[pt] A relação entre orientação para o mercado e desempenho é um tema que desde o início dos anos noventa atrai a atenção de muitos pesquisadores das áreas de marketing e estratégia empresarial. Várias pesquisas nacionais e internacionais comprovam uma relação de causalidade entre os construtos. Esta pesquisa investiga se essa relação é válida no contexto da indústria hospitalar brasileira através do teste empírico da hipótese: O grau de orientação para o mercado é positivamente correlacionado com o desempenho dos hospitais no Brasil. A pesquisa testa e confirma essa hipótese através do uso da técnica de modelagem por equações estruturais (SEM - Structural Equation Modeling). Após a confirmação da relação de causalidade entre os construtos, classifica-se os hospitais em grupos, de acordo com seu tipo de orientação para o mercado, através da técnica de análise de clusters - K means. O passo seguinte é a comparação das médias de desempenho de cada um dos grupos através de análise multivariada da variância (MANOVA). Deste modo, o estudo conclui que não só existe uma relação positiva entre orientação para o mercado e desempenho, como também que o tipo de orientação para o mercado conduz os hospitais a diferentes níveis de desempenho. / [en] The relationship between market orientation and performance is a subject that has been drawing the attention of many researchers in the marketing and business strategy fields. The causality relationship of the mentioned constructs has been confirmed by many national and international studies. The purpose of this study is to determine if this relationship is also valid in the context of the Brazilian hospital industry through the empirical test of the hypothesis: the level of market orientation is positively correlated with the performance of Brazilian hospitals. This study tests and confirms the stated hypothesis employing the Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) technique. After confirming that there is a causality relationship among market orientation and performance, the hospitals are classified into groups according to their type of market orientation, which is done by using the Clusters Analysis technique. The last step of the study is to compare the performance level of each group by use of Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). This study concludes that not only is there a positive relationship among market orientation and performance, but also that the kind of market orientation leads hospitals to different levels of performance.

A orientação para o mercado (OPM) tem se mostrado uma alternativa interessante no ambiente competitivo atual. Diversos estudos têm demonstrado que essa prática traz retornos favoráveis ao desempenho financeiro e mercadológico das empresas. Dado seus resultados favoráveis a OPM, que inicialmente referia-se à orientação para o cliente, e posteriormente para o cliente e concorrente, vem ganhando abrangência cada vez maior, atingindo outros elos da cadeia produtiva, como os canais de distribuição e o consumidor final. A proximidade com os clientes, a integração dos diversos departamentos da empresa, e o foco na entrega de valor superior, colaboram para a construção de um ambiente criativo que privilegie idéias inovadoras. Neste contexto, buscou-se conhecer a relação existente entre a Orientação para a Tecnologia e o Marketing de Relacionamento em empresas orientadas para o mercado, seguindo os pressupostos de um modelo de OPM, sugerido neste trabalho, e composto por três elementos: cultura transversal (CT), formação e disseminação de inteligência (FDI), e estratégia de ação (EA). O foco principal da pesquisa, portanto, girou em torno das variáveis: orientação para a tecnologia e marketing de relacionamento, e suas principais relações. Para atender aos objetivos deste trabalho, realizaram-se de estudos de casos e análises de dados econômicos de dez empresas petroquímicas atuantes no Brasil, onde se efetuou um levantamento de campo, com questões pré-estruturadas, baseadas em argumentos teóricos. Dentre os resultados obtidos, chamou a atenção adoção dos modelos inovativo technology push ou technology push e demand pull em concomitância com a prática de marketing relacional. Percebeu-se, também, que as empresas buscam um equilíbrio entre orientação para a tecnologia e o marketing de relacionamento, de forma que estas duas forças se complementem. O resultado da pesquisa foi colocado em um gráfico onde foram caracterizadas as diferentes categorias da estratégia de ação (EA). Outro ponto avaliado na pesquisa diz respeito à abrangência da OPM, neste sentido, percebeu-se que tal orientação contempla, ainda, a orientação para o fornecedor, como elemento-chave para a entrega de valor superior ao cliente, e para a manutenção de vantagens competitivas pela empresa. / Market orientation has been identified as an interesting alternative to companies, in the current competitive environment. Several studies had demonstrated that this practice brings favorable returns to the financial and marketing performance of the companies. Due to these favorable results, market orientation, initially orientated only towards the end customer, became oriented towards both the end customer and competitor, reaching other links of the supply chain, as the canals of distribution and the final user. Moreover, the proximity with customers, the integration of different departments of the company, and the focus on the delivery of value, all permit the construction of a creative environment that privileges innovative ideas. The present dissertation analyzes the relationship between Technology Orientation and Relationship Market in petrochemical companies in Brazil, and presents a model of market orientation composed for three elements: transversal culture (TC), formation and dissemination of intelligence (FDI) and strategy of action (SA). The methodology used was multiple-cases study and the analysis of quantitative data from this sector. To fulfill this purpose, a structured questionnaire was developed, based in the theoretical arguments, and to be answered by the ten operating companies working in the Petrochemical sector in Brazil. The main focus of the work was on the technological orientation and market orientation relationship, and the possible relationship between these two orientations. One of the results indicated that these companies are adopting an innovative model of technology push or technology push and demand pull, concurrent to the relational marketing model. Thus, the technology orientation and the relational marketing are not opposed, but complementary in companies oriented for the market. The result of the research was placed in a graph in which had been characterized the different categories of the action strategy. Another point evaluated in the research, is the scope of the orientation for the market. In this case, this study shows that this orientation contemplates the orientation for the supplier, as key element for delivering superior value to the customer, and also for the maintenance of competitive advantages for the company.

