Market Orientation & Profitability

He created a marketing orientation within his firm that talked about the benefits that could come from using his cosmetics could deliver. This simple act was a predictive movement that was the beginning of a shift in marketing theory from productorientation to a marketing or endbenefit orientation.

Petrof (1997) postulated that this shift was an example of "relationship marketing." He defines that term as "being oriented toward a long time horizon in contrast to the short-term orientation that existed in marketing before 1983...[consisting of] attracting, developing, and retaining customers" (Petrof, 1997, 26).

But, continues Petrof, is this approach substantially different from what businesses were doing prior to the 1983 benchmark?

This paper will examine the relationship of a company's chosen market orientation to its profitability. In subsequent sections, the following questions will be discussed:

A. Why is a marketing orientation related to profitability?

B. What are the critical factors that can affect a company's

. . .
efits on the P & L? Petrof, who was quoted above, points out that marketing "lags far behind other fields in historical research, and scholars typically quote only recent sources in their journal articles. Many concepts appear to be new only because their authors did not search back beyond the very recent past" (Petrof, 1997, 27). Because of this lag, much that is being written about "market orientation" is similar to the marketplaces in other historical eras, periods which were as competitive, if not more so, than the marketplace today. Says Petrof "in the 1920s and 1930s was as competitive as--if not more so than--it is today. To tap it effectively required marketing knowledge. With buyers in increasingly short supply, the marketer of the 1930s could scarcely afford to neglect customer relationships" (Petrof, 1997, 27). After the company has undergone the questioning process described above (there are far more questions than those five listed), the next step would be to determine  philosophically  what the company strategy should be. It is during this process that the management should allow creative thinking, and no ideas should be discarded, especially since there are fewer "right and wrong" answers. As Be
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Approximate Word count = 1662
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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