Market Orientation and Business Performance

The provided document is an assignment that delves into the concept of market orientation in businesses. It references various studies and research papers to understand how market orientation affects a company's operational activities, managerial ties, and overall performance. The references cover a range of topics from understanding older consumers to designing export performance models based on organizational orientations. This analysis can be useful for students of marketing, business management, or related fields, providing insights into how businesses can effectively orient themselves towards their markets to achieve success.

AS1 RESIT- MARKETING
ORIENTATION

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This business report summarises marketing orientation and its components as the major
key for defining the strategies, performance goals, roles and responsibilities in any business
organisation. It aims to find a meaningful relationship between marketing decision and
organizational performance, evaluates market practice to ascertain that how these practices create
a base for the working of an organisation in line with the company's goals and objectives. For
developing a complete understanding of the topic, Tesco has been selected to critically evaluate
and analyse the nature of marketing organisation and its impact on Tesco. It demonstrates how
effectively marketing tasks such as advertising have been carried out in Tesco for reorganizing
their mission and vision as well as goals and objectives. This report also entails a detailed
analysis of Tesco and the strategic actions undertaken by it in response to competition thus,
outlining how external and internal organisational information affects their planning strategies.

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Research aim, objectives and questions:.....................................................................................1
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................2
Evaluation of marketing practices ..............................................................................................2
Analysis of Impact of market decision process on organisational performance.........................3
Analysis of impact of organisational information for implementation of effective market
planning strategies.......................................................................................................................3
To demonstrate ability to work effectively as a leader...............................................................4
METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................................................4
DISCUSSION..................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6

