جهت گیری بازار و انتظارات عاملان خرده فروشی

Market orientation, and particularly the link with business performance, has been widely studied using the new measurement systems emerging in the 1990s. However, few successful efforts have been made to evaluate the impact of market orientation on operational employee characteristics or behavior. An exploratory study of market orientation in UK retail companies, grounded in case study research, adopts a novel survey design that compares managerial perceptions of market orientation with operational employee beliefs and attitudes. The study highlights an important issue neglected in the existing literature — the impact of enhanced employee expectations about management behavior in market-oriented companies and the influence on employee behavior of the confirmation or disconfirmation of those expectations by management. We suggest that it is the neglect of this intervening variable that has partly confounded attempts to demonstrate a clear positive relationship between market orientation and operational employee characteristics, such as morale, job satisfaction, and retention. The findings show that employees in market-oriented companies are aware of service and quality imperatives, but report little of the changes in their job attitudes in terms of motivation, team spirit, or autonomy in the workplace, that are predicated by the literature. These findings offer several new insights and identify important directions for executives and marketing scholars in addressing the market orientation issue.

There has been substantial academic and practitioner debate concerning market orientation since the 1950s (see Kohli and Jaworski, 1990). The late 1980s saw significant advances in the development of a market orientation construct for empirical evaluation. Since that development, much analytical effort has been devoted to defining, conceptualizing, and operationalizing constructs of market orientation (see for example, Cadogan and Diamantopoulos, 1995, Deng and Dart, 1994, Kohli and Jaworski, 1990, Narver et al., 1990, Ruekert, 1992 and Wrenn, 1997). Two conceptualizations of market orientation have gained wide support: the information-based view of market orientation developed by Kohli and Jaworski (1990) and the culture-based interpretation of market orientation tested by Narver and Slater (1990). These advances triggered considerable debate on the association between market orientation and organizational performance (see for example, Jaworski and Kohli, 1993, Diamantopoulos and Hart, 1993 and Slater and Narver, 1994). However, few studies have examined the effects of market orientation on operational-level employees, in terms of their perceptions of work-related issues or their behavior and job attitudes (Jaworski and Kohli, 1993). Those studies that have commented on the effects of market orientation on operational employees, have concentrated on (and typically collected data from) executive or top management informants. The goal of this paper is to complement existing research findings through evaluating the effects of market orientation on operational-level employees in retail organizations, i.e., those personnel employed at the customer interface in the retail outlet. Our argument mirrors that of the internal marketing theorists who argue that one important issue is winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of operational employees if market orientation is to succeed (e.g., Piercy, 1997). The market orientation literature has moved increasingly from the issues of definition and measurement to those of implementation, i.e., how can firms become more market oriented, if that is part of their strategy (Narver et al., 1998)? Given that employee attitudes and employee behavior are central to the two most widely recognized conceptualizations of market orientation Narver et al., 1990 and Kohli and Jaworski, 1990, it is surprising that empirical work in this area is, as yet, relatively rare. Our study is grounded in detailed qualitative case study research, leading to subsequent survey research. For these reasons, we believe that our research contributes several new insights into how the beliefs and attitudes of operational employees, and particularly their expectations about management behavior, mediate the effects of management actions to enhance market-oriented behavior by employees. These insights have important implications for managers and researchers in this field in better understanding the issues to be addressed in more effectively implementing market orientation strategies. We first consider the literature concerning the effects of market orientation, both in terms of organizational performance and in terms of the effects upon organizational members. The research design and methodology adopted is discussed, together with the summary findings of three case studies leading to the development of a propositional inventory. A mailed questionnaire survey of operational-level retail employees is used to present a preliminary evaluation of these propositions. A discussion of a series of implications for both marketing scholars and practitioners underlines the potential importance of this line of investigation.

Our study of market orientation in UK retail companies has attempted to generate new insights into the conventional literature by the comparison of managerial perceptions of market orientation with employee beliefs and attitudes in a relatively novel approach. While surrounded by several important research limitations, the findings are notable in several respects. We found clear evidence that market orientation is associated with employee beliefs about service quality and customer focus. This suggests that at least in market-oriented firms employees are aware of the importance placed by management on service quality and customer focus. However, other study findings cast substantial doubt on the extent to which this awareness may produce behavior change and enhanced performance at the customer interface. We found that market orientation was highly associated with employee beliefs that management should plan strategically and that the organization should adopt a long-term orientation. This highlights a new issue not previously evaluated in the market orientation literature — the nature of employee expectations about certain types of managerial behavior in developing and implementing market orientation, and the importance of the confirmation or disconfirmation of these employee expectations on important outcomes in the workplace and the marketplace. The identification of this issue for study has important implications for management and for scholars of market orientation. The significance of these findings is underlined by the study results showing little clear relationship between market orientation and important operational-level employee job attitudes. One interpretation of these findings is that employees in market-oriented companies are aware of service and customer focus imperatives, but also form higher expectations of management behavior, while evidencing little change in their own attitudes. The degree to which this finding can be validated, then the more urgent the need for managerial and research focus on the linkages between market orientation and employee characteristics and behavior.