Susana Morales

2013

Market orientation (MO) has received much attention in recent years and has
become an essential topic in today's business world. MO is a marketing concept
which many companies implement and follow to survive in the current economical
environment. But the problem is that many companies do not know what MO means
and how it is implemented successfully. Specifically, the implementation of it in hightechnology
firms has been less investigated to date. Thus, less work has been done
to support the high-technology firms in becoming more market-oriented internally. A
firm’s MO entails both an internal and an external perspective. The enhancement of
the processes of intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and the
responsiveness to the generated and disseminated intelligence are the key figures of
an internal MO. This paper’s focus is on the development of an internal market
orientation in a high-technology context by considering the antecedents of MO as
potential barriers toward its implementation. The results show that a change towards
a new market-oriented firm philosophy expects a change in a firm’s structure and
processes. Moreover, the behaviour, emphasis and commitment of the management
and the employees play a crucial role for the successful market orientation
development within a high-technology firm. The role of a knowledge management
system is shown in this study as well as the characteristics of such firms, acting in
the high-technology sector.