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 scarce during this period, brands could make products on a massive scale that were functional and durable, but ignore marketing elements such as add-on features and design. This was largely due to the growing numbers of affluent and middle class people that the rise of capitalism had created.

Following the second world war, it soon became obvious that products were not selling as easily as during the Industrial era due to a saturated market. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, companies responded by adopting a sales orientation model that concentrated first on making products, then selling them to customers. Despite organizations’ move from product-oriented to sales-oriented strategies, customers were still excluded from the product development process.

The Shift Toward Marketing Orientation

Beginning in the 1970s, Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt and other academics argued that the sales orientation model was ill-equipped to deliver products tailored to customer wants and needs. Instead of manufacturing products for the sole purpose of generating profit, they argued for businesses to shift their strategy toward developing products based on customers’ desires, insights, and opinions. Using this customer intelligence, companies could produce products that supported their overall business strategy, competed effectively in an increasingly global and competitive market, and delivered solutions for current and future customer needs.

With the widespread adoption of Internet technology, e-commerce, and social media technologies, the customer has clearly become the driving force behind contemporary business strategies. 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.