Topic:
“Exploring the nature of marketing orientation and its impact on Tesco Plc”
INTRODUCTION
Market Orientation refers to a business' customer-centric philosophy tailored to identify,
create and satisfy the needs or wants of the customers and generate revenue for the organisation
at the same time (Chung, 2012). To elevate this discussion in length, Tesco PLC has been
selected which is the largest groceries and general merchandise retailer of UK. Additionally, this
report also covers the literature review of marketing orientation, explains the conceptual tools
and techniques of marketing process, applicability of marketing strategies across Tesco and
provides recommendations thereof.
Research aim, objectives and questions:
Aim:
To explore the nature of marketing orientation in Tesco PLC from academic and practical
perspective.
Objectives:
 To understand and evaluate the application of marketing practices across Tesco to
achieve its long term goals.
 To critically analyse market decision process, planning and control to produce superior
marketplace performance.
 To analyse organisational information with dynamic external environment data for
implementing effective market planning strategies.
 To demonstrate ability to work in a leadership role in order to carry out marketing tasks.
Questions:
 How marketing practices helps to achieve organisational goals?
 How market decision process contributes in enhancing organizational performance?
 How organisational information is helpful to carry out effective marketing planning
strategies based on external environment?
 What are the abilities of leaders in order to carry out marketing tasks?
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Evaluation of marketing practices
Market Orientation of a company defines the type of marketing practices adopted by the
organization thus affecting the product or service mix of any organisation. Market orientation
theory has undergone many changes based on varying perspectives of researchers regarding this
concept. Slater and Narver (1995) state that customer orientation relates to understanding
customer needs and preferences well enough to create superior value and satisfaction for them on
a continuous basis. Tesco implements marketing practices such as customer-centric product
development, cost effective production efficacies and low pricing strategies making it the most
preferred grocery retailer.
Competitor orientation associates to the awareness of rivals regarding their short-term
and long-term capabilities. Hence, any changes made by them impacts the strategic decisions of
the organisation. Tesco entered into a strategic alliance with Carrefour to increase its
sustainability as well as competence to face challenges that come into effect after Sainsbury-
Asda Merger Deal. This shows Tesco's capability to change its strategies as and when the
situation arises.
Inter-functional co-ordination pertains to using of company's resources to create value for
target customers through research and innovation. Here, adopting market practices, mostly
innovation, that create value for the customers is the main objective of the organisation. Market
disruption caused due to introduction of artificial intelligence has led Tesco to introduce robotic
assistance, 'click and collect' and 'if this, then that' concept to improve robustness of their
business models.
Organization culture implies the internal environment of any organisation. Kohli and
Jaworski (1990) say that market orientation generates market intelligence across each level of
the business entity. This results in increased emphasis on committed leadership, communication
and collaboration linking managerial behaviour to customer satisfaction. Tesco has always
supported customer orientated organisational culture, thus encouraging responsiveness among
the internal employees to understand the customer needs and values at an individual level.
Creation of long-lasting shareholder values is another important component of
Marketing Orientation. Tesco's customer Club-Card loyalty programme encourages brand
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loyalty among its users as well as aims to provide sustainable development, long-term viability
and profitability to the organization through data collection using Hadoop Model and AI.
Analysis of Impact of market decision process on organisational performance
Market Decision Process and Organisational performance are inter-related conceptual
frameworks. Based on grounds of previous theoretical frameworks described Gunter (2012), the
development of marketing orientation directly contributes to the business' performance.
However, performance does not directly contribute to the marketing orientation of the business.
It revealed that market scholars decided on the type of marketing strategies were to be adopted to
enhance company performance thus forming a cause-effect relationship between the two
variables.
Impact of decision process on organisational performance is restricted to the fact that
performance relates to only achieved performance and not the future goals and objectives of the
organisation. Also, according to Johnson, Martin and Saini (2012), any strategy related to
segmentation-targetting and positioning would directly to performance as these decisions would
provide the foundation for other related decisions such as product mix, after-sales service and
feedback from customers. Tesco's decision to imbibe artificial intelligence at its stores instead of
employees would effect the workforce as well as customer behaviour. Tesco's ability to
implement this decision would ensure whether the company is able to achieve superior
performance or incur losses in the face of increasing competition and reduced market share.
Analysis of impact of organisational information for implementation of effective market
planning strategies
As explained by Labbé and Musil (2014), organisational information refers to the facts
and figures, internal and external, related to an organisation. In general, this information helps
the internal management to identify, forecast, plan and control future actions of the organisation
as well as help the external users to make important decisions specifically related to investment.
The external environment affects the operational activities of an organisation such as Tesco
directly or indirectly.
Any changes in the external environment can be illustrated by Sainsbury-Asda Merger
that posed threat to the market share of Tesco. Hence, in order to cope up with this increased
competition from its rivals, Tesco joined hands with Carrefour, Europe's largest retailer to
narrow down the price war between Sainsbury-Asda and Tesco. Apart from that Tesco pulled out
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products and reduced variety of offerings by restocking its stores with own brands so as to fight
Amazon Fresh launch in UK.
These strategies came into effect after there was a change in the external environment
thus increasing economies of scale and using competitor's capabilities and internal core
competencies to its advantage.
To demonstrate ability to work effectively as a leader
Tesco holds the largest market share in UK as a grocery and general merchandise retailer.
Being the market leader requires certain skills and roles to be inculcated in the organisation's
internal culture as well as externally. Levine and Zahradnik (2012) agrees that to carry out
marketing task as an effective leader, good interpersonal skills, self-confidence, motivation and
persistence to perform are some of the crucial qualification requirements. Tesco's marketing
tasks would include developing and implementing of marketing strategies regarding sales and
promotions. Also, any change in the external environment, specifically competition, would
require Tesco's managers to be agile in changing its action plans. Advertising is a marketing
task that helps in promotion of goods and services produced by an organization to increase sales
and generate revenue.
Tesco's aims to rebuild trust and create a brand image as the most loved brand among its
customers after the brand safety scandal recently. In order to achieve this the marketing manager
of Tesco would need to develop an advertising strategic plan that customers would connect to
