Customer Orientation of B2B Firms in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Russia

Abstract

While the field of customer orientation (CO) has been studied extensively since the 1990s, there have hardly been any attempts to revisit the concept for the specifics of B2B markets, especially in the context of emerging economies. This paper explores the peculiarities of B2B firms' CO on the example of Russia. The empirical survey of 272 Russian B2B firms show that well-established CO measurement can be used as integrated complex measure. The results of our analysis demonstrate a critically important aspect of CO, which helps to differentiate the customer-oriented firms from those with only ``declared{''} CO. The study indicates a need to critically assess widely used marketing concepts and their measurement in B2B markets of emerging economies.