Product Orientation

Product Orientation

Similar to production orientation, the product orientation of marketing focuses solely on the product a company intends to sell. This orientation was popular during the 1950s and into the 1960s. A firm employing a product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of its product. A firm such as this would assume that as long as its product was of a high standard, people would buy and consume the product. This approach stresses the research and development of products and the continuous evolution during their life cycles, in order to maintain the attention of potential customers. Under the product orientation, management focuses on developing high-quality products that can be sold at the right price, but with insufficient attention to what it is that customers really need and want. The premises implicit in this orientation include:

1. Consumers buy products more than solutions.
2. Consumers are interested in product quality.
3. Consumers recognize product quality and differences in the performance of alternative products.
4. Consumers choose between different products based on getting the best quality for the price paid.
5. The main task of an organization utilizing the product orientation approach is to continue improving quality and reducing costs as key factors in the fight to maintain and attract customers.

Adopting the product orientation can be advantageous to a company, due to the fact that the cost of determining consumer preferences and the development of new products and services are minimized or eliminated because consumers are in some way captive. Product orientation assumes a developing or closed economy where few if any, choices are available. There are disadvantages to the product model. However, As soon as a competing company can offer a product more oriented to the satisfaction of customers’ needs and desires, the companies undertaking product orientation will lose most if not all of their market share.