, and Editor of the Journal of Political Economy. But the popularity of this one item in his total published oeuvre seems to have been guaranteed by the fact that reviewers routinely describe prefix his name with “the rogue economist”. Is that perhaps the only way to gain access to non-expert inquiring minds in the world outside, where principles can become practice? (Interesting how few commentators seem to have noticed that there is a co-author.)

Nick Southgate also cites The Tipping Point and The Long Tail, both of which titles have become instant buzzwords in the management-speak lexicon, to the extent that they turned up repeatedly in the newspapers and magazines with which I sat out an airport delay last week.

He is clear that “any shrewd planner or strategist will develop approaches that help to minimise the limits to his or her knowledge ... the enlightened will look to their academic colleagues and academic publications for such knowledge”. However, his first-hand experience is that the number who do is small. There are two key reasons, he argues: they feel under too much time pressure for challenging discretionary reading, and they fear they will have to justify departure from the profession's normal sources as soon as they seek to use intelligence inputs from the Ivory Tower. So the lesson is that the impetus has to come from our side of the divide (I am wearing my academic hat now), and few of us show any more willingness to make the first move than most of them do. This Viewpoint certainly deserves a slice of your time and effort. Perhaps you will even want to exercise the always available Right to Reply.

Freakonomics is co-authored by Stephen J. Dubner, by the way. He is not an academic.

If you are a regular reader, you may recall that issue four of the current volume was the first “themed issue” in our history. Not quite a Special Issue, with a Guest Editor, it contained six articles out of seven on aspects of a single general topic. They had been drawn from a pool of submissions the common theme that was simply too large to be ignored. The plan seemed to work well, so we are following it again in this issue.

As I said on that occasion, the correct response to a critical mass is generally not to ignore it. I am well aware that “market orientation” will strike some of you as a non-issue, reincarnated and then kept alive by a band of followers of Jaworski and Kohli or Narver and Slater. As one blind reviewer of a paper not in this selection observed, market orientation might have been a timely and interesting topic for a themed issue ten or twelve years ago. Today, however, “the last thing we need is one more replication of MARKOR ... which produces expected results, and doesn't surprise me in any way”. Yes, indeed. The same natural life cycle characterises a number of other scales that were in vogue in previous decades, such as SERVQUAL or SOC, and have now been tucked up in bed. It is not really enough to claim to fill a gap in the literature, unless there really is a literature in the gap. And there is not, if all we do is to conduct a MARKOR-scaled survey, find the usual acceptable Cronbach's a plus evidence of acceptable face and discriminant validity, detect comparative weakness in nomological and discriminant validity, and conclude that fellow academics need to carry out yet more surveys. Nor is it really helpful to recommend more market orientation among practitioners. Everyone in marketing says so, in one way or another. The really interesting conclusion is drawn by researchers in strategic management in general, not marketing, who have suggested that we could do with a little less of it (Berthon et al., 2005; Christensen and Bower, 1996).

However, the market orientation enthusiasts are still here, numerous and worldwide. Therefore, I have selected (my responsibility entirely) four reviewed papers which, by approaching the so-called “construct” from different directions, give us a little more to chew on than just another application of the well-known measuring scales.

From the Cardiff Business School, in Wales, Katy Mason and the much-cited Lloyd Harris note that no research study before theirs had considered the environmental factors that might influence particular emphases within an overall market orientation emphases. Using research techniques normally associated with qualitative research, rather than the ubiquitous scales and statistics, they collected their data by in-depth, semi-structured interviews with respondents in more than 50 firms in the UK. Formal coding of transcripts identified environmental factors at work at three levels, determining the shape of market orientation in practice. They advise planners to match those to their strategic objectives, and to review the fit regularly.

The next article comes from the USA. Charles Blankson of Long Island University, with co-researchers Jaideep Motwani and Nancy Levenburg of Grand Valley State University, explains that their study sought to redress the bias in the core literature towards large corporations. There is a persuasive logic to their assertion that market orientation can offer a crucial competitive lever to smaller firms, otherwise disadvantaged by a lack of resources of most kinds. They too sidestepped the conventional scaling approach, deriving protocols and means-end maps from data collected by face-to-face and telephone interviews with ten owner-managers and two professional consultants in one US State. Interpretation by inductive reasoning confirmed the research proposition and, in the process, identified a distinctive “marketing style”: strong emphases on customer care, employee welfare, motivation, and market intelligence. The specific form it took was related to the size of the firms, the personality of the owner-managers, the available resources, and – linking to Mason & Harris – the nature of the operating environment. They suggest that their findings provide “useful and candid insights” into market orientation in small businesses, and counterbalances the dominantly quantitative studies in the core literature to date. In passing, they also convincingly resolve the distinction between “market orientation” and “marketing orientation”, for non-experts such as me.

