Today, it is important for companies to deliver superior customer value in order to be successful on the market. There are two different ways of achieving this advantage; a company can either follow a market driven approach or a market driving approach. The difference between these two approaches is that a market driven company listens to the customers’ demand and create superior customer value of their needs. On the contrary, a market driving company reshapes the market and offer new superior needs to customers that will be seen as a need by them. Furthermore, there is a gap of the influence the internal factors have on the market driven and the market driving approach. Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide an insight of how the three internal factors, structure, financial resources and organization culture, influence the two approaches in the luxury industry. A survey was conducted in order to gather data from different companies worldwide. Both explanatory and exploratory research strategies were used when the collected data was analyzed. Explanatory research was used to test the hypothesis and explain the research question. Exploratory research was used to further understand how the internal factors influence a company’s marketing strategy.  The result of this dissertation indicates that the three internal factors were not significantly connected with market driven or market driving approach. However, it can still be argued that the internal factor structure somehow is correlated with the market driven approach. Furthermore, the findings of this dissertation can be interesting for people who seek to investigate in both the concept of market orientation and how the internal factors influence it.

This research explores to what extent the community newspaper, Fourways Review, which is distributed to a geographically demarcated area in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, is fulfilling the community’s expectations; how community members use the newspaper and how Fourways Review’s community journalists define their roles. The research uses a qualitative approach to collect data through face-to-face, in-depth interviews with a sample of 30 community members and eight news team members; and one week of participant observation in the newsroom. Data is analysed through a constant comparative technique. The research finds Fourways Review is accepted in the community but is not as community-minded as a community newspaper should be, which affects how the community members use the publication. Community member respondents attribute the criticism to the influence of a market-driven approach to reporting. This is echoed by the news team respondents who say news production is influenced by community, advertising and inter-departmental pressures. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication Studies)