demonstrating that the brand cares about them. “Every Little Helps” is one such strategy adopted
by the organisation where it increased number of staff in the stores, conducted a range reset
through intensive market research thus reducing the diversity of products it sold and refocused its
efforts to prioritise its customers. The manager makes sure that responsiveness between internal
employees and customers is high especially at the checkout points in its stores where queues tend
to be huge.
METHODOLOGY
The contextual business report draws helps from qualitative data sources to conduct
research and collect information regarding concepts of marketing orientation and Tesco.
Qualitative data sources are those that include smaller sample and are mostly based on
observation (Meyer-Waarden, Benavent and Castéran, 2013). These sources include
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observations, action research, individual interviews. Additionally, secondary data sources such as
Journals, Magazines, Literary works of marketing scholars including articles and theoretical
frameworks as well as Tesco's website have also been taken into consideration while conducting
this research (Ormrod, 2013). Apart from this, an environmental analysis has been carried out to
ascertain the factors affecting the market decision process, planning and control as well as
marketing practices of Tesco in response to changes in retail industry's external environment.
DISCUSSION
As per the aforementioned theoretical perspective, it can be inferred that different
marketing practices are required to be formulated by an organisation in order to be responsive to
continual changes in the external and internal environment of a business to achieve its pre-
defined goals and objectives (Pless, Maak and Waldman, 2012). Tesco has been able to imbibe
these marketing practices by truly centralizing its activities around the customers it caters to,
based on their needs and preferences. Some of these practices include low price strategies,
customer centric product development action plans as well as using an innovative approach to
increase competence in changing environment. Apart from this, a critical analysis of market
decision in relation to organisational performance has inferred that the two are inter-related to
each other where performance is stated to be a dependent variable and market decision is an
independent variable. This is due to the fact that every decision is formulated and implemented
initially as a result of which the performance whether increases, decreases or remains unchanged.
As far as organisational information is concerned it is both important to the organisation
as well as its rivals since it helps in identification, forecasting and planning of strategic actions
based on organisation's and its rivals internal as well as external capabilities. Therefore any data
collected through organisation information is important for review of internal performance for a
business and at the same time it is effective for the business to create new competencies in order
to survive future changes (Taghavi Shavazi and et.al., 2015). Therefore it is important for a
business to be aware of its external environment as much as its responsiveness to internal
organisational changes. Lastly, a discussion on leadership role while carrying out marketing
tasks is demonstrated by illustrating an advertising strategies adopted by Tesco PLC in its efforts
to refocus their aim to being a customer-centric brand. Since a leader requires to be agile and
adaptable to new market changes it is important for Tesco to for carrying out the task of creating
and implementing a constructive advertising strategy that would not only provide a shield from
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its competition but also help in gaining market share in the business environment. For this,
leadership qualities have been discussed and their importance has been analysed in regards to
changes in external environment.
As to prevent organisation from impact of these factors, company must evaluate elements and its
effects so they can reduce affect of factors on organisations. There is always need for analysing
the environmental factors for organisation as company can not make plan and policies without
analysing the factors. There is a need for frequent monitoring of external environment as it helps
to improve the productivity of organisation (Toppinen, Wan and Lähtinen, 2013). This is very
crucial for any business as effective planning would develop effective strategies which would not
only help in generation of revenue but also expansion of customer base.
CONCLUSION
From the above business report it can be concluded that application of market practices is
very crucial. These practices must be adopted in line with organization's vision, mission and
beliefs. This report focused on a critical evaluation of Tesco PLC through application of
academic concepts in a practical situation. Through this research and discussions made, it was
inferred the philosophy of marketing orientation is important when the organisation models its
business on a customer-centric approach by prioritizing fulfilling their needs at its core.
Leadership, market decision and performance also play an important role. In order to study how
the leadership role is effective in carrying out marketing tasks, Tesco PLC's recent changes were
researched through observation and secondary research. Through these it was concluded that
Tesco has been able to overhaul its operations to achieve customer satisfaction as its main
motive. Apart from this, market decisions and planning strategies are crucial for achievement of
goals of organisations. There are some tools and techniques in marketing planning and
controlling which can be used by organisation for marketing decision process. These include
analysing internal competencies and external environmental changes to understand and
implement required changes in the business organization. Based on this one can understand that
market decision directly affects the performance of a business and not the other way round as
these decisions form the philosophies on which the operational activities are carried out in a
business.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Slater, S.F. and Narver, J.C., 1995. Market orientation and the learning organization. Journal of
marketing. 59(3), pp.63-74.
Kohli, A.K. and Jaworski, B.J., 1990. Market orientation: the construct, research propositions,
and managerial implications. The Journal of Marketing, pp.1-18.
Chung, H. F., 2012. Export market orientation, managerial ties, and performance. International
Marketing Review. 29(4). pp.403-423.
Gunter, B., 2012. Understanding the older consumer: The grey market. Routledge.
Johnson, J. L., Martin, K. D. and Saini, A., 2012. The role of a firm's strategic orientation
dimensions in detChung, H. F., 2012Gunter, B., 2012Johnson, J. L., Martin, K.
Dermining market orientation. Industrial marketing management. 41(4) pp.715-724.
Labbé, D. and Musil, C., 2014. Periurban land redevelopment in Vietnam under market
socialism. Urban Studies. 51(6). pp.1146-1161.
Levine, H. and Zahradnik, A. G., 2012. Online media, market orientation, and financial
performance in nonprofits. Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing. 24(1).
pp.26-42.
Meyer-Waarden, L., Benavent, C. and Castéran, H., 2013. The effects of purchase orientations
on perceived loyalty programmes' benefits and loyalty. International Journal of Retail
& Distribution Management. 41(3). pp.201-225.
Ormrod, R. P., 2013. A conceptual model of political market orientation. In Current issues in
political marketing (pp. 53-70). Routledge.
Pless, N. M., Maak, T. and Waldman, D. A., 2012. Different approaches toward doing the right
thing: Mapping the responsibility orientations of leaders. Academy of Management
Perspectives. 26(4). pp.51-65.
Taghavi Shavazi, E., and et.al., 2015. Designing export performance model based on
organizational orientations. Iranian Journal of Management Studies. 8(2). pp.265-285.
Toppinen, A., Wan, M. and Lähtinen, K., 2013. Strategic orientations in the global forest sector.
Global forest sector: changes, practices and prospects.
(Chung, 2012)(Gunter, