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The concept of market orientation has attracted attention from both academics and managers and it has been widely used in the marketing discipline to explain marketing phenomena in business and consumer markets (Deshpande, Farley, & Webster, 1993; Jaworski & Kohli, 1993; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Steinman, Deshpande, & Farley, 2000). The most common output or effect attributed by the literature to the market orientation concept has been the firm's achievement of good or superior financial performance by delivering superior value to customers (Deshpande et al., 1993; Hunt & Lambe, 2000; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Narver & Slater, 1990). The market orientation concept has also generated a stream of research in both domestic and international markets (Breman & Dalgic, 2001; Cadogan & Diamantopoulos, 1995; Cadogan, Diamantopoulos, & de Mortanges, 1999; Dalgic, 1994; Siguaw, Simpson, & Baker, 1998).

The products of some firms emerge neither from new technology developments nor from attempting to address articulated consumers’ needs, but from a company-internal design-driven approach. To explore this design-driven approach, we propose a construct, design orientation, as a firm’s ability to integrate functionality, aesthetics, and meaning in its new products. We hypothesize relationships between a firm’s design orientation, customer orientation, technological orientation, and willingness to cannibalize on its new product performance.

We use data from surveys of senior marketing executives entrusted with design in 252 US firms, we validate the construct of design orientation and establish its distinctiveness from related constructs of creativity, technological orientation, and customer orientation. Using a structural equation modeling approach, we test the hypotheses and find support for them.

Individually, design orientation, technological orientation, and customer orientation improve new product performance. In addition, customer orientation decreases the positive effect of design orientation while willingness to cannibalize increases the positive effect of design orientation on new product performance.

More than two-thirds of respondents (69%) perceive that their firm can improve its new product performance by increasing its design orientation, an overlooked organizational capability.

Although practitioners have acknowledged the importance of design as a strategic marketing issue, there is little in the literature on how firms can benefit from building capabilities in the design domain, the issue we focus on in this research.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

This study investigates the role of grit in a work setting as well as interrelationships among work-related constructs among frontline employees of hotels. Based on the framework of grit and work-related constructs, this study proposes and tests a model that attempts to understand the dynamic relationship among the two dimensions of grit, customer orientation, job satisfaction, and job performance, with an emphasis on the moderating role of organizational tenure. The results indicate that consistency of interest significantly influences customer orientation, whereas perseverance of effort significantly affects job satisfaction. Job performance is significantly influenced by customer orientation and job satisfaction. The paths from perseverance of effort to customer orientation, from perseverance of effort to job satisfaction, and from consistency of interest to job satisfaction are significantly moderated by organizational tenure.

This chapter investigates the effect of customer orientation and CRM organization on hotel financial performance. A model of enhancing hotel financial performance through customer satisfaction practices was tested. Customer satisfaction was hypothesized to be a mediator in the relationships between customer orientation and CRM organization and the result being financial performance. The sample consisted of 54 hotels that was made up of three 5-star, fifteen 4-star, and thirty-six 3-star hotels in Ghana. A quantitative deductive approach was employed to gather data using cross-sectional survey, which was analyzed using PLS-SEM to check the validity, reliability and factor loading of the data. The findings revealed that, CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction and financial performance of hotels. Also, customer orientation showed significant positively related to customer satisfaction in the hotels. Surprisingly, the effects of CRM organization and customer orientation on financial performance through customer satisfaction were insignificant. Thus, customer satisfaction failed to mediate the effect of CRM organization and customer orientation on the financial performance of hotels. This suggests that though an effective CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction, it directly affects the financial performance of hotels. The outcomes have useful implications for CRM implementation on hotel financial performance in Ghana.

The paper discusses how market orientation impacts marketing performance in the hotel industry of Ghana. The research was a qualitative research that covered a sample of nineteen19 hotels in Ghana by using a two-stage nonprobability sampling comprising convenience sampling and purposive sampling. Personal interviews were conducted to collect primary and qualitative data from hotel managers of the sampled hotels. Template analysis was used to analyze the data in order to understand how market orientation impacts selected marketing performance indicators. The study has provided insight into how market orientation impacts marketing performance indicators, precisely sales growth, customer complaints, customer satisfaction, and customer retention. The limitations of the study are that it is a cross-sectional study and it involved only officials of the hotels as participants. Also, the study does not explain how customers perceive market orientation practices and how market orientation affects customer buying behavior. Research implications are that longitudinal research design and involvement of customers as participants should be considered in future-related qualitative studies. The contribution of this study to knowledge is that it has given some explanations to how market orientation impacts sales growth, customer complaints, customer satisfaction, and customer retention in the hotel business.

Despite some attempts to integrate the market orientation construct into the international marketing area, most conceptual and empirical studies have been conducted in the context of domestic operations. To address this gap we examine whether competitive intensity moderates the relationships among the components of market orientation and export performance. Data was used from 197 Brazilian export companies. Results suggest that interfunctional coordination enhances customer and competitor orientation. Moreover, customer orientation has no direct effect on export performance, while competitor orientation has a positive effect on firm’s international performance. Findings also indicate that competitive intensity moderates all the relationships tested in the model.

Further understanding of how stakeholder marketing explains firm performance through greater customer satisfaction, innovation, and reputation of a firm.

Grounded in stakeholder theory, the study provides a conceptualization of stakeholder orientation based on cultural values that is distinctive from stakeholder responsiveness and examines the relationship of stakeholder responsiveness to firm performance. The study determines the mediating role of marketing outcomes on the impact of stakeholder responsiveness on firm performance. Multiple regression analysis tests hypotheses using a data set consisting of qualitative data obtained from corporate documents and quantitative data from respected secondary sources.

Our findings provide support for stakeholder marketing creating a strong relationship to organizational outcomes. There exists a positive relationship between stakeholder responsiveness and firm performance through customer satisfaction, innovation, and reputation.

Our definition implies that stakeholder responsiveness is acting in the best interests of the stakeholder as a responsible business. This study shows that stakeholder marketing may not always represent socially responsible marketing. Further research could explore how and why firms may not respond ethically and responsibly to stakeholders.

We further the discussion whether stakeholder marketing equates to sustainability. Marketers can build on expertise of managing customer relationship and generating customer value to develop a stakeholder marketing approach that addresses the economic, social, and environmental concerns of multiple stakeholders.

We further the discussion whether stakeholder marketing equates to sustainability. Marketers can build on expertise of managing customer relationship and generating customer value to develop a stakeholder marketing approach that addresses the economic, social, and environmental concerns of multiple stakeholders.

Market orientation is often mentioned as a key factor for the success of domestic and international activities, but our knowledge about differences in degrees of market orientation remains limited for firms that have varying degrees of international activities. In particular, the literature is very sparse with regard to studies of newly established firms. Our study empirically explores this gap examining how different types of new ventures adopt two strategic components of market orientation – customer orientation and competitor orientation. Our empirical evidence is based on responses from CEOs of 249 Danish manufacturing firms that are categorized into four groups, depending on their degree of international operations within the first three years. We demonstrate that the most internationally oriented firms seem to be the most market oriented in general. They are significantly more competitor-oriented than domestically oriented firms, but the results regarding customer orientation are more mixed. Interestingly, we find indications that the strategic emphasis on customer orientation may be higher for firms with domestic operations than for those with limited international operations. We discuss implications for research and managers.