The performance of an organization largely depends upon the strategy-environment fit (Mintzberg, 1979). The success of business-level strategy is contingent on industry environment characteristics (Pelham, 1999). Under the strategic fit, new ventures need to match their strategies of market, product with external environment. In different contextual situations, a new venture should employ appropriate management practices that positively impact its performance. The strategic fit provides important theoretical foundations for understanding how strategies drive firm performance. Today, technology-based start-up ventures and corporate entrepreneurship both embrace emerging markets and emerging technologies as the core of their competitive advantage (Thukral, Ehr, Walsh, Groen, & Sijde, 2008). For these new ventures, it is important to set up market orientation strategy at the beginning of founding. New ventures need to explore market opportunities and respond to market requirements. Proactive and responsive market orientations are two dimensions of market orientation considering to latent and current market needs ((Narver, Slater, & Maclachlan, 2004)). Current studies acquiescently treat proactive and responsive as two types of market orientations. However, further study need to clarify whether and what extent and under what contextual situations new ventures pursue two dimensions of market orientation strategy. In specifically, does pursuit of a hybrid market orientation lead to superior performance relative to a pure one? What extent should a new venture emphasize relative pure strategy which can help it to fit its strategy with performance objectives? Furthermore, is the market orientation strategy purity equally important in both emerging and established market conditions and industrial technology standards? This paper proposes hypotheses of positive relationship between market orientation strategy purity and new venture performance. And, Market needs has a moderating role on the relationship of MO purity and new venture performance. That is, for emerging market, the MO purity will exert a weaker influence on the new venture performance. Technological uncertainty has a moderating role on the relationship of MO purity and new venture performance. That is, for emerging technology, the MO purity (especially proactive market orientation) will exert a stronger influence on the new venture performance.

This research explore the complementarity effect of export-market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation on export performance of SMEs from a CEE developing economy. We found that the likelihood of this effect on export profitability is higher in dynamic export market environments if high level of resources are committed to export operations.

We propose a conceptual model of MO in emerging markets by drawing on industrial organization and economic sociology, and outline factors which can better explain the determinant-strategy-performance relationships in emerging markets. We provide two country examples (Russia and China), and propose future research directions for our conceptual model.

The need for a co-alignment between internal and external marketing has largely been discussed in the literature. In an attempt to increase the conceptual and empirical body of knowledge, the present study follows a systematic presentation of balanced market orientation. After a brief literature review, it tackles research gaps building on theoretical hypotheses. An empirical examination based on 217 questionnaires, addressed to hotel managers, illuminates the role of culture in this context. Results unveil a significant positive relationship between internal marketing, market orientation and firm performance, irrespective of the underlying culture. Opting for a balanced market orientation, hotel managers gain particular insight into its principal axes and their interrelationships in practice.

This study seeks to understand how the interplay between Market Orientation, Firm strategy and Performance is developed over time. In order to study the interplay, I build a model on industry and company evolution by adopting a Variation, Selection and Retention (VSR) analysis of a telecom company and industry 1980-2010 in Finland market. The evolution of telecom industry and a case company is manifested in innovations and strategy in a company and respectively in the basis of competition in the market. In addition, what capabilities and resources a company can use successfully when innovating and developing products and services, and how those capabilities and resources change over time are of interest. A longitudinal (1980-2010) abductive case study of a telecom company’s offerings and strategy was made. Company’s spearhead innovations, managerial cognition and strategy were studied in a longitudinal setting. The theoretical contributions of the study are to discover Market Orientation payoff is context and industry life-cycle specific. Secondly, Market Orientation has potential adverse effects on Firm Performance, and what is the most important, Market Orientation as a sole source of innovation activity has a permanent influence on company’s comparative advantage in the market.

Introduction A market orientation is a fundamental concept of strategic marketing that reflects a thorough understanding of both customer needs and competition (Narver & Slater, 1990; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Salavou et al., 2004). Market orientation as organizational culture increases firms’ interest in providing greater value for its customers, and, consequently enhances business performance (Narver & Slater, 1990). Thus, it is important to understand processes related to development and management of market-oriented culture (Zhou, Gao, Yang, & Zhou, 2005). As practitioners are encountering many difficulties in implementing market orientation in their organizations (Day, 1994; Mason & Harris, 2005), more detailed studies have been called to investigate managerial processes of deploying and developing market-oriented culture (Harris, 2000). Recent studies have found that market orientation can be enhanced by top management emphasis and reward systems (Kirca, Jayachandran, & Bearden, 2005; Kumar, Jones, Venkatesan, & Leone, 2011). However, fewer studies have specifically looked into the remuneration of the management in this setting (Ruekert, 1992), and particularly how the different parts of employee compensation, such as incentive schemes, are structured. Although our understanding of how compensation structure effects on development of market-oriented culture is limited, compensation structures have been studied extensively in finance literature (see Murphy 2012 for an extensive review). The structure of employee incentive schemes may be used to shift personnel’s myopia and risk-taking behavior (Murphy, 1999). Thus, these schemes provide a classic solution to the agency problem between shareholders and management (Jensen & Murphy, 1990) and have been predominantly postulated to be beneficial for the shareholder (Murphy, 1999). The underlying rationale is that the managers perceive risk differently from the shareholders and because of this asymmetry the managers may be hesitant to undertake projects that would be optimal for the shareholder value (Core, Guay, & Larcker, 2003). In this study, our aim is investigate how the structure of the employee incentive schemes affects to the market orientation of the firm. Given that the benefits of market orientation take time to become fully realized, the importance of top management both emphasizing and supporting a market-oriented culture is paramount (Kumar, Jones, Venkatesan, and Leone, 2011). Since developing market orientation is by its nature a long-term and risky investment (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993), and is linked to superior firm performance, we postulate the development of market orientation as an activity that stock-based compensation is meant to promote. Literature review and hypotheses development Market orientation as organizational culture is “the set of beliefs that puts the customer's interest first, while not excluding those of all other stakeholders, such as owners, managers and employees, in order to develop a long term profitable enterprise” (Deshpande Farley, & Webster, 1993, p. 27). As positive relationship between market orientation and business performance has been empirically proven (Huhtala et al., 2013; Deshpande & Webster, 1989; Narver & Slater, 1990), recent studies have focused on investigating possible antecedents of market orientation, such as reward systems (Kirca et al., 2005; Kumar et al., 2011; Sarin & Mahajan, 2001, Wei, Frankwick, & Nguyen, 2012). Studies have found that proper reward systems, such as participation based rewards, may facilitate market orientation (Sarin & Mahajan, 2001; Wei et al., 2012). Development of our hypotheses is based on the understanding that, firstly, market orientation is only acquired through risky and time-consuming projects (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993), and, secondly, stock-based incentive schemes are specifically designed to mitigate risk aversion and myopic investment choice challenges (Murphy, 1999). The benefits of a market orientation take time to realize, and especially management support is needed to instill a market-oriented culture (Kumar et al., 2011). This type of management involvement is also reflected in Jaworski and Kohli's (1993) statement that risk-averse management leads to subordinates being less likely to focus activities that increase overall market orientation. The reward and compensation system is a critical factor as it can either encourage or impede managers’ actions (Hambrick & Snow, 1989), and, therefore, has an impact on market orientation (Wei et al., 2012). We argue that stock-based incentive schemes address the challenges of developing market orientation that has been found in extant literature (see Mason & Harris, 2005). The incentives should both motivate employees to focus more on long-term value creating activities as well as encourage them to overcome their risk aversion. As the market-based incentive systems aim to promote longer-term focus and reduce risk-aversion, which are major factors causing managers’ inertia to develop market orientation. In line with incentive and reward systems literature we propose that: H1(a)/(b): An increase in (a)option/(b)stock incentive schemes' total average value per employee involved increases a firm's market orientation (and its constituent factors) Organizations should provide more bonuses and long-term incentives to high level