Now to that elusive Second World that must exist between the First and the Third. From Turkey, Alper Özer, Akin Koc¸ak and Orhan Çelik of the University of Ankara study the application of market orientation in accountancy firms: not just services, but professional services. Using a purpose-built variation on the conventional numerical scales, they successfully collected data from just over a thousand managers of accountancy practices. The finding of interest to readers with a general interest in useful marketing intelligence is that market orientation does seem to be a commonly understood principle of marketing practice beyond the USA, where it originated, and the big firms that are the subject of most studies. I wonder if I am alone in suspecting, all the same, that academics advising practitioners take enough account of the possibility that the marketing managers responsible for putting it into practice may still be vague about how it differs from the good old-fashioned “marketing orientation” to be found in the introductory chapters of the textbooks and workbooks they are likely to have read: Southgate's point, again. A specific finding, for specialists, is that Turkish accountants definitely see customer orientation as the most important element of market orientation. They also focus on such aspects of the operating environment as professional regulations, but do not pay much attention to the “competitor orientation” element, probably because of the unique characteristics of professions.

The final contribution in this sub-set comes from the Third World, as conventionally defined: Nigeria. Linus Osuagwu is acting Head of Department in the Lagos State University. He describes a study of 697 firms of all sizes there, aimed at identifying the reasons for observed emphases placed on different dimension of market orientation and the factors influencing. Using conventional scales and methods of analysis, he came to the conclusion, like Özer and his colleagues, that market orientation was practised to a reasonable extent locally. The particular shape of its implementation seemed to be a function of the type and size of a particular firm. The principal focus of market-oriented activity was the gathering, interpretation and implementation of market intelligence, with secondary emphasis on measuring the effectiveness of the outcomes. The location of this study in Anglophone West Africa offers interesting general cross-references to one from Francophone West Africa (l'Afrique Occidentale Franc¸aise) published in Marketing Intelligence & Planning two years ago (Akamavi et al., 2004).

One practical benefit of this themed collection is that it has generated a “free bonus pack” for those who may indeed be interested in knowing more about its common topic: a comprehensive reading list. By combining the four comprehensive lists of references, and removing duplications and non-specific entries, we have produced a total of 122 relevant readings. It is appended the end of this Editorial, as a Bibliography of Market Orientation.

To borrow a phrase from newspaper publishing, “This correspondence is now closed – Ed.”.

We now move to a quite different topic, though the next article is linked to three of the first four by its focus on small firms and export markets. From the UK, Isobel Doole and Sean Demack of Sheffield Hallam University, with Tony Grimes of the University of Hull, report the application of their own Export Marketing Profiling System to the data collected from 250 SMEs in one region of the UK. The aim was to identify the blend of marketing management processes, practices and activities that was most closely associated with strong overall performance in exporting. They found 17 key variables, and suggest that capabilities in knowledge management (including marketing intelligence), relationship-building, product strategy and pricing are most closely associated with success. Their conceptual framework and these findings have particular implications for providers of business-support services, by adaptation into a tool for the identification of ways in which intervention and investment might have the greatest impact on performance.

Next, to a radically different branch of marketing and frame of reference. The reviewers advised Shu-Pei Tsai, Chair of the Department of Public Relations and Advertising of the Shi Hsin University in Taiwan, to reduce the conceptual material in his introduction. I am content that he met them only half way, because I find the revised version you see here an absorbing and pretty easy read – not to mention food for thought for anyone of an intelligence-gathering and plan-formulating disposition. “The brand as hero” is a common enough turn of phrase in advertising planner's proposals, but I had never until now recognised its grounding in Jungian and post-Jungian theory. The verbatim responses from the huge and widespread research sample offer a fascinating insight into the mental set of consumers in a rapidly developing Second-World (again) country. A Nike sub-brand was the focus of the fieldwork, but the Swatch and Ikea mini-cases towards the end, which might also have been sacrificed to keep the word count down, in fact shed a new light for me on two brands I do not really like but know well, both of which I have succumbed to once. As for the applicability of the concepts, Tsai offers a “brand archetype-icon transformation model” as the basis of a branding strategy that exploits association with positive archetypes under the overall coordination of a “comprehensive brand management” philosophy.

