The Impact of Market Orientation on Business Performance

A working title for the research:

“Investigating the relationship between Market Orientation and Business Performance of SMEs in Pakistan”.

Definition of the research:

Market orientation a term used by marketers as indicator of the degree to which firm implements its marketing concept (Komppula and Reijonen, 2010). A market oriented firm has a greater ability in achieving higher performance compared to non-market oriented firm (Agarwal et al., 2003). The concept of market orientation has received a great deal of consideration since the topic was re-introduced by Kohli and Jaworski (1990) and Narver and Slater (1990). The relationship between market orientation and firm performance is extensively highlighted and contended that market orientation is significant to organizations because of its strong relationship with performance. Overall, there is a positive correlation between market orientation and firm’s business performance at least in the perspective of industrialized countries (Cano et al., 2004). But research done in other perspectives, the nature of the relationship between market orientation and business performance is very ambiguous, with studies finding a positive relationship (Farrell, Oczkowski, and Kharabsheh ,2008; Martin-Consuegra and Esteban, 2007; Pelham, 1997; Pulendran et al., 2000; Singh, 2009; Kara et al., 2005; Kirca et al., 2005; Sin et al. 2005; Kaynak and Kara 2004; Verhees and Meulenberg 2004; Langerak 2003; Shergill and Nargundkar, 2005.), a strong positive relationship (Haugland, Myrtveit, and Nygaard, 2007; Megicks and Warnaby, 2008; Ramaseshan, Caruana, and Pang, 2002; Wood, Bhuian, and Kiecker, 2000), and even in some cases a weak relationship (Caruana, Pitt, and Ewing, 2003; Nwokah, 2008) were found between market orientation and business performance. It indicates a great deal of ambiguity in the literature about the course of the relationship between these two constructs. As discuss above majority of the empirical

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