nsight gained form it, to redirect its internal processes to respond effectively to market dynamics, can potentially facilitate the long-term provision of superior value to the customer and the achievement of a sustainable competitive advantage in the market.

This thesis suggest the usage of a specifically planned and implemented marketing audit, designed to address the components of the model of market fit to facilitate an organizations efforts to achieve and maintain continued currency in relation to its target market. It is argued that the marketing audit procedures can be used as an integral part of the organization/market matching process and can assist with the establishment and maintenance of the optimum level of fit of an organization to its target market. The thesis also provides an agenda for future research.

1.2 Background

The recent past has been characterized as technologically (Burns and Bush 2003) and economically turbulent. The accelerated rate at which technologically innovations are affecting all business activities from the development of new product concepts to marketing communication (Wilson and Meadows 1998). The rate of new product introduction has increased while the rate of new product failure has been estimated to be between 80% and 95%, depending on one’s definition of success (Berggren and Nacher 2000). The availability of large quantities of data has made it difficult for a business manager to conveniently convert the data into action-oriented information in order to make appropriate key marketing decisions. The level of corporate failures has increased, time for making decisions has become shorter and the negative results of wrong business decisions have become more severe. The competition in some industries has become more intense and sophisticated (Ashil and Jobber, 2002)

In this market environment, that can be characterized as growing in uncertainty and risk, organizations that are unprepared to change in reaction to market dynamics will have little opportunity to survive.

The magnitude and the far reaching consequences of these environmental changes have been demonstrated by the recessions taking place globally in the recent past, and the “downsizing” or “correctsizing” and the restructuring moves by different companies (Farrell 2000). The