Marketing Orientation in Indian Industry

An instrument with 54 items was developed to measure marketing orientation of Indian companies. Ninety-one senior marketing executives from a cross section of Indian manufacturing companies provided data on their perceptions about the marketing orientation of their company through a mail questionnaire. These executives also provided perceptual measures of the extent of customer/market orientation in the different elements of the marketing mix used by their organisation and also give an assessment of the relative performance of their company on three indicators of sales growth, profitability and increase in market share over the last three years. The following were the major conclusions of the study: 1. The average marketing orientation of the Indian companies was found to be 2.6, on a 5-point scale with 1 representing the highest orientation. On a 54-item scale the average total score was found to be 140.6 with a standard deviation of 21.9. The conclusion is, thus, clear that Indian companies are still at a stage where primary orientation in their marketing activities is that of selling concept and adoption of the marketing concept is still a far off dream. Only 14 out of 91 responses could be classified into high orientation group with total score upto 120. This picture emerged despite the fact that sample was biased in favour of better managed companies in highly competitive situations. The actual average of the Indian companies in general would be expected to be considerably lower than the figures that emerged out of this study. 2. The change orientation of the Indian companies in product policy matters was found to be low and companies don’t seem to fully explore the potential of modifications in existing product line to serve the needs of new customers/markets. 3. The respondents expect the government policies to be the single most important factor in bringing about changes in the future markets and expect considerable increase in R & D as well as in market research efforts on the part of the Indian companies to cope with future changes. 4. The study indicates that strategic orientation of Indian companies is weak and policies are made out of operational necessity. Also, reasoning behind many policy decisions is not fully understood within the organizations. 5. While considerable field information is collected by the Indian companies, most of it is unstructured, its copilation ineffective and its reach to the top management is poor. Nor is the information effectively used in marketing planning. 6. Marketing planning, though widespread, appears to have primarily a sales orientation and strategic aspects of implementing the plan are ignored in the process. 7. The marketing concept appears to be primarily a concern of the marketing function alone and marketing orientation is yet to permeate within the entire organization. 8. Extent of marketing orientation within the organization was found to have more impact on product and pricing policies, and it has no significant effect on promotion and distribution decisions. However, the decisions in the last two elements of the marketing mix were generally found to be market oriented, irrespective of overall marketing orientation of the organization. 9. The research indicated that market orientation score, as measured in this study, proved to be a good predictor of market performance and explained 60%, 59% and 88% of the variance in measures of relative sales growth, profitability and increase in market share.