Dublin Core
Title
How sustainability orientation makes market-oriented firms more market-oriented
Abstract
Globalization and competition have forced most firms to develop competitive advantage in order to compete and survive. In this regard, market orientation and sustainability orientation can play a crucial role in rendering firms a competitive advantage. Market orientation relates to satisfying current and future customers’ needs. Literature indicates that market orientation contributes positively to business performance, and that market-oriented firms outperform non market-oriented firms. As a result, firms are forced to be market oriented even though becoming or increasing or maintaining a market orientation is costly, complex, and timeconsuming. Therefore, the costs of becoming market oriented must at least be offset by additional revenue. One of the sources of such additional revenue can be obtained by adhering to the principles of sustainability orientation (e.g., triple bottom line), which captures the whole set of values, issues and processes that firms must address in order to minimize any harm resulting from their activities and to create environmental, social and economical value. Thus, it is expected that firms that follow sustainability principles in addition to being market oriented should outperform firms that are market-oriented only. The premise for such expectation is that customers are more attracted to firms that care also about social and environmental aspects of society (and not just financial) than firms that are marketoriented only (i.e., care about customers’ needs just for financial reasons). The purpose of this study is to explore relative contribution of market-oriented firms, and market-oriented firms with a sustainability orientation. To assess relative contributions of both the orientations, we speculate a trade-off between them, and recommend that any additional revenue generated from sustainability initiatives should be redeployed to enhance market orientation that contributes further to enhancing business performance. Keywords: Market Orientation, Sustainability, Business Performance, 3BL
Keywords
Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed
PeerReviewed
Date
2012-05-31
Extent
1094