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A marketing oriented firm (also called market orientation, the marketing concept, consumer focus, or customer focus) is one that allows the wants and needs of customers and potential customers to drive all the firm's strategic decisions. The firm's corporate culture is systematically committed to creating customer value. The rationale is that the more a company understands and meets the real needs of its consumers, the more likely it is to have happy customers who come back for more, and tell their friends. This process can entail the fostering of long term relationships with customers. In order to determine customer wants, the company usually needs to conduct some form of marketing research. Overall, the marketer expects that becoming marketing oriented, if done correctly, will provide the company with a sustainable competitive advantage. Research is the search for and retrieval of existing, discovery or creation of new information or knowledge for a specific purpose. ... Companies that compete by selling similar products (or even substitutes) to the same group of customers constitute an industry. ...

The concept of marketing orientation was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s at Harvard University and at a handful of forward thinking companies. It replaced the previous sales orientation that was prevalent between the mid 1950s and the early 1970s, and the production orientation that predominated prior to the mid 1950s. Since the concept was first introduced in the late 1960s, it has been modified, repackaged, and renamed as "customer focus", "the marketing philosophy", "market driven", "customer intimacy", "consumer focus", "customer driven", and "the marketing concept". A production orientation dominated business thought from the beginning of capitalism to the mid 1950s. ...

Application of the concept

Customer focus can be seen as a process that involves three steps. First customer wants are researched, then the information is disseminated throughout the firm and products are developed, then finally customer satisfaction is monitored and adjustments made if necessary.

The process can be applied at the individual level (called personalized marketing), the group level (called market segmentation), and occasionally at the mass level (mass marketing). The larger the group size, the more difficult the concept is to apply. Personalized marketing (also called personalization, and sometimes called one-to-one marketing) is an extreme form of product differentiation. ... Market segmentation is the process of grouping a market into smaller subgroups. ...

Techniques that firms use to understand the customer include:

• Quantitative marketing research - such as; surveys and questionnaires
• Qualitative marketing research - such as; focus groups and advisory panels
• Market research and industry research - such as; Porter 5 forces analysis
• Face-to-face meetings with customers
• Face-to-face meetings with frontline staff - sales reps, clerks, and receptionists
• Customer complaints department
• Customer hotlines - Web and telephone
• Visits to customers' facilities
• Frequent user programs and databases
• User groups - Beta testing
• Conferences

A marketing oriented firm will typically show the following characteristics: Quantitative marketing research is a social research method that utilizes statistical techniques. ... Statistical surveys are used to collect quantitative information about items in a population. ... Questionnaires are frequently used in quantitative marketing research and social research in general. ... Qualitative research is a set of research techniques, used in marketing and the social sciences, in which data are obtained from a relatively small group of respondents and not analyzed with statistical techniques. ... A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their attitude towards a product, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. ... Industry or market research is the acquisition of corporate intelligence on a broad range of issues including: Macroenvironment economy government legal technology ecological sociocultural Market Analysis and Competitor analysis market definition market size market segmentation industry structure and strategic groupings Porter 5 forces analysis supply chain competition and market share... Michael Porters 1979 framework uses concepts developed in Industrial Organization (IO) economics to derive 5 forces that determine the attractiveness of a market. ...

• Extensive use of various marketing research techniques
• Broad product lines
• Emphasis on a product's benefits to customers rather than on product attributes
• Use of product innovation techniques, such as; brainstorming, concept testing, and force field analysis.
• The offering of ancillary services like credit availability, delivery, installation, and warranty
• Customer satisfaction and complaint monitoring procedures, including; exit interviews, customer complaints database, and Web and telephone information hotlines.
• Organizational structure in which the marketing manager reports directly to the CEO.

Product lining is the marketing strategy of offering for sale several related products. ... In business and engineering, new product development is the complete process of bringing a new product to market. ... Look up brainstorming in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Concept testing is the process of using quantitative methods and qualitative methods to evaluate consumer response to a product idea prior to the introduction of a product to the market. ... Force field analysis is one of the most influential developments in the field of social science. ...

References