بازارگرایی در سازمان های کیفیت گرا و تاثیر آن بر عملکرد آنها

Studying the impact of market orientation on business performance has been a popular research topic in recent years. However, there seems to be a lack of empirical studies that measure market orientation in quality management environments, even though marketing and quality management are considered complementary business approaches. This paper explores the effects of market orientation on a sample of 304 quality-oriented firms, and its impact on their performance. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the measures of market orientation, quality management implementation, and business performance. Correlation analysis was performed to determine whether market orientation is associated with quality management implementation and a firm's performance. Three aspects of market orientation are found to correlate with 10 critical factors of quality management implementation, and with four dimensions of business performance. The findings indicate that market orientation is strongly correlated with quality management implementation and business performance in a positive direction in the sampled firms. The implications of the results are discussed, and suggestions for further research are proposed.

The prevalent business environment is highly competitive and is characterized by such norms as the globalization and deregulation of markets, cut-throat competition, and the ever-rising expectations of customers. To compete and survive in the fiercely competitive global marketplace, firms have to pay more attention to the needs of customers as competition intensifies, and offer them quality products or services to satisfy their increasing expectations. They must constantly innovate in every aspect of their business operations for continuous improvement of their products and services. Therefore, they need a strategy that aligns the organization with the stakeholders, and a management system that facilitates the continuous improvement of every facet of their operations. Firms must recognize the pursuit of desirable outcomes through these efforts as their critical management objective. To these ends, many firms are changing their business operations from a production-oriented approach to a market-oriented approach. The market-oriented approach requires that customer satisfaction be put at the very heart of business operations. At the same time, many organizations resort to quality management and embrace the concept of total quality management (TQM), which links organizational visions, missions, operating principles and quality with satisfying customer needs as the top priority (Willborn and Cheng, 1994). Various forms of quality management systems such as statistical process quality control (SPC), quality assurance, ISO 9000 quality standards and TQM are being pursued for business improvement and to achieve the goal of customer satisfaction. Quality management and the market-oriented approach to doing business, both anchored in the notion of customer satisfaction, are increasingly embraced by many firms as the key to gaining a competitive edge. A number of studies have been conducted to examine the impact of quality management, particularly TQM (see e.g., Hendricks and Singhal, 1997; Powell, 1995), on business performance. In general, these studies tend to support the notion that quality management is a significant contributor to company success. Some studies, however, have questioned the value of quality management (see e.g., Harari, 1993) to performance. It has been suggested that the lack of successful quality management implementation can be attributed to the missing marketing link (see e.g., Kordupleski et al., 1993). There has been a lot of research concerning market orientation and customer focus (see e.g., Kohli and Jaworski, 1990; Narver and Slater, 1990). A review of the marketing literature shows that marketing researchers and practitioners have dealt with product quality (Cravens et al., 1988), service quality (Zeithaml et al., 1988), and customer satisfaction (Peterson and Wilson, 1992). Links between market orientation and quality management have also been widely discussed (see e.g., Mohr-Jackson, 1996; Witcher, 1990), but these studies have been descriptive rather than empirical in nature. Generally, there is a lack of empirical studies that examine the role of market orientation in quality management, especially with respect to its management and performance implications for quality management implementation. In this regard, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of market orientation in the quality management context and its impact on business performance. The fundamental research questions are whether there is any link between market orientation and quality management implementation, and whether market orientation adds value to the business performance of quality-oriented firms. This paper adds to the existing literature by exploring the role of market orientation in quality management implementation and its impact on business performance. Further, linkages between market orientation, quality management implementation, and business performance are empirically examined. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. First, a review of the literature on marketing and market orientation is presented. Second, the role and nature of market orientation in the context of quality management and its performance implications are discussed, followed by the formulation of hypotheses for testing. The research methodology used is then described, with due attention being given to a description of the sample, and the validity and reliability issues associated with the measurement instrument. This is followed by analysis of the research results, which reveal the linkages between market orientation, quality management implementation, and business performance. Finally, the findings of the study are summarized and the limitations and directions for further research are discussed.

