Market Orientation and Marketing Orientation

Market orientation is different from marketing orientation. If you can recall, marketing orientation is when an organisation puts its total focus on the customer, and where the delivery of customer satisfaction at a profit, is their primary motivation.

On the other hand, a market-oriented organisation is much more than just acknowledging the importance of customers as a key driver to deliver superior customer value.

More than that, it encourages the methodical collection and sharing of market information from customers, competitors and other stakeholders, in order for the organisation to interpret and devise appropriate responses to changing conditions.

This serves the purpose of promoting an organisation-wide priority that allows identifying and exploiting of opportunities as well as neutralising threats in the marketplace.

In other words, market orientation captures an organisation’s ability to anticipate, react to, and capitalise on changes that are bound to occur in the fast-moving marketplace.

Just as you now know that market orientation is concerned with organisation-wide issues, marketing orientation reflects a functional focus. We can add that marketing orientation as a philosophy extends beyond the marketing function in an organisation.