Returning finally to our Viewpoint, it is interesting that Tsai does not cite Barthes (1957) when discussing the power of myth, for his Mythologies is one of those serious books with a populist touch, which is probably at least vaguely familiar to marketing planners.

Keith Crosier

Appendix. Bibliography of market orientation

Agarwal, S., Erramilli, M. K. and Dev, C. S. (2003), “Market orientation and performance in service firms: role of innovation”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 68-82.

Aggarwal, N. and Singh, R. (2004), “Market orientation in Indian organizations: an empirical study”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 22 No. 7, pp. 700-15

Appiah, H. K. and Ranchhood, A. (1998), “Market orientation and performance in the biotechnology industry: an exploratory empirical analysis”, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, Vol. 10 No. 20, pp. 197-211.

Appiah-Adu, K. (1997), “Market orientation and performance: do findings established in large firms hold in the small business sector?”, Journal of Euromarketing, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 1-26.

Appiah-Adu, K. (1998), “Market orientation and performance: empirical tests in a transition economy”, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 25-45.

Atuahene-Gima, K. (1995), “An exploratory analysis of the impact of market-orientation on new product performance: a contingency approach”, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 275-93.

Atuahene-Gima, K. and Ko, A. (2001), “An empirical investigation of the effect of market orientation and entrepreneurship orientation alignment on product innovation”, Organizational Science, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 54-74.

Avlontis, G. J. and Gounaris, S. P. (1997), “Marketing orientation and company performance”, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 385-402.

Baker, T. L, Simpson, P.M. and Siguaw, J. A. (1999), “The impact of suppliers' perceptions of reseller market orientation on key relationship constructs”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 27 No. 1, p. 50.

Baker, W. E. and Sinkula, J. M. (1999), “Learning orientation, market orientation, and innovation: integrating and extending models of organizational performance”, Journal of Market-Focused Management, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 295.

Bathgate, I., Omar, M., Nwankwo, S. and Zhang, Y. (2006), “Transition to market orientation in China: preliminary evidence”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 332-46.

Becherer, R. C., Halstead, D. and Haynes, P. (2003), “Marketing orientation in SMEs: effects of the internal environment”, New England Journal of Entrepreneurship, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 13-22.

Becherer, R. C. and Maurer, J. G. (1997), “The moderating effect of environmental variables on the entrepreneurial and marketing orientation of entrepreneur-led firms”, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 47-58.

Bhuian, S. N. (1998), “An empirical examination of market orientation in Saudi Arabian manufacturing companies”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 43, pp. 13-25.

Bhuian, S. N., Menguc, B. and Bell, S. J. (2005), “Just entrepreneurial enough: the moderating effect of entrepreneurship on the relationship between market orientation and performance”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 58 No. 1, pp. 9-17.

Bigné, E., Kuster, I. and Toran, F. (2003), “Market orientation and industrial salesforce: diverse measure instruments”, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 59-81.

Bigné, E., Vila-Lopez, N. and Kuster-Boluda, I. (2000), “Competitive positioning and market orientation: two interrelated constructs”, European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 190.

Blankson, C. and Omar, O. (2002), “Marketing practices of African and Caribbean small businesses in London, UK”, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 123-34.

Blankson, C. and Cheng, J.M.S. (2005), “Have small businesses adopted the market orientation concept? The case of small businesses in Michigan”, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 20, No. 6, pp. 317-30.

Blankson, C. and Stokes, D. (2002), “Marketing practices in the UK small business sector”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 49-61.

Blesa, A. and Bigné, E. (2005), “The effect of market orientation on dependence and satisfaction in dyadic relationships”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 249-65.

Brady, N. (2004), “In search of market orientation: an experiment in key account management”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 144-59.

Cadogan, J. W. and Diamantopoulos, A. (1995), “Narver and Slater, Kohli and Jaworski and the market orientation construct: integration and internationalization”, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 41-60.

Cadogan, J. W, Paul, N. J., Salminen, R. T., Puumalainen, K. and Sundqvist, S. (2001), “Key antecedents to export market-oriented behaviours: a cross-national empirical examination”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 3, p. 261.

