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• What is it?
  Business orientations are classified into the following groups: Production Orientation, Product Orientation, Sales Orientation, and Marketing Orientation.

  Production Orientation – Dominated the business landscapes of the industrial revolution and mid 1900′s; this is where a company is heavily focused on streamlining production processes and concentrating on improvement efficiencies with little focus on anything else. Scenario: We can build a car for you, but it comes in black only.

  Product Orientation – An approach to business that centres its activities on continually improving and refining its products. All efforts are put into making the product better.  Scenario: We can offer you non-chip paint on your car.

  Sales Orientation – Some businesses see their main problem as not selling enough of the product or services which they already have available, hence predominantly focusing on sales and selling techniques. As a result these organisations operate as Sales Oriented companies. A sales orientated business pays little attention to customer needs and wants and is more concerned about selling. Scenario: If you sign up for the car now we’ll throw in a sunroof.

  Marketing Orientation – This is a culture rather than an individual process. It’s the norms, mindsets, values and behaviours of employers; alongside the structure, systems and control of the organisation. Marketing oriented businesses define their activities as service activities carried out towards the satisfaction of their customers. In other words they define their operation as a service business with customer service being the most important activity. They are driven by customer needs which are identified in their objectives. Scenario: We’ll make your car in whatever colour you choose.

  When to use it?
  Use market orientations when you want to understand, anticipate and satisfy your customer needs. You may already be operating somewhere in-between orientations. Companies can be anywhere on the spectrum as well as having different products at different orientations.

  What does it achieve?
  • A sense of what customers want
  • Links customers needs to company capabilities
  • Builds relationships
  • Creates vision
  • Greater internal marketing and communications
  • Tracking and information systems for further research and evaluation

  Key steps:
  • Audit and analyse current orientation
  • Decide on strategy
  • Implement full marketing mix
  • Evaluate and control

  Top Tips:
  Being marketing orientated is more than just being customer-led. It requires the full support of the organisation in order to be fully implemented in the long term, and may need a complete change in a company’s culture.

Tags: marketing orientation, product orientation, sales orientation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 2:44 pm and is filed under How To Do.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.