Little, or no effect, is put into establishing what the customer actually
wants – a dangerous route! Naturally, product innovation is important
but it needs to appeal to the market place, otherwise it risks being
innovation for the sake of innovation.
● Sales orientation: This views sales volume as the key determinant of
success. The focus is on aggressive selling that persuades the customer
to buy. Given that the process is driven by sales targets, a short-term
perspective dominates, with little regard to building longer-term rela-
tionships. Often, this follows on from a production orientation, as man-
agementtries to create a demand for unwanted products.
● Market orientation: As previously stated, success is derived from under-
standing and meeting customer needs. This process starts with the cus-
tomer and uses actual customer demand as a means to focus resources.
In simple terms, we provide what the market wants. Additionally, the
importance of building long-term relationships with customers is recog-
nised. We seek to build loyalty and consistently offer superior value. An
awareness of competitors’ proficiency and strategy is required in order
to optimise this process.
It is not our intention to decry production, product innovation or selling –
indeed they are vital. However, the truly ‘world-class’ organisation under-
standshow to marshal these factors into a coherent market-led orientation.
Creating such focus will facilitate the sustainable competitive advantage
required to prosper.
How do we go about achieving a market orientation? The answer to
this question can be summarised as follows:
1 Customer focused
Understand your customer base and be responsive to their needs. Treat
loyal customers as assets and strive to build on-going and long-term
relationships. Regularly monitor levels of customer satisfaction and
retention. Note, to achieve this we must: (i) define our markets,
(ii) effectively segment/target customers and (iii) listen to customers.
2 Competitor focused
In terms of competitors, be watchful and assess their objectives, strat-
egies and capabilities. There is the need to ‘benchmark’ their products,
processes and operations against our own.
3 Integrate marketing into the business
Marketing should not be confined to the marketing department. Every
function and person within the organisation has a role to play in creating
value and achieving the goal of being a market-led organisation. This
may require fundamental changes in culture and organisation structure.
4 Strategic vision
Develop a long-term, market-orientated strategic vision by viewing
marketing as more than a series of promotional tools and techniques.
It must be on the agenda of senior management, who should develop
and implement market-led strategy and define the future in terms of
creating long-term value for stakeholders.
The strategic perspective 11