Marketing Orientation Approach And Product Orientation Approach

Marketing Orientation Approach

Marketing oriented approach is a strategy undertaken by companies encompassing all actions geared towards satisfying the satisfaction of clients. Basically, organizations focus their production activities towards attainment of customers’ welfare. A marketing oriented organization will generally be concerned with identifying all the factors that are essential in meeting customer demand and needs (Jackson, 2000). After identifying the needs of the customer, the firm will then undertake a marketing approach usually formulated at market research stage. It is then that the company may head to produce products and sell them. After-sale services will also be conducted to identify whether the product meets its goal in satisfying customer needs. In case of faults, improvement strategies will be formulated and implemented. Due to the dynamic nature of the market, consumer demands and preferences are bound to change and hence the need to conduct research on the customer needs (Proctor, 2014).The market oriented approach is therefore a perpetual philosophical model. Ideally, the market orientation approach encompasses four processes including:

Products,
Services,
Processes
Research.

Marketing orientation business model was well stated by Bernard J. Jaworski and Ajay K. Kohli in the “Journal of Marketing”, stating that, “The organization-wide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current and future customer needs, dissemination of the intelligence across departments and organization wide responsiveness to it.” The pillars of marketing orientation are as follows:

Market research.
Market testing
Customer focus.

It is the onus of the organization to identify the competitors’ actions in terms of satisfying customer preferences. Companies understand well that by using this philosophical model, customers are of high priority. In actual sense, the strength of the company is essentially determined by how favorably it competes in the market as well as its customer base.

Pros of Market oriented approach.

Promotes Favorable competition – Marketing operational approach enables firms in business to stay ahead of their competitors. Firms are tasked with identifying complementary services not offered by competitors and they in turn undertake to implement them.

Flexibility – Market orientation approach helps the organization to adopt changes in accordance with the changes in customer tastes and preferences. Changes in customer preferences are brought about by the changing world trends that keep streaming in the market (Jackson, 2000) To keep up with the pace of the changes, firms are required to embrace market orientation techniques.

Attainment of long term goals – As the business focuses its all its energy towards satisfying customer needs, repeated purchases and customer retention in the long run are likely to be borne. When a firm attends to customers’ complaints and queries promptly, customers on the other hand gain confidence and trust in the enterprise (Andrews, 1971). The enterprise is therefore the entity to gain.

Cons of Market Oriented Approach

Firms embracing the market oriented approach face massive challenges sustaining the competition posed by companies that specialize in the quality approach (Sutherland, 2008). Customers who are hell-bent in considering the durability and quality of products when determining the items to buy are best fitted to use product orientation approach rather than the market oriented approach.

Product Orientation Approach

A company that is product oriented perceives that superiority of its products are of great essential and have a great bearing towards determining the. The organization believes each improvement in quality of a product draws more clients to the business.

Product oriented approach aims at improving the quality and features of products in a manner such that the commodities are highly durable (Andrews, 1971). The organization will often concentrate on modifying and improving the product features, quality, processes and profits. Nevertheless, the skills, knowledge and systems that support the product are also considered.

The tools of product orientation include:

Product research
Product testing
Product focus.

Unlike the market oriented approach, the product orientation approach differs sharply in terms of the tools of orientation. While the market oriented approach focuses on satisfying customer needs, the product oriented approach is concerned with exclusively on commodities.

Pros of Product oriented approach.

Promotion of innovation and technology – By investing in the quality research, an organization is able to identify and invest in new and efficient methods of production. This in turns boosts durability, efficiency and convenience of products. The need to find more efficient methods of production promotes innovation.

Economies of scale – Increase in quality of product leads to the reduction in costs of production. Bearing in mind that the overall objective of each enterprise is to minimize costs and maximize revenues, companies that specialize in provision of absolute quality products stand a chance to dominate in the market flooded with firms producing low quality goods. Such firms greatly benefit from outsourcing contract services.

Cons of Product Oriented Approach

Failure to meet customer needs appropriately and hence tremendous limitations in terms of the scope of operations. Therefore, any changes in the market structure are never incorporated effectively by firms using the product oriented method.
All that product oriented model focuses is the quality of products. However, this may just be a fraction of what the customers might be looking for when making acquisitions. This approach misses out on the aspect of considering customer preference.
Another setback faced by the use of product oriented approach is the fact that the quality of a product is not the only factor that affects the demand of a product. Not until the product satisfactorily satisfies the client and is within his/her budget, it might never be bought. Therefore, product oriented approach does not satisfactorily identifying all the factors that affect the demand of a product.
Another drawback is the rapid loss in value and depreciation of products with time. Products that remain in the market for a long time also became obsolescence.

Steps a business may take to adjust its orientation.

Application of market and product orientation strategies.

In the real world, several companies may combine both strategies (market and product orientation model). Companies such as Gillette, Cocacola and Travis Perkins will often:

Conduct vivid market research on the products being sold.
Organize product research in conjunction with feedbacks obtained from market research.
Regularly engage in qualitative market research to ascertain the portion of the public that focuses on new aspects and trends of commodities.

Test the products in small markets before unavailing them in the bigger market.
Measure and weigh the customers’ thought on the goods consumed. The question to ask in this scenario is whether the customers are obtaining optimum satisfaction from consuming the goods. If the expectations of the customers are not being met, measure and means of improving the products image, quality, quantity and brand will be improved.

In conclusion, companies focusing to optimize their returns and make best use of economies of scale should consider using the market oriented approach. Essentially, it is impossible to attain the highest level of quality production. Again, the organizations are not perfectly assured on whether when there will sufficient units to meet the current needs. Taking for example seasonal goods; production of high quality goods which are out of season will not guarantee that the customers will demand the goods since no one benefits by buying goods which are out of seasons. Therefore the demand for such goods will be low regardless of their high quality (Proctor, 2014) Taking the social classes in the society for example, the low level class in the society will not buy commodities associated with high income earners class in the society just because they are of high quality. They will still demand substandard goods as long as they are meeting their needs perfectly.

The dynamicity of the world is what has prompted the great need to identify customer needs and meet satisfactorily. This is to say that the market oriented approach is very practical and applicable to almost all organizations. What makes one firm have an edge in the market is determined by the extent to which it has gone in producing products that meet the needs of the target population perfectly (Jain, 1998). The existence of myriad competitors producing the same products is what has prompted firms to consider going an extra mile to identify and meet unsatisfied demand in the market.

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