This study aims to define marketing orientation, identify it in practice, and examine its association with company financial performance. An empirical analysis is made of marketing orientation of a sample of companies. These are analyzed by financial performance, level of technology and company size. Extant marketing literature is used to develop a model of marketing orientation. This is examined, operationalized and tested. The research methodology involves a sampling frame of all manufacturing firms in Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes 320 (industrial plant and steelwork) and SIC 330 (manufacture of office machinery and data processing equipment). These industry sectors are chosen to include the technology dimension in the study. The first sector is classified as 'low-tech': second as ... 'high-tech'. This classification is based on industry averages for R&D expenditure. The study is confined to specific industry sectors and to manufacturing companies in order to make meaningful inter-company comparison of financial performance, measured here using 3-year average for: i) return on capital employed ii) profit margin. Data collection is by a postal survey of chief executive officers to study marketing practices from a preselected framework in order to assess marketing orientation of sample companies and to study its relationship with their financial performance. . The results (based on response from 84 companies -- 42 in each of the two industry sectors) show no significant association between marketing orientation and financial performance. For the sample used in this study, high-tech companies tend to be more marketing oriented than low-tech firms. Also, for both industry sectors, large-sized companies are more marketing oriented than small companies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:630929 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Amir, Irfan |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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