Employee’s Market Orientation and Business Performance in Nigeria: Analysis of Small Business Enterprises in Lagos State

Abstract

Organization success is determined by the demand for its product or services. Many organization put in place methods and strategies that could enabled them attract customers and improved the quality and quantity of their product. One of the major methods in this direction is market orientation. Employees are influenced to consider organization interest and be involved or oriented to monitor their customers' loyalty and attitude towards their product to enable them to be competitive, productive and profitable. But despite its advantage, most small business enterprises (SBEs) in Lagos, the economic capital of Nigeria don't engage in market orientation. This paper examines different methods of market orientation and how it could be employed for improved SBEs performance in Lagos State. Two null hypotheses were formulated to test the relationship between customer orientation and sales growth and market orientation and SBE's profitability. Questions were formulated based on the hypotheses and questionnaires were distributed to top managers and investors of SBEs, out of which 95% of the respondents returned duly completed and properly filled questionnaires. The research findings show that many SBEs that engage in market orientation recorded substantial progress. But most other have not really applied this method, hence their low performance and profitability. The study recommends that market orientation should be used by SBEs for improved performance. Also, SBEs managers and owners should engage in market orientation to enable their enterprises more profitable and survive in changing, dynamic and turbulent business environment.

Market Orientation and FIRMS' Environmental Innovation: The Moderating Role of Environmental Attitude

“…Based on customer demand, customer‐oriented firms achieve profits by responding to desires and needs. As the consumer focus has shifted to products' greenness and environmental friendliness, and as firms seek to satisfy their customers and to create customer value, customer orientation would surely encourage firms' environmental innovation from the perspective of market pull (Dauda and Akingbade, ). This is particularly so for the proactive market orientation, which advocates the active exploration of the potential customer demand, instead of merely satisfying their existing needs, whereby firms can accomplish active environmental innovation even without receiving any feedback (Workman, ).…”

Market Orientation and Firm Performance among Nigerian SMEs: The Moderating Role of Business Environment

“…Since the work of Kohli and Jaworski (1990) and Narver and Slater (1990), many studies have been done to try to establish the link between market orientation and firm performance. Most of these studies have found a strong positive correlation between market orientation and performance (Hooley et al, 2000;Shoman & Rose, 2001;Grainer & Padanyi, 2005;Olavarriete & Friedman, 2008;Li & Justin, 2008;Morgan et al, 2009;Dauda & Akingbade, 2010); though there are a small number of studies that found no positive linear relationship between market orientation and firm's performance (Au & Tse, 1995;Demirbag et al, 2006). Previous studies have suggested a direct relationship between market orientation and business performance, using the business environment as moderator (Suliyanto and Rahab, 2012).…”

Performance Outcome of Market Orientation Behaviour among Botswanas’ Small Service Firms

“…Therefore, the anecdotal research conducted on market orientation and the mixed findings reported, complicate efforts amongst both academics and practitioners to conclude on the real effects of the construct upon business performance (Dauda, 2010). This is exacerbated by the absence of empirical research conducted on market orientation construct in Botswana.Accordingly,there are many calls for market orientation research in Low income Countries (e.g., Kuanda & Buatsi,cited in Burgess et al,2007).…”

“…Recent studies have provided empirical support for the positive impacts of MO on customer perceived quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and employees as well (Jaworski and Kohli, 1996;Kirca et al 2005;Dauda, 2010). Thus MO is critical to a firm's performance because it encourages and supports new product development to meet current and future market needs.…”