Table of Contents
Introduction
Business orientations are put into groups. The groups include; market orientation, product orientation, sales orientation and production orientation. This essay examines factors that companies may orient marketing around to recognise when the marketing strategy is oriented around something which is not the customer. The article will also focus on why the orientation is relevant to business and what success market strategy is.
Market orientation
This is an individual rather than developmental process. It is the mindsets, norms, behaviours and values of employees alongside the systems, structure and control of the organisation. Businesses define their practices as service activities which are carried out aiming at the satisfaction of their customers. In other words, market-oriented companies describe their methods as service enterprises with customer service as the most significant activity. They are utterly driven by the needs of clients which are identified and concluded to by their objectives (Grönroos, 1989).
The most successful businesses take market-oriented approaches. The approach means that companies react to the wants, desires and needs of customers. All the decisions that are made are based on and around information about the needs and wants of customer’s not what the business perceives as right and fit for the customers (Granlund & Lukka, 1998. It is true than evident that nowadays, most successful businesses have moved towards a more market-oriented approach as a result of customers becoming more knowledgeable and now need better quality and more variety of goods and services. This has stiffened competition, and in return, businesses have to fit in and remain at the top. To compete favourably. Therefore, businesses have to be more sensitive to merge and meet their customers’ needs if they don’t want to lose their sales to their competitors. (Granlund & Lukka, 1998).
(Grönroos, 1989) Mentions that are using the current global car markets for instance; the fact that the manufacturers of these cars can create a product then sell it to customers waiting eagerly is not an option any longer. Further, as the global economy increases day after the other, there are many choices for customers. The tacit implication here is that the companies must be at will to adapt their market orientation strategies to remain relevant and competitive.
(Granlund & Lukka, 1998) Indicates that market orientation are necessary when you want to get to anticipate, understand and satisfy the needs of customers despite already being in operation in between orientations. It is also clear that companies can be anywhere on the spectrum and as well as have distinct products at different orientations. Market orientation achieves a sense of what customer’s needs, creates a great vision, links the needs of the customers to the capabilities of the company, builds relationships, and creates more important internal communications and marketing.
Sales orientation
Some business views their main setback as not being able to sell enough of their services or products that they already have hence and therefore, they predominantly put their focus on selling techniques and overall sales. As a result of this, these organisations, therefore, operate as sales-oriented companies. It is important to point out that these sales-oriented companies focuses on selling and pays little or no attention to the needs and wants of customers. It is true than evident that sales orientation bases its ability to have profited by making more each day on using very powerful techniques of selling to persuade people into buying the products rather than the needs of customers (Granlund & Lukka, 1998).
Production orientation
Production orientation was in the domination of the business landscapes of the industrial revolution. In production orientation, a company is heavily focused on streamlining the manufacturing processes and putting more concentration on the improvement of efficiency with less focus on any other thing. For instance, (Grönroos, 1989) writes that production orientation can build a car for you, but it comes only in white. They are the ones to do the specifics. In production orientation, there is always a great focus for the business to reduce costs through mass production. Such a business has a belief that the economies of scale that are generated by mass production will in return reduce the costs and at the same time maximise profits.
Product orientation
Product orientation is an approach to business which centres its activities and practices on continuously and continually improving and refining its products. The efforts invested in these methods are geared towards making the products better than they were. Therefore, it is right to say that a product-oriented company believes that the high quality and functional features of its products make it a superior product. The problem with such an approach is that superiority alone does not guarantee the sale of goods because excellent products may not sell unless they fully satisfy the wants and needs of the consumer (Granlund & Lukka, 1998).
In conclusion, it is prudent to mention that in today’s competitive world, it is now important than even to use a market orientation strategy. As the digital age advances, customers have the ability to research products in a quick way. If an organisation does not satisfy the needs of clients, they will buy from a competitor who offers those the same things.
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- Granlund, M., & Lukka, K. (1998). Towards increasing business orientation: Finnish management accountants in a changing cultural context. Management Accounting Research, 9(2), 185-211.
- Grönroos, C. (1989). Defining marketing: a market-oriented approach. European journal of marketing, 23(1), 52-60.