Competitive Strategy and Market Orientation: The Relationship and its Implications

Abstract

MatKet orientation has become a central tenet of marketing. While marketing effectiveness, marketing performance, and marketing success have been presented as important endogenous constructs in the pertinent literature, market orientation has emerged as a critical topic with fertile research opportunities. However, despite the proliferation of conceptual comment and empirical research on this topic, a lacuna remains regarding the nature of association between firms’ level of market orientation and competitive strategy pursued. This paper presents the findings from a study of medium and large industrial manufacturing firms in which firms’ aggressiveness, analysis, defensiveness, futurity, proactiveness, and riskiness in competitive strategy are evaluated against market orientation. The results of the analysis are discussed within the realm of extant knowledge and a number of implications are derived for executives and future research.