What is Market(ing) Orientation?
Market orientation, as defined by Kohli & Jaworski (1990) and Narver & Slater (1990), has three components: (1) customer orientation — generating intelligence about customer needs; (2) competitor orientation — generating intelligence about competitor capabilities and moves; and (3) interfunctional coordination — sharing that intelligence across departments and acting on it as one firm. It is a culture, not a department. R&D, finance, supply chain, and HR all participate. Decades of meta-analysis have linked higher market orientation to higher growth and profit.
How Market(ing) Orientation actually works
The framework breaks down into the following moving parts. Knowing what each piece is — and what it is not — is what separates a B-grade answer from an A-grade answer in a written assignment.
- Customer orientation — continuous, structured listening (NPS, ride-alongs, ethnography, complaint logs)
- Competitor orientation — wargames, win-loss analysis, product teardowns, intelligence systems
- Interfunctional coordination — shared dashboards, cross-functional squads, common P&L
- Long-term horizon — invest beyond the current quarter to maintain the orientation
A worked example: Procter & Gamble
P&G's "Living It" and "Working It" programs send brand managers to actually live in target households and work behind the counter at retailers — a literal expression of customer orientation. The Connect+Develop open-innovation network is interfunctional coordination at the boundary of the firm. Every brand has a competitor playbook updated quarterly. The result is one of the most consistently market-oriented firms in CPG, and a track record of category leadership across more than 60 brands.
Don't lose marks for these
- Confusing market orientation with marketing orientation (focus only on the marketing department)
- Treating customer satisfaction surveys as the whole of customer orientation
- Letting competitor obsession crowd out customer focus
- Forgetting that interfunctional coordination requires structural change, not just slogans
How to use this on the exam
Score-maximizing moves
- Always cite all three components (customer, competitor, interfunctional)
- Reference Kohli & Jaworski or Narver & Slater for academic credibility
- Tie market orientation to financial outcomes for a complete answer
When to use Market(ing) Orientation (and when not to)
Use Market(ing) Orientation when your assignment asks you to analyze, structure, or recommend — and when you have at least two data points to populate every cell of the framework. Skip it when the question is asking for a numerical answer or a single recommendation, since Market(ing) Orientation is a structuring tool, not a calculator.