managers, since decision-makers in the upper echelons can have impact on the organization (Wang, Venezia, & Lou, 2013; Gerhart & Milkovich, 1990; Hambrick & Mason, 1984). We argue that top managers are the priority when designing stock-based compensation and the larger the proportion of employees benefiting from an incentive scheme within a firm is, the better the relevant decision-makers and experts have been incentivized. Thus, we propose: H2(a)/(b): An increase in the proportion of employees benefiting from an (a)option/(b)stock incentive scheme increases a firm's market orientation (and its constituent factors) Data and methods The incentive scheme data was obtained from Alexander Incentives, a remuneration scheme consultancy that administers a broad database of publicly disclosed information on the remuneration and incentives of public and private companies in Finland. We use data from 2008 to 2012 comprising 67 firms. Over this period the average year specific value of an option based incentive scheme was 4.7 million € and corresponding value of a stock based incentive scheme was 7.6 million €. On an average year, an option based scheme comprised 595 grantees and a stock based scheme comprised 317 grantees. Measurement of market orientation was conducted through survey using the questionnaire items developed by Narver and Slater (1990). The survey was conducted in the spring of 2008, 2010 and 2012. The survey was sent to all companies in Finland with more than 5 employees in the previous year resulting 1157, 1134, and 952 completed answers, respectively. The respective firm-level response rates were 16%, 10% and 9%. However, in this study, we are investigating only the companies that were publicly listed at the time of conducting the survey and who have disclosed personnel incentives. Such companies answering the survey totaled 55 firms in year 2008, 39 in 2010, and 28 in 2012. The final sample consisted of firms that responded to the survey in one or more years and from which we were able to obtain incentive scheme data. The sample comprises 122 firm-years collected from 65 unique firms (n = 122). The items measuring market orientation were evaluated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using SPSS AMOS version 21.0. The latent variables measuring the dimensions of market orientation (customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination) were included in a single second-order CFA model. Following suggested guidance for the model fit index thresholds (Bagozzi & Yi, 2012; Bentler, 1990), the second-order CFA model shows a good fit (χ2 = 58.08, df = 24, χ2/df = 2.42, RMSEA = .10, SRMR = .047, NNFI = .94, and CFI = .96). All items loaded significantly on their respective second-order (standardized loadings ranged between .90 and .95) and first-order latent constructs (standardized loadings ranged between .68 and .96), indicating convergent validities. All model maximum likelihood estimates were found to have statistically significant critical ratio values. We conclude that the tests proved the factorial validity of the second-order CFA model. Additional financial data was used to formulate control variables and was obtained from Worldscope and Datastream. We are using annual and quarterly financial statements data to control the size of the companies and the volatility of the environment. Stock market data were used to control the riskiness of the firms. We are controlling for the size of the firm with the logarithm of the total assets. To control for the environment, we are using the volatility of the quarterly revenues within a year. We also use the monthly volatility of the stock market performance to control for the investors’ perceptions of riskiness. Detailed descriptive statistics of the sample are available upon request. Results The impact of the employee stock-based incentives on the market orientation of the firm was investigated using multiple regression analysis. We used the market orientation as the dependent variable. As the independent we used the value of the incentive scheme (option and stock based) per grantee and the percentage of total employees who were grantees. Total assets, quarterly revenue volatility, and monthly stock returns volatility were control variables. The variable for market orientation significantly correlated with option scheme value (p < .10), presenting a low correlation of -.17. Quarterly sales volatility significantly correlated with monthly stock return volatility at -.21 (p < .05). Other correlations were found statistically insignificant and ranged between -.14 and .23. Table 1 reports the regression results predicting market orientation. Models 2 and 4 test Hypotheses 1(a) and 2(a). Models 3 and 4 test Hypotheses 1(b) and 2(b). All Models 1 through 4 were found statistically significant based on the F-statistic (p < .01). Hypothesis 1(a) proposed increase in option incentive scheme’s total average value per employee predicts increase in a firm's market orientation. As indicated in Model 2 and 4, there is no strong support for the hypothesis. Although the coefficient for option scheme value is significant (p < .10), the coefficient is negative instead of being positive as was hypothesized. Hypothesis 2(a) postulated the option scheme coverage to have a positive impact on the market orientation of the firm. The coefficient in both Models 2 and 4 was positive, however not significant. Thus, the Hypothesis 2(a) is clearly rejected.