Carson, D. (1990), “Some exploratory models for assessing small firms' marketing performance”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 24, No. 11, pp. 4-51.

Caruana, A., Gauci, S. and Ferry, M. (1995), “Market orientation and business performance: some evidence from Malta”, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Marketing Education Group, Bradford, UK, pp. 123-32.

Caruana, A., Pitt, L. and Berthon, P. (1999), “Excellence-market orientation link: some consequences for service firms”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 44, pp. 5-15.

Cervera, A., Molla, A. and Sanchez, M. (2001), “Antecedents and consequences of market orientation in public organisations”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 35 Nos. 11/12, p. 1259.

Chelariu, C., Ouattarra, A. and Dadzie, K. Q. (2002), “Market orientation in Ivory Coast: measurement validity and organisational antecedents in a Sub-Saharan African economy”, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 17 No. 6, pp. 456-70.

Chang, T. Z. and Chen, S. J. (1998), “Market orientation, service quality and business profitability: a conceptual model and empirical evidence”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 246-64.

Cravens, K. S. and Guilding, C. (2000), “Measuring customer focus: an examination of the relationship between market orientation and brand evaluation”, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Vol. 8, pp. 27-45.

Dadzie, K. G., Johnston, W. J., Yoo, B. and Brashear, T. G. (2002), “Measurement equivalence and applicability of core marketing concepts across Nigerian, Kenyan, Japanese and US firms”, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Vol. 17 No. 6, pp. 430-55.

Dawes, J. (1999), “The relationship between subjective and objective company performance measures in market orientation research: further empirical evidence”, Marketing Bulletin, No. 10, pp. 65-75.

Day, G. S. (1994),“The capabilities of market driven organizations”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 58 No. 4, pp. 37-52.

Day, G. S. (1998), “What does it mean to be market-driven?”, Business Strategy Review, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 1-14.

Day, G. S. (1999), “Misconceptions about market orientation”, Journal of Market – Focused Management, Vol. 4 No. 1, p. 5.

Day, G. S. and Wensley, R. (1988), “Assessing advantage: a framework for diagnosing competitiveness”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 52, No. 2, p. 1.

Deng, S. and Dart, J. (1994), “Measuring market orientation: a multi-factor, multi-item approach”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 10, pp. 725-42.

Desphandé, R. and Farley, J. U. (1998), “Measuring market orientation: generalization and synthesis”, Journal of Market-Focused Management, Vol. 2 No. 3, pp. 213-32.

Deshpandé, R. and Farley, J. U. (2004), “Organizational culture, market orientation, innovativeness and firm performance: an international research odyssey”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 21, pp. 3-22.

Diamantopoulos, A. and Hart, S. (1993), “Linking market orientation and company performance: preliminary evidence on Kohli and Jaworski's framework”, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Vol. 1, pp. 93-121.

Dickson, P. R. (1992), “Toward a general theory of competitive rationality”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 56, pp. 69-83.

Doyle, P. and Wong, V. (1998), “Marketing and competitive performance: an empirical study”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 32, Nos. 5/6, pp. 514-35.

Esteban, A., Millan, A., Molina, A. and Martin-Consuegra, D. (2002), “Market orientation in service”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36 Nos. 9/10, pp. 1003-21.

Gounaris, S.P. and Avlonitis, G. J. (2001), “Market orientation development: a comparison of industrial versus consumer goods companies”, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Vol. 6 No. 5, pp. 354-81.

Gray, B. J. and Hooley, G. J. (2002), “Market orientation and service firms' performance: a research agenda”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36 Nos. 9/10, pp. 980-8.

Gray, B., Matear, S., Boshoff, C. and Matheson, P. (1998), “Developing a better measure of market orientation”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 32 Nos. 9/10, pp. 884-903.

Greenley, G. E. (1995), “Forms of market orientation in UK companies”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 47-66.

Greenley, G. E. (1995), “Market orientation and company performance: empirical evidence from UK companies”, British Journal of Management, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 1-14.

Gummesson, E. (1991), “Marketing-orientation revisited: the crucial role of the part-time marketer”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 60-75.