A partir dos anos 1950, o conceito de marketing e a orientação para mercado destacaram a importância do consumidor para as empresas. Nas últimas décadas surgiu uma nova visão que propõe que as demandas de outros públicos também são relevantes, como colocam a orientação para stakeholders e a de marketing holístico, entre outras. Em alguns contextos, porém, consumidor e outros públicos têm demandas divergentes, como na indústria de alimentos brasileira atualmente. Se, por um lado, aumenta o consumo de industrializados, identifica-se que, por outro, o governo tenta mudar a composição desses alimentos para reduzir o teor de ingredientes considerados prejudiciais à saúde se consumidos em excesso e, assim como ONGs, tenta desestimular seu consumo. O presente estudo busca, por meio de uma pesquisa empírica, com amostra não-probabilística, analisar como é feita a gestão de marketing nesse contexto. Foram realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas com sete gestores de marcas de alimentos industrializados que atuam em categorias onde o governo identifica necessidade de mudanças. O elemento de partida, por tangibilizar as decisões de gestão da marca e facilitar a abordagem do assunto, foi uma campanha de comunicação de marketing recente. As respostas foram analisadas pelo método de análise de conteúdo e os resultados indicam que, na gestão de marketing, as demandas do consumidor são as de maior relevância, até porque, sem colocá-las em evidência, há risco para o sucesso do negócio. Há algumas ações descritas pelos gestores que foram motivadas por pressões de outros públicos, como a mudança de público-alvo e de mensagem em campanhas de comunicação e a reformulação de produtos - neste último exemplo, porém, não houve adesão do mercado em dois casos narrados. Isso não significa, entretanto, que o consumidor não incorpore as discussões em torno da saudabilidade proposta por outros públicos e que, atualmente, evidenciam as demandas divergentes entre stakeholders. Um nicho, caracterizado principalmente pelo poder aquisitivo mais alto, tem interesses que vão ao encontro do que propõem o governo e as ONGs. O grande mercado consumidor, porém, ainda valoriza mais o acesso a novas categorias que se tornou possível com o recente aumento de renda no Brasil. O caminho para que as mudanças ocorram de maneira mais ampla e rápido, de acordo com os gestores, passa pela informação, de maneira a diminuir a divergência entre as demandas dos stakeholders envolvidos na questão. / In the 1950s, the marketing concept and the market orientation emphasized the importance of the consumer to companies. In the last decades, new concepts emerged, which highlight that the demand of other publics are also priorities, as state the stakeholder and the holistic marketing orientations, for example. In some contexts, however, consumers and other publics might have divergent demands, as in the Brazilian food industry nowadays. On one hand, the consumption of industrialized items increases and, on the other, government tries to change the formulation of those products to reduce the quantity of ingredients that are considered unhealthy if eaten in high levels and tries to discourage its consumption. Some NGOs are also dedicated to the subject and support the government\'s point of view. This study analyses the marketing management of brands in that context through an empirical research with a non-probability sample. In-depth interviews were conducted with seven marketing professionals of the food industry whose categories are involved in the discussions started by the Brazilian government. A recent marketing communication campaign was chosen as the starting point of the interview since it is a public expression of the brand and it could facilitate the conversation and analysis of the subject. The analytical procedure used was content analysis. The results show that consumers\' demands are the most relevant for marketing management because if the market is not satisfied, the business might be on risk. Some actions presented by the managers were motivated by pressure imposed by other publics, such as the change of the communication target for two brands and the implementation of new formulas for some products of other two brands. In these cases, however, the market did not accept the healthier options. Nevertheless, consumers are more aware of healthy habits. A niche of high-income people has demands that are closer to those presented by the government. But the average consumer, due to the recent income increase in Brazil, still places more value on having access to new categories than on making choices. In order for changes to happen faster and widely, bringing the consumers and government\'s demands closer, managers point out the need of information.