Customers today are highly informed and knowledgeable, and are generally more demanding. They not only expect to have their needs satisfied in the sense of “conformance to requirement”, but also anticipate experiencing continuing improvements in the product and service they receive. For many years, the marketing concept has been recognized by many firms and academics as an important aspect of business management, and many firms have invested in quality management efforts to upgrade their product and service quality to satisfy ever-increasing customer expectations. Although both marketing and quality management are anchored in the notion of customer satisfaction, and the marketing/performance and quality management/performance links have been extensively addressed in various studies (Powell, 1995; Narver and Slater, 1990), there is a lack of empirical studies examining the role of market orientation in the quality management context and its performance impact. This study extends previous research on the performance impact of market orientation to the quality management context. The findings lend support to the prediction that market orientation is positively associated with quality management implementation and a significant predictor of business performance in quality-oriented firms. The results suggest that a firm with a market orientation is likely to have favorable quality management implementation and performance results. To this end, marketing acts as a window through which customer needs in the process of quality improvement can be discerned, and ensures that market intelligence will be of the utmost importance in guiding organizational responses to customer needs and market changes. The need to develop an outward-looking focus on market needs rather than an inward focus and greater marketing participation in other functional areas, to enhance customer value and increase customer satisfaction in quality management implementation, is highlighted. Furthermore, this study provides empirical evidence to complement the qualitative interview findings of Morgan and Piercy (1998) that marketing should play a pivotal role in quality strategy development. The results suggest that the marketing role, i.e., in market intelligence generation, dissemination, and responsiveness to it, is important in quality management implementation. Marketing possesses expertise about customers that can enable it to make a valuable contribution by collecting and analyzing marketing information and representing the voice of the customer in the quality improvement process. It plays a discerning role in the identification of customer needs and provides essential input, i.e., market intelligence, for the pursuit of quality throughout the organization. As a market-oriented focus aligns the organization to the continuous creation of superior value for customers (Baker and Sinkula, 1999), it creates an environment that increases opportunities for learning about markets, for sharing information among functions in the organization so that common interpretations of quality are reached, and for taking coordinated action (Slater and Narver, 1996) in quality improvement efforts. To this end, the market intelligence generated must be disseminated to the relevant implementers and shared with other functional areas to enhance customer value and increase customer satisfaction. The result would be integrated effort across organizational functions to achieve customer value, which in turn would lead to improved business performance (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990). The findings of this study substantiate the speculation of Kordupleski et al. (1993) that, with the market-oriented business approach, successful implementation of quality management and improved business performance should be anticipated. It should be understood that marketing plays an important role in quality management implementation and that there is a need for greater participation by marketing in the quality improvement process. The areas in which marketing can contribute to quality management implementation are numerous, for example, information generation, customer satisfaction monitoring, and use of market intelligence for quality planning and measurement. The role of marketing in quality management implementation must be properly recognized. Practical methods to integrate marketing into quality management implementation must be developed. Such methods might include periodic market research and focus group interviews to discern customer needs, as well as the practice of internal marketing (Grönroos, 1990), where non-marketing staff perform their tasks in a marketing-like manner, to enable organization-wide generation and dissemination of market intelligence for a timely organizational response to fast-evolving customer needs. While other functional staff do not necessarily need personally to perform marketing tasks, an understanding of market orientation and the way in which it can reinforce quality management implementation should prove beneficial. Quality management should have an increased chance of success through a market-oriented focus and the effective use of market intelligence to prevent inward focus in the implementation process. In addition to having marketing assume the roles of customer window and quality leader in the quality improvement journey, firms should also recognize the philosophical links between marketing and quality management and the effective use of market intelligence to inform employees in different functional areas of the needs and expectations of customers in the quality management implementation process. The expected result would be an enhanced organizational capability to design and deliver the product/service offerings that make a satisfied customer—the ultimate objective of quality management.