Gunay, G.N. (2002), “Market orientation and globalization among the Turkish clothing exporters”, in E. Kaynak and F.D. Sarvan (eds.), The Impact of Globalization on World Business: Competition, Cooperation, Environment, and Development, Proceedings of the IMDA 11^th World Business Congress, pp. 753-59.

Guo, C. (2002), “Market orientation and business performance”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36 Nos. 9/10, pp. 1154-63.

Harris, L. C. (1996), “Cultural obstacles to market orientation”, Journal of Marketing Practice: Applied Marketing Science, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 36-52.

Harris, L. C. (1998), “Cultural domination: the key to a market-oriented culture”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 32 Nos. 3/4, pp. 354-73.

Harris, L. C. (1998), “Barriers to market orientation: the view from the shopfloor”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 221-8.

Harris, L.C. (1999), “The strategic legacy of company founders”, Long Range Planning, Vol. 32 No. 3, p. 333.

Harris, L. C. (2000), “The organizational barriers to developing market orientation”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 34 Nos. 5/6, p. 598.

Harris, L. C. (2001), “Market orientation and performance: objective and subjective empirical evidence from UK companies”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 38 No. 1, p. 17.

Harris, L. C. and Ogbonna, E. (2001), “Leadership style and market orientation: an empirical study”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 35 Nos. 5/6, pp. 744-64.

Harris, L. C. and Piercy, N. F. (1999), “A contingency approach to market orientation: distinguishing behaviours, systems, structures, strategies and performance characteristics”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 15, pp. 617-46.

Hooley, G., Cox, T., Fahy, J. and Shipley, D. (2000), “Market orientation in the transition economies of central Europe: tests of the Narver and Slater market orientation scales”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 50 No. 3, p. 273.

Hooley, G., Cox, T., Fahy, J., Shipley, D., Beracs, J., Fonfara, K. and Snoj, B. (1998), “Market orientation in the transition economies of Central Europe”, Proceedings of the 27th EMAC Conference, pp. 479-98.

Hooley, G., Fahy, J., Greenley, G., Beracs, J., Fonfara, K. and Snoj, B. (2003), “Market orientation in the service sector of the transition economies of Central Europe”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 37 Nos. 1/2, pp. 86-106.

Hooley, G. J., Greenley, G. E., Cadogan, J. W. and Fahy, J. (2005), “The performance impact of marketing resources”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 58 No. 1, pp. 18-27.

Hooley, G. J., Lynch, J. E. and Shepherd, J. (1990), “The marketing concept: putting theory into practice”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 24 No. 9, pp. 7-24.

Huff, L. and Kelley, L. (2005), “Is collectivism a liability? The impact of culture on organizational trust and customer orientation: a seven-nation study”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 51 No. 8, pp. 96-102.

Hurley, R. F. and Hult, M. T. G. (1998), “Innovation, market orientation and organizational learning: an integration and empirical examination”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 62 No. 3, pp. 42-54.

Jaworski, B. J. and Kohli, A. K. (1993), “Market orientation: antecedents and consequences”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 57 No. 3, pp. 53-70.

Jaworski, B. J. and Kohli, A. K. (1996), “Market orientation: review, refinement and roadmap”, Journal of Market-Focused Management, Vol. 1, pp. 119-35.

Jaworski, B. J., Kohli, A. K. and Sahay, A. (2000), “Market-driven versus driven market”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 45-54.

Kelly, S. W. (1992), “Developing customer orientation among service employees”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 27-36.

Kohli, A. and Jaworski, B. J. (1990), “Market orientation: the construct, research propositions and managerial implications”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 1-19.

Kohli, A. K., Jaworski, B. J. and Kumar, A. (1993), “MARKOR: a measure of market orientation”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 467-77.

Kurtinaitiene, J. (2004), “Marketing orientation specifics in European Union mobile telecommunication market”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 104-13.

Lui, H. (1996), “Patterns of market orientation in UK manufacturing companies”, Journal of Euromarketing, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 77-100.

Martin, J. H., Martin, B. A. and Grbac, B. (1998), “Employee involvement and market orientation in a transition economy: importance, problems and a solution”, Journal of Managerial Issues, Vol. X No. 4, pp. 485-502.

Matear, S., Osborne, P., Garrett, T. and Gray, B. J. (2002), “How does market orientation contribute to service firm performance”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36 Nos. 9/10, pp. 1058-75.

Matsuno, K., Mentzer, J. T. and Rentz, J. O. (2005), “A conceptual and empirical comparison of three market orientation scales”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 58 No. 1, 1-8.

Maydeu-Olivares, A. and Lado, N. (2003), “Market orientation and business economic performance: a mediated model”, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 284-309.

Mazaira, A., González, E. and Avendaño, R (2003), “The role of market orientation on company performance through the development of sustainable competitive advantage: the Inditex-Zara case”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 220-9.

Narver, J. C. and Slater, S. F. (1990), “The effect of a market orientation on business profitability”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54, No. 5, pp. 20-35.

Payne, A. F. (1988), “Developing a marketing-oriented organisation”, Business Horizons, No. 31, pp. 46-53.

Pearson, G. J. (1993), “Business orientation: cliché or substance?”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 233-43.

Perry, M. L. and Shao, A. T. (2002), “Market orientation and incumbent performance in dynamic market”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36 Nos. 9/10, pp. 1140-53.

Piercy, N. F. (1997), Market-Led Strategic Change, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Pulendran, S., Speed, S. and Widing, R. E. (2003), “Marketing planning, market orientation and business performance”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 37 Nos. 3/4, p. 476.

Rexha, N., Ramaseshan, B. and Kirk-Burnand, T. (1998), “The use of the MARKOR scale in assessing market orientation in small firms”, Proceedings of the International Conference on One World One Market – Vision 2020, pp. 63-7.

Rexha, N., Kirk-Burnnand, T. and Ramaseshan, B. (2000), “The impact of technically focused values or market orientation of professional service firms”, Journal of Professional Services Marketing, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 45-61.

Shapiro, B. P. (1988), “What the hell is “Market Oriented”?”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 66 No. 6, pp. 119-25.

Shoham, A., Rose, G. M. and Kropp, F. (2005), “Market orientation and performance: a meta-analysis”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 23 No. 5, pp. 435-54.

Siguaw, J. A., Brown, G. and Widing, R. E. (1994), “The influence of the market orientation of the firm on Sales”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 106-16.

Siguaw, J. A., Simpson, P. M. and Baker, T. L. (1998), “Effects of supplier market orientation on distributor market orientation and the channel relationship: the distributor perspective”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 62 No. 3, p. 99.

Slater, S. F. and Narver, J. C. (1994), “Does competitive environment moderate the market orientation-performance relationship?”, Journal of Marketing, January, Vol. 58, pp. 46-55.

Slater, S. F. and Narver, J. C. (1995), “Market orientation and the learning organization”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 59, pp. 63-74.

Slater, S. F. and Narver, J. C. (1999), “Market oriented is more than being customer-led”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 20 No. 12, pp. 1165-8.

Slater, S. F. and Narver, J. C. (1998), “Customer-led and market-oriented: let's not confuse the two”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 19 No. 10, pp. 1001-6.

Slater, S. F. and Narver, J. C. (2000a), “The positive effect of a market orientation on business profitability: a balanced replication”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 48 No. 1 pp. 69-73.

Sundqvist, S., Puumalainen, K. and Salminen, R. T. (2000), “The interaction between market orientation, industry environment and business success: evidence from an exporting context”, Australasian Marketing Journal, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 55-69.

Van Egeren, M. and O'Connor, S. (1998), “Drivers of market orientation and performance in service firms”, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 39-58.

Varela, J. A. and Del Rio, M. (2003), “Market orientation behaviour: an empirical investigation using MARKOR”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 6-15.

Vazquez, R., Alvarez, I. and Santos, M. L. (2002), “Market orientation and social services in private non-profit organisations”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 36 Nos. 9/10, pp. 1022-46.

Verhees, F. J. H. M. and Meulenberg, M. T. G. (2004), “Market orientation, innovativeness, product innovation and performance in small firms”, Journal of Small Business Management, Vol. 42 No. 2, p. 134.

Webster, F.E. Jr (1988), “The rediscovery of the marketing concept”, Business Horizons, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 29-39.

Winston, E. and Dadzie, K. Q. (2002), “Market orientation of Nigerian and Kenyan firms: the role of top managers”, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 17 No. 6, pp. 471-80.

Wong, V. and Saunders, J. (1993), “Business orientation and corporate success”, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Vol. 1, pp. 20-40.

Wrenn, B. (1997), “The market orientation construct: measurement and scaling issues”, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Summer, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 31-54.