In recent years, the commercialization of the audit market has become more and more apparent, which is an inevitable trend. After the Enron scandal broke out, researches about commercialization and audit professions, audit quality have arisen. Most of these studies are focus on western audit firms. The purpose of this study is to look at the impact of commercialization of the Chinese audit industry from the auditor perspective. This paper is based on 109 responses to a survey distributed to Chinese auditors, including Big 4 firms and non-Big 4 firms. This study use market orientation, customer orientation and process orientation as indicators of commercialization. Auditor independence and auditor competence as two main cornerstones of audit quality. The data were analyzed by multiple statistics test. Our finding indicates that all three indicators of commercialization of audit market have a positive relation with auditor independence and competence. We are thus concluding that commercialization of the audit market has a positive relation to audit quality. Also, we find that auditors in Big 4 and non-Big 4 audit farm are not much difference. This may be because the Big 4 in the Chinese market do not have the same dominance as in the Western market.

Market orientation is generally defined as the implementation of the marketing concept within organizations. It has been operationalized by such dimensions as customer orientation (the pursuit of customer satisfaction), Competitor Orientation, Inter-functional Coordination, and Responsiveness. According to a growing body of literature, this strategy is likely to help higher educational institutions in their effort overcome the challenges and pressures of their changing environment (these are: massification, professionalisation, budget constraints, the rise of stakeholders’ requirements in terms of quality control and accountability… In this research, I first object that those researchers who are suggesting market orientation as the suitable strategy have said nothing as for its content or definition. I also contend that empirical works using higher educational setting to operationalize the market orientation strategy are just conceptual transpositions, which do not consider the specificities of higher education institutions as compared to private firms. These shortcomings are the theoretical justification of my research. Hence, after showing the origin of the market orientation rhetoric in higher education, I develop a new conceptualization of the strategy and suggest a new scale for its measurement. The following dimensions composed my suggested scale: Stakeholder orientation (Students, policy-makers, and organizations), Competitor Orientation, Collaboration, Inter-functional Coordination, and Responsiveness. The empirical validation of these dimensions was enriched by a quantitative assessment of the place of the market orientation strategy within the mission statements of higher educational institutions. This research is one attempt in a whole ongoing trend towards research on how to relevantly import private sector strategies into public and nonprofit sector organizations, among which, higher education/ L'Orientation-Marché est généralement définie comme étant l'implémentation du marketing dans les organisations. Une revue de littérature permet de l’opérationnaliser par les dimensions telles que l'Orientation clients qui consiste en la poursuite de satisfaction des clients, Orientation concurrents, Coordination inter/intra fonctionnelle, et la Réponse organisationnelle. Cette stratégie est de plus en plus évoquée comme pouvant aider les institutions d'enseignement supérieur à faire face aux défis tels que la massification, la professionnalisation, la réduction des financements, la montée des exigences des parties prenantes en termes de qualité... Dans cette thèse, je constate d'une part que certains chercheurs se limitent à proposer cette stratégie sans en définir le contenu, et d'autre part que les travaux empiriques existants sur l'Orientation-Marché dans l'enseignement supérieur se limitent à des transpositions conceptuelles, sans tenir compte des spécificités des institutions d'enseignement supérieur. C'est pour cette raison qu'après avoir démontré l'origine des discours sur l'Orientation-marché dans ce secteur, je développe une échelle de mesure susceptible d'Opérationnaliser cette stratégie. L'échelle comprend l'Orientation vers les parties prenantes (Etudiants, Décideurs politiques, Entreprises), l'Orientation Concurrents, la Collaboration, la Coordination Interfonctionnelle, et la Réponse organisationnelle comme principales dimensions. La validation empirique de ces dimensions a été enrichie par une évaluation quantitative de la place de l'Orientation-Marché dans les missions des institutions d'enseignement supérieur, telles que déclarées dans leurs différents documents. Cette recherche est une première ébauche dans tout un courant de recherches sur l'importations des stratégies de gestion privée dans les institutions à but non lucratif.

Given today’s industry dynamics, new service development is becoming increasingly important to the competitiveness, growth, and survival of organizations. Unfortunately, new service development has proven to be a complex and difficult task. Numerous reasons are stated in the literature such as the difficulty of understanding and anticipating latent customer needs and insufficient market research techniques. To facilitate proactive learning about the customer, recent findings stress customer involvement in the development process and observations of customers in real action. The overall objective of the dissertation is to contribute to an increased knowledge of customer involvement, i.e., the role of customers as contributors and co-creators in new service development. The thesis draws on theory from market and learning orientation in conjunction with a service-centered model, and provides an extensive review of literature on customer involvement in innovation. In five separate studies, this doctor’s thesis addresses the customer’s role in innovation activities in various industries (e.g., Staffing Services, Airline Services, and Mobile Telecommunication services). In this thesis it is argued that interaction is not only the focal point of services, but also the essence of customer involvement. A special emphasis is put on supporting techniques as these are the means by which customer information and knowledge are created. In addition, results are provided showing that customer involvement in innovation pays off. Companies that engage in collaborative innovation with customers can expect improved customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and profit margin.

