Market orientation and Business Performance : The Case of Indian Manufacturing Firms

Market orientation has come to be recognized as a key concept in marketing literature. Researches in other countries point to the presence of a positive relationship between market orientation and business performance. In the Indian context, however, little evidence exists to demonstrate that market orientation is an activity worth pursuing by the business firms. Based on an empirical investigation, the present paper reports a strong relationship existing between market orientation and various financial and non-financial measures of business performance among manufacturing firms in India. Adjusting for the effects of various moderating and control variables, the authors find this relationship to be holding true, irrespective of market conditions. The obvious managerial implication of the study is that it is worth investing resources in making organizations more market-oriented as all this gets amply paid by way of superior business performance.