FORMS OF MARKET ORIENTATION IN UK COMPANIES

Despite the importance of market orientation in the marketing and strategic management literature, it has been the subject of few conceptual and empirical studies. Also, the latter have addressed only the degree of market orientation and not its nature or form. The empirical study reported in this article focuses on the form of market orientation. Five different forms of market orientation were identified, along with three factors that discriminate between them. Although there are some performance differences between the forms of market orientation, the market environments that they are associated with are not significantly different. As well as providing additional empirical evidence, the results provide empirical support to, and extensions of, the conceptualization of market orientation given in the literature.