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 a problem important to both management strategists and policy-makers: what makes some companies grow rapidly? This topic is important as high-growth companies create a disproportionally high percentage of new jobs. The literature frequently cites sustainable competitive advantage as an explanation for firm performance and growth. Companies can build competitive advantage through the accumulation and development of resources, strategic orientations and unique capabilities. More recently, researchers have looked outside the firm for explanations, concluding that inter-firm co-operative networks and alliances are also important sources of competitive advantage leading to firm growth. While there is an extensive body of literature on firm growth, few studies have specifically addressed the antecedents of rapid firm growth. Much of the available literature is descriptive, for example Birch’s (1987) study of gazelle firms or the OECD (2008) report on high-growth firms. There are however few theoretic models or empirical tests to explain the success of these firms. In response this research explains the occurrence of high-growth firms in terms of the resource- and knowledge-based view, dynamic capabilities, core competencies, and strategic orientation theories. Structural equation and growth mixture models were tested using data gathered from a survey administered to a cross-industry sample of Canadian businesses. The study found that high-growth forms were more likely to be innovators, as well as to have a combination of strong entrepreneurial and market orientations and the ability to manage their business networks. These findings highlight the importance to management of not only responding to market demands but leading the market with innovation and extending firm capabilities and reach through networking. In addition, this research indicates that institutional support for innovation, networking and market development would assist in developing high-growth firms in Canada.

This research explores a problem important to both management strategists and policy-makers: what makes some companies grow rapidly? This topic is important as high-growth companies create a disproportionally high percentage of new jobs. The literature frequently cites sustainable competitive advantage as an explanation for firm performance and growth. Companies can build competitive advantage through the accumulation and development of resources, strategic orientations and unique capabilities. More recently, researchers have looked outside the firm for explanations, concluding that inter-firm co-operative networks and alliances are also important sources of competitive advantage leading to firm growth. While there is an extensive body of literature on firm growth, few studies have specifically addressed the antecedents of rapid firm growth. Much of the available literature is descriptive, for example Birch’s (1987) study of gazelle firms or the OECD (2008) report on high-growth firms. There are however few theoretic models or empirical tests to explain the success of these firms. In response this research explains the occurrence of high-growth firms in terms of the resource- and knowledge-based view, dynamic capabilities, core competencies, and strategic orientation theories. Structural equation and growth mixture models were tested using data gathered from a survey administered to a cross-industry sample of Canadian businesses. The study found that high-growth forms were more likely to be innovators, as well as to have a combination of strong entrepreneurial and market orientations and the ability to manage their business networks. These findings highlight the importance to management of not only responding to market demands but leading the market with innovation and extending firm capabilities and reach through networking. In addition, this research indicates that institutional support for innovation, networking and market development would assist in developing high-growth firms in Canada.

The background to this thesis is found in the growing importance of the marketing concept. The concept has been used frequently in articles in the past few years, in spite of lack of consensus about what it is. To make a contribution to the theoretical field the theories about service marketing and market orientation had to be examined and the relevant factors drawn out to construct a model for describing market orientation in service companies. The theoretical examination resulted in the follo­wing three components that together constitutes the foundation of the marketing concept in service companies: market information, the support system and the customer meeting. The main purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the marke­ting concept in service companies. Within this purpose the study also will identify which driving forces and obstacles affects market orientation. To a certain extent the process towards market orientation also is examined. The first analyses of the two insurance companies showed that the de­gree of activity in working with the factors that constituted the marketing concept varied. In general they had worked with approximately the same factors almost in the same way. In so doing they had worked more with some of the conceptual and behavioral factors than with the others. The cases differed from the theoretical frame of reference, as expected. However, the differences were impossible to explain with the component model. New analyses of the empirical data showed other factors that had influenced the market orientation process in the companies. The new factors could be divided into four groups depending on whether they were considered as internal or external factors and whether they were driving forces or obstacles for the process. One original component that proved to be of great importance in the market orientation process was market information. Neither of the insu­rance companies had worked with that component in a systematic way to find out, for example, the customers needs and wants. The study resulted in a more dynamic model of the market orientation process - the cycle model. It visualize the relation between the compo­nents and it also adds on a time perspective to market orientation, since it is supposed to continue over time. / digitalisering@umu