The catching-up process of the emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) towards the average income level in Western Europe has driven the marketing strategies of Western multinational companies (MNC) so far. Particularly, the boom years from 2002 to 2008 with an average GDP growth for the region of more than 6% (Becker et al., 2010) fuelled the notion that soon a large European market with similar demand and market structures will exist that will allow Western MNCs to sell their international brands in a highly standardized way in the whole region. The Great Recession of 2008-09 stopped this convergence process and highlighted the still existing differences in consumer behavior (Schuh, 2012). The recessionary developments in the aftermath of the crisis have shown that this is more of a structural problem than a temporary one (Labaye et al., 2013). The Western firms now have to acknowledge that many product markets are not “structural twins” of Western markets with a strong upper- and mid-price segment but that CEE markets are rather shaped like bottom heavy pyramids. By just transferring brand strategies developed for high-income economies to emerging markets they ignore large segments of the mass market. To tap these market segments MNCs have to think how they can make their products affordable to these lower-income consumers, i.e. bring-ing the purchase of a product within the financial means of a consumer or household. The neglect of low-income segments may be either a deliberate decision based on the well-proven inherent business logic of Western branded good marketers (“stick to our success-ful way of doing business”) or a blind spot in the strategic approach to emerging markets (Sheth, 2011). The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, a case is made for the relevance of affordability concepts to CEE markets; second, three case studies of affordability initiatives of leading fast-moving consumer goods companies are analyzed in order to get a better understanding of how these firms approach the affordability issue and what are the success factors of such strategies in CEE. Most of the existing emerging market literature is dealing with very low income consum-ers in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa earning less than US- 2,500 p.a. (Prahalad, 2005; London & Hart, 2011; Khanna & Palepu, 2010). While the coverage of the “bottom of the pyramid” is regarded as an extreme stretch for most Western firms, more attention is paid to the growing middle class in the emerging markets (Court & Narashimhan, 2010). The steady growth of the middle-class in the emerging economies is promising rising sales for the future and at the same time supporting the notion that West-ern MNCs can continue with their business model and just have to “wait for the market”. The rapidly growing middle class consumers in emerging markets include almost 2 billion people with a total spending of US- 6.9 trillion annually which will expand to US-20 trillion within the next decade (Court & Narasimhan, 2010). Surprisingly, lead-ing Western MNCs approach the affordability issues in the context of CEE rather defen-sively and reluctantly (Schuh, 2012). This may be resulting from the belief that the eco-nomic catching-up process will bring CEE consumers to a similar standard of living as in the “old” EU and any investment in products for the lower-segments would be only of temporary value. Therefore, CEE countries are not seen as the typical candidates for affordability strategies. This may be partly true for the most advanced Central European countries and Russia with rapidly rising household incomes in the last decade. But the economic downturn and the following recessionary development has shattered the consumption model that was based to a high degree on credit financing in those markets too. Moreover, studies show that there exists a high share of low-income households and price-sensitive consumers in CEE. According to the “Life in Transition” survey the mid-dle-class ranges from 4% in Albania to 27% in Slovenia – in between you can find Poland with 16% and Russia with 18% (EBRD, 2007). Pfeifer, Massen and Bombka (2007) estimate that 56% of the consumers or 57 million people, in Eastern Europe are low-income consumers (< 10,000 in PPP per year). In addition, in Russia and Ukraine 70% of the populations are falling in this category. A study of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants (2008) on “Consumer Archetypes in CEE” identified seven basic consumer types in CEE. Three out of them – the “self-centered consumers” (18% of population), “minimalists” (14%) and “rationalists” (12%) – can be classified as highly price-sensitive. Together, these three highly price-conscious consumer types make up 44% of the CEE market. What is more, other identified consumer types with less distinct price sensitivity could be taken into account as well. In total, these consumer types whose purchasing behavior is influenced predominantly by affordability amount to 56% of all CEE consumers. Summing up, the studies provide divergent figures of the size of the middle class and low-income segment in CEE. Different methodological approaches, classifications, and data bases are the reasons for these variations (Kharas, 2010). However, the findings show that the market below the middle class in CEE is a large one, accounting for more than 60% of the population of a country. The strategies that are used to address low-in-come consumers are described by the so-called “4 A’s”: affordability, acceptability, availability and awareness (Anderson & Markides, 2007). Affordability as a strategy con-cept can be defined as all measures of a company that aim at bringing the purchase of a product within the financial means of a consumer or household (or business). In the literature you can find different approaches towards this goal. Firms typically start with marginal changes in their marketing strategy (e.g., different packages, single portions). However, to tap the lower-end of these price-sensitive mass-markets and to reach non-consumers of your products changes have to go beyond rebranding and adapted market-ing elements. New business models with deeper and more comprehensive changes in product development and architecture of the supply-chain are needed to be successful in this segment (Johnson, Christensen & Kagermann, 2008). The purpose of the empirical part of this study is to get a better understanding of motives, goals and success factors of affordability initiatives addressing the countries of CEE. A case study approach is the best way to learn about underlying assumptions and considera-tions of managers involved in the decision-making process (Yin, 2009). The cases consist of two parts: a) a general company profile describing businesses, geographic presence and goals; b) the role of affordability for tapping emerging markets and the description of affordability initiatives in CEE countries. Globally active consumer goods companies in the food sector from USA and Western Europe were chosen as target firms: They ex-panded strongly into emerging markets and CEE in the last years, play a pioneer role in tapping low-income markets and exemplify the sought-after strategic constellation for this research, i.e. an MNC expanding from a traditional “premium-position” into lower-price segments. In addition, food companies serving broad segments of the population are faced with social responsibility issues, namely if they legitimately can deny people access to their products. So far three cases of Western companies with an extensive presence in emerging markets are available (see overview in Table 1). The results show that affordability is part of the marketing strategies in CEE of all these selected companies. A considerable share of the product portfolio and overall sales vol-ume in their CEE country organizations stem from affordable products. Higher growth rates of this segment than the overall market prove that there is a demand for this type of products. And it seems that these companies don’t see an insurmountable conflict in pursuing the two-pronged approach as indicated in the literature. All affordability strate-gies are run under a business perspective. They have to contribute to the growth and profitability goals, although social motives are mentioned as strong arguments too. The case of company A nicely shows how the affordability initiative started as a CSR project and then evolved into a business project. During this process they learned that they can make a “sustainable business case” out of it. This step was a break with so far existing concepts in the company, as it involved product development targeted to the demand and financial conditions of low-income households. Country organizations decide individu-ally if and to what degree they use affordability initiatives. In our cases Russian, Polish and Romanian subsidiaries were interested in the introduction of affordable products and looking for support within the group. The establishment of competence centers for affordability initiatives at global headquarters is a clear indication that a central hub is needed which provides basic strategy guidelines, offers assistance in the introduction of such initiatives and spreads best practices in the group. However, differences can be found in the market and branding strategy. While company A is using local brands in combination with the company brand, company C is using a strict two-tier strategy. Inter-national brands are sold parallel to local/regional ones which are used for the entry into the lower-income segment. Company B is covering all price points within a category with the international brand. So the brand stretches from the super-premium, premium and mainstream to the affordability segment. 4,000 “good value for money products” are sold worldwide today, in CEE the affordable category accounts for 25% of total turnover and grows twice as fast as the whole zone Europe. The differences can be explained via the basic approach towards branding: are they following a House of Brands or a Branded House architecture. As far as success factors are concerned all three cases show that the successful introduction of an affordable product range is based on (a) a commitment of the organization to the development of affordable products; (b) deep understanding of consumer behavior, buying patterns, and market situation; (c) utilization of synergies with higher priced brands; (d) focus on volume and scale via covering a large consumer base and (e) radical cost cutting along the whole value chain. In our ongoing research we try to increase the number of companies which run affordability initiatives to be able to cover a greater variety of industry and company types. Our research shows that multi-tier and affordability strategies can be found in other consumer and industrial markets in CEE too. This research shall help to clarify for which type of company it makes sense to ex-pand to lower-income segments. While so far the internal perspective was in the center of our research attention, market and competitive constellations should be covered in the future too.

The concept of customer orientation (CO) has been studied for quite a long time at first as a major part of market orientation and then as a separate construct. For emerging market the role of CO became paramount with the shift from the planned to the market economy. However, after more than two decades of transition Russian companies are still demonstrating rather a claim of being customer orientation, instead of implementing a long-term orientation towards customer. This paper focuses on reconsidering applying the Narver and Slater (1990) approach to conceptualizing and measuring customer orientation, and its empirical test and validation in the context of Russian economy. This study is based on data from two empirical studies on Russian companies, conducted during the pre-crisis (2008) and post-crisis (2010) period. Our results reveal that existing theory on customer orientation is not fully confirmed by the evidence from Russian companies.

New product promotion is an expensive and time-consuming process that suffers from a high failure rate. Scholars have examined the relationships between product introduction and sales force management, but the importance of the sales force in selling new products can still be further explored (Fu, Richards, , Hughes, , & Jones, 2010; Spanjol, Tam, Qualls, & Bohlmann 2011). The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of perceived sales management controls on a salesperson’s new products sales performance (i.e., electronic goods) in a business-to-business context. In addition, the direct, mediated, and moderating influences of market orientation on sales performance will also be investigated.Through the literature reviewed (e.g., Evans, Landry, Li, & Zou, 2007; Matsuo, 2009; Matear, Osborne, Garrett, & Gray, 2002), this paper proposes its hypotheses. In terms of the antecedents of sales performance, this research focuses on the effects of innovativeness (Matsuo, 2009). Second, based on the works of Evans et al. (2007) and Matsuo (2009), this study proposes that management controls (i.e., behavior-based control, knowledge-based control, and output-based control) both directly and indirectly affect sales department performance by first influencing innovativeness. Third, this research intends to examine the effect of organization psychological climate, which is market orientation, on the innovativeness and performance of sales departments (Matear et al., 2002). Finally, this study investigates the moderating effects of an organization’s market orientation on the relationship between sales innovativeness and performance (Matear et al., 2002).EMBA and MBA students were recruited as interviewers to gather data. The companies involved in this study were electronics product manufacturers that were publicly listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. A total of 315 complete responses were obtained. The target research question was “what are the determinants of a sales department’s new product sales performance?” This study used partial least squares (PLS) to examine the proposed model.This research found that sales department innovativeness is positively linked with new product sales performance. For the effectiveness of management controls, the results show that sales management controls (i.e., output-based control, behavior-based control, and knowledge-based control) positively affect department innovativeness but cannot influence performance directly. As for marketing orientation’s influences, this current research confirmed an organization’s market orientation-ness cannot positively affect sales department’s innovativeness and performance when selling new product. However, market orientation can positively moderate the relationship between innovativeness and performance. Based on the findings of this research, managerial implications have been put forth.

Economic fluctuation has a remarkable influence on firms and their performance (e.g., Deleersnyder, Dekimpe, Sarvavy, & Parker, 2004; Srinivasan, Rangaswamy, & Lilien, 2005). Given the extreme conditions and frequency of recessions (since World War II, recessions have occurred every six years; Srinivasan et al., 2005), understanding what kind of marketing is effective across the different phases of the economic cycle is a crucial question for marketers (e.g., Steenkamp & Fang, 2011; Srinivasan, Lilien, & Sridhar, 2011). In business-to-business markets, characterized by a strong emphasis on long-term customer relationships (e.g., Grönroos, 1997), the ability to gain a deep understanding of customers and their changing needs is a central determinant of firm performance. Therefore, in such markets, market orientation (MO) provides a particularly important source of competitive advantage. During an economic crisis, MO may also serve as an effective shelter against declining firm performance, particularly in industrial markets (Alajoutsijärvi, Klint, & Tikkanen, 2001). The key rationale is that highly market-oriented firms are able to rapidly and accurately identify changes in the marketplace and respond to shifting customer needs and competitors’ actions (Narver & Slater, 1990). While a vast body of literature evidences MO in general to yield performance gains for firms (Kirca, Jayachandran, & Bearden, 2005), some recent studies (e.g., Kumar, Jones, Venkatesan, & Leone, 2011) have questioned this relationship. Recent empirical studies (e.g., De Luca, Verona, & Vicari, 2010; Noble, Sinha, & Kumar, 2002) also propose that the different components of MO (i.e., customer orientation, competitor orientation and interfunctional coordination) may result in different performance outcomes. Furthermore, recent studies have shown the economic environment to play an important role in determining the performance outcomes and, thus, effective forms of MO (cf. Smirnova, Naudé, Henneberg, Mouzas, & Kouchtch, 2011). In this study, using panel data of 140 firms from before and after the great financial crisis, we examine the performance implications of distinct forms of MO 1) over the changing economic cycle 2) among different types of business-to-business focused firms. Employing ordinary least squares regression analysis, our findings suggest that MO and its distinct components yield varying performance impacts from economic upturn to downturn. Specifically, the impact of MO increases during downturn, with interfunctional coordination boosting performance and competitor orientation becoming detrimental. Subsequently, employing configurational analysis (fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis), our findings further indicate that the role and the most effective forms of MO vary across industry sectors, with MO having a particularly strong impact among firms operating in business-to-business services. We also conclude that, in a growing economy the role of MO has become more of a cost of competing (Kumar et al., 2011), whereas in an economic downturn MO still provides a valuable shelter against performance declines. Finally, our empirical findings are in line with contingency arguments, and suggest that the successful ways for a firm to relate with its markets depend on the dynamic firm- and industry-specific settings.

This paper is exploring the role of market orientation adoption by the Sales managers in the creation of effective cross functional relationship between Marketing and Sales and in company performance. Based on data collected from both Marketing and Sales managers in 132 consumer packaged goods companies, the study shows that higher levels of market orientation by the Sales managers are reducing the level of Marketing-Sales conflict as perceived by the Marketing managers and enhancing important performance metrics. The implications of the study for both theory and practice are discussed.

New health care services are salient in the supply chain. The market success of new health care services depends on the knowledge-based view to integrate organizational knowledge and attain service innovation performance. This study suggests that the hospitals integrate total market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation as organizational knowledge to sustain marketing operations advantages and achieve market performance in the new health care service supply chain.

The purpose of this study is to present the Market Orientation effects on Enterprise Management Performance. In order to carry out this research, we obtained 212 survey sheets and inspected ten assumptions based on the reliability, validity of the questionnaires. The results of regression analysis are summarized as follows; First, the factor of Market Orientation, intelligence generation, don’t influence on the Enterprise Management Performance significantly. Second, the element of Market Orientation, information dissemination, don’t have an important effect on the Enterprise Management Performance. Finally, the requisite of Market Orientation, information response, affects to Enterprise Management Performance significantly. Based on the results, the parts with intelligence generation and information dissemination will be improved in the manufacturer of the small businesses.

Business environment, competition among firms in recent years, diverse and fragmented by the symbol of the consumer has become very complex and intense. Nevertheless, for the best performance of firms differentiated their company strives to have unique core competencies. In this study, reviewing the internal customer support activities and existing research on market orientation and then how it affects the future strategy for the internal customer support activities. Through the results of this study, first, to appear understanding of the effect of education and training to customers in enterprise-wide, strategic plan through competitor analysis, improved communication between departments, etc need to design to be effective in performance of company in a long term when in planning and training for employees such as job training, service training and training for improving service mind. Second, employment stability and internal communications to the employee's customer orientation showed no significant affect. This is considered for employees due to lack of fear or anxiety, so the employer could focus on his role in the current organization willing to participate actively for goals of the organization. Finally external customer orientation in the employee's customer orientation did not affect the analysis results which is appeared to in companies are constantly communicating with employees through the company's position and the difference between the employee's position is necessary to look for ways to narrow down.

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of the entrepreneurship and market orientation of franchisers on the boundary-spanning behavior of franchisees in food-service companies in the Yeongnam region. This study also investigated the relationship between the entrepreneurship and market orientation of franchisers and sought to identify the effect of the boundary-spanning behavior of franchisees on their managerial performance. Based on literature reviews, 4 hypotheses were tested. The subjects responding in this study were owners or managers of franchise restaurants in Youngnam province. A total of 605 questionnaires were analyzed using the factor analysis, a reliability test, and structural equation modeling analysis. The results revealed that first, the entrepreneurship and market orientation of franchisers were positively related to the boundary-spanning behaviors of franchisees, and secondly, the entrepreneurship of franchisers was positively related to their market orientation. Finally, the boundary-spanning behavior of franchisees was positively related to their managerial performance. Therefore, food-service franchisers in Youngnam should have the entrepreneurship and market orientation to lead franchisees to have positive boundary-spanning behaviors and good performance.

The present study analyzed empirically the structural relationship among characters, market orientation and performance of CEO's in small and medium-sized companies. The analysis showed that market orientation is affected by CEO's characters in the industry. It was also revealed from the analysis that the business performance and technical renovation of small and medium-sized companies rely fairly on their market orientation. These findings are believed to have great significance in the process of creating market orientation by the industry. That is, CEO's will may play a very important role in pursuit of market orientation and, at the same time, may act as a vital factor for small and medium-sized companies to achieve business performance and to realize technical renovation.