The Effect of Individual Market Orientation on Sales Performance: An Integrated Framework for Assessing the Role of Formal and Informal Communications

Abstract

To gain competitive advantages, companies expect their sales forces to execute selling strategies consistent with their market-oriented culture. Drawing on understandings of market orientation, organizational communication, and role theory, the author develops an integrated framework demonstrating the performance impact of individual market orientation (IMO) through formal and informal communications. This article also considers the moderating effects of role ambiguity and role conflict in the IMO-performance relationship. Five propositions are developed to bring new insights to these complex and important relationships and to encourage future research into the nature of frontline communication in the implementation of market orientation.Market orientation (MO), also known as organizational culture, provides norms that guide a firm's marketing implementation process in order to effectively create superior customer value and continually respond to market needs (Narver and Slater 1990;Slater and Narver 1995). In the past two decades, research in this area has made considerable contributions to the conceptualization of MO (Kohli and Jaworski 1990), its measurement (Deshpandé and Farley 1998; Kohli, Jaworski, and Kumar 1993), its impact on organizational performance and overall business strategies (Haugland, Myrtveit, and Nygaard 2007;Kirca, Jayachandran, and Bearden 2005), and its impact on a firm's relations with stakeholders (Ferrell et al. 2010). However, although prior research has greatly advanced understanding of MO antecedents and performance outcomes, there are important voids in the literature.With regard to the underlying mechanisms that link MO and organizational performance, research has unveiled several mediators: organizational innovativeness (Im and Workman 2004;Ledwith and O'Dwyer 2009), organizational learning (Gebhardt, Carpenter, andSherry 2006;Hult, Ketchen, and Slater 2005), operational efficiency (Chang et al. 1999), and relationship commitment (Taylor et al. 2008). A successful MO requires an effective information dissemination process by which a market-oriented culture is transferred and innovative ideas in response to changes in customer needs are communicated (Homburg, Krohmer, and Workman 2004;Homburg and Pflesser 2000). However, prior research has not thoroughly examined the mediating role of communications in MO implementation. Importantly, frontline employees, such as salespeople, play a critical role in this process because of their privilege of interacting with customers. They learn constantly from the marketplace, and communicate the received information about the firm's offerings throughout the organization to keep pace with customers' changing needs. A combination of formal and informal communications is advantageous to salespeople to maximize the quality and quantity of the market information (Maltz and Kohli 1996). A market-oriented salesperson, therefore, should capitalize on different forms of communication (i.e., formal and informal) to exchange information between custome...

Mediating effects of individual market orientation on the link between learning orientation and job performance

“…Besides, Ferreras-Méndez et al (2016) argued that the desire to explore something new about customers is not important to develop deep relationships with customers. In order for market oriented salespeople to build long-term profitable relationships, the roles of formal and informal communications are deemed imperative (Lai, 2016). Drawing from Lai's (2016) contention, different communication channels used by the salespeople and their clients might affect their levels of mutual disclosure and interpersonal relationships.…”

Market Communication: Ethical and Praxeological Dimensions

“…(Mitchell, 1982). Effective communication increases the company's performance (Lai, 2016). The communication process consists of many elements, which list, more or less numerous, depending on the interpretation and the approach of each author.…”

“…The latter issue also involves the fundamental problem of the credibility of the source itself, as consumers are suspicious of corporate social responsibility initiatives undertaken by companies (Jahdi & Acikdilli, 2009;Lock et al, 2016). Marketing managers themselves, through their unethical behavior, may also influence the negative image of this activity (Garbarski, 2012), just as the attitude and behavior of salespeople directly affect consumers' perceptions of products, brands and companies (Lai, 2016). In addition, the unethical behavior of the company's top management can have a strong negative impact on other employees (Drumwright & Murphy, 2009).…”

Exploring the determinants and consequences of salesperson market orientation behavior

“…In response to the current highly competitive sales environment, SMOB is a more comprehensive approach and provides greater value than the traditional wisdom of customer orientation. Instead of only focusing on the aspects of customers, SMOB puts more emphasis on the integration and deployment of customer knowledge, competitor intelligence, and product knowledge in the creation of advantages in personal sales activities (Lai, 2016). This corresponds to the service-dominant logic stating that knowledge acts as the primary source of competitive advantage as well as the fundamental component of differentiation (Lusch et al, 2007;Vargo and Lusch, 2004).…”