evitt (1960) point outs that customer is the reason for the existence of any organisation, where marketing orientation is at the focus of modern marketing (Grinstein, 2008). Liao et al. (2011) observes that market-oriented organisations are sustainable in competitive environment and capable of performing better. A company gets more profits when they offer their product in market based on consumers expectation and needs (Drummond, 2005, p.6). Conclusively, marketing orientation is the only strategy applied to all organisation irrespective of their size or industry, thus due to wide range of application of marketing orientation, many consider it as a superior strategy to other business orientations (Liao et al. 2011, p.306).
The figure: 1 below shows the components of marketing orientations.

Source: Hooley et al. (2008, p.9)

COMPARING BUSINESS ORIENTATIONS

This section will compare the relationship and components of marketing orientation with other business orientations such as product, brand and learning orientations.

Market Vs Product orientation:

Product orientation is closely linked to the innovation of a business by which a firm will create new ideas or products (Grinstein, 2008). Product oriented business firms are focused on the quality of product (Fritz, 1996; Gatignon and Xuereb, 1997; Han et al., 1998) and highly invest on introducing new products decreasing the organisational inertia. Lukas and Ferrell (2000) argues that market-oriented companies are less innovative because their focus is to satisfy customer needs. Houston (1986) reached to a different conclusion claiming market-oriented companies to be more innovative they are customer-focused and able to anticipate their future needs.
However, there are several overlapping factors between product and marketing orientation. One such factor is “innovation” (Liao et al., 2011). Marketing orientation focus on the continuous innovation of the products while understanding the customer needs in order to serve in a better way from that of their competitors (Han et al., 1998). Evidence indicates that Marketing orientation and product innovation together has a positive impact on the product performance (Raju et al., 2008). Consistent with the above argument, Liao et al. (2011) confirms the conclusion that Marketing orientation is the only strategy applicable to all organisations and is superior than alternative strategies of business orientations.
Market Vs Brand orientation: