George A. Luffman

Implementing Marketing Strategy Through a Market Orientation

The adoption of specific marketing strategies is related to several factors in an organization including the organizations mission, objectives, resources, and market orientation. We report an exploratory study in which we define relationships between market orientation and marketing strategy in a high technology environment - the telecommunications industry in the United States. Market orientation is defined as a culture that influences how employees think and act. Our results indicate that a market orientation provides a context for the implementation of specific marketing strategies by serving as a moderator of operational marketing strategy. For example, those organizations who possess a strong market-oriented culture (high-spirited cultures) engage in value creation strategies such as market segmentation, developing new products/services for new markets, and product or service customisation. Those organizations possessing low market orientations (ineffectual cultures) generally practice less aggressive and internally focused strategies such as charging lower prices, providing limited customer service, product/service standardization, and undertake limited market research.

Market orientation and market strategy profiling: an empirical test of environment‐behaviour‐action coalignment and its performance implications

Organizational performance is greatly influenced by employee behaviours and the resulting market orientation that they possess. Market orientation is a behavioural culture that affects strategy formulation and strategy implementation, and how an organization interacts with its environment and adjusts to changes within that context. The relationship between market orientation and performance is robust across several environmental contexts that are characterized by varying degrees of market turbulence, competitive intensity, and products/services introduction rates. This study identifies co‐aligned market orientation and strategy profiles corresponding to unique competitive contexts that represent best practices for an organization seeking to maximize performance in a high technology environment. This relationship becomes dynamic when one considers the assertion that organization culture is synonymous with strategy and the evidence that the external environment affects organizational culture. As a result, the ability to profile ideal orientations will have significant strategic and performance implications for organizations that will contribute to the development of a sustainable competitive advantage.

Diversification and Performance

This is the key chapter in this book in that it identifies whether one policy towards diversification has been more or less successful than an alternative policy. This is the first large-sample research project to examine this issue in British industry. The chapter is structured such that the Introduction (5.1) explains some features of the diversification process which are not always clarified. It outlines the measurement of performance and after reviewing appropriate previous research it sets out some expectations for the results of the analysis. Then follow three sections, each representing a performance variable which, in this research, is considered to represent one of the stakeholders in the firm. This format, together with a summary will provide the outline for this and the next two chapters.

Behavioral approaches to marketing strategy implementation

The development and reinforcement of context‐specific behaviors support the implementation of marketing strategy. Discusses the limitations of traditional strategy implementation pursuits and then proceeds to report the results of two independent but related studies that consider two methods of behavior management – market orientation profiling, and behavioral repertoires – and their effect on marketing strategy and organizational performance. Results indicate that these methods provide a context for the implementation of specific marketing strategies by serving as a moderator of employee behavior and can be used strategically by organizations to guide service applications. Concludes by providing prescriptive steps that managers can consider in efforts to adopt these approaches to marketing strategy implementation.

Assessing Strategic Change

When seeking to assess the nature of strategic change there are potentially many different ways in which the research may be conducted. The choice of methodology may have a significant effect on the results and will need to be reviewed carefully when looking at the implications and drawing conclusions. The purpose of this chapter is to provide some detailed information on the approach to the research problem, the methodology used to tackle the problem and the sample of companies investigated. Parts of the chapter are technical and may not be of interest to the general reader, who could readily move on to Chapter 3. All the major constructs reviewed in this chapter are reiterated briefly at the appropriate point in the later chapters to facilitate understanding.

British Industry 1970–80

What happened to British industry in the 1970s? How did it manage in face of the unprecedented and discontinuous changes of the decade? These are questions of fundamental importance to a wide range of people, all of whom have an interest in the want-satisfying institution in society — the business firm. There have been many attempts to seek answers to these questions, but none has been based on a large sample and examined a wide range of issues.

Diversification, Performance and Industry

The objective of this chapter is to determine whether the industry a company operates in has an influence on the nature and extent of diversification and the resultant performance. The results of diversification on the performance of the company were outlined in Chapter 5.

Diversification in the 1970s

The increasing rate of change in the environment in which business was operating, coupled with the desire of senior managers to lead larger companies thereby reducing risk and/or enhancing status, inevitably led firms to extend their range of products beyond the traditional boundaries within which they had operated. This extension of company activities into new products and/or new markets is called diversification. This rather simplistic definition of diversification which will suffice for the present, will be extended as the chapter develops.

Diversification, Performance and Company Size

From Chapter 4 onwards each chapter has added a new dimension to the analysis. Chapter 4 was concerned with assessing the nature and extent of diversification in the sample. Was diversification a random process or were there identifiable movements which were supported by a significant proportion of the companies? After determining the nature and extent of diversification it was important to examine whether different diversification strategies had led to differences in performance. This was the subject of Chapter 5. Having examined diversification and performance it is important to determine whether other variables might be influencing the results. There are two factors which are the subject of much research and which might be considered to be influential in this research. The two factors are: the size of the company, which is examined in this chapter, and the industry in which the company operates, which is the focus of Chapter 7. The addition of a third dimension adds considerably to the complexity of the analysis, but as far as is possible the format adopted and concepts used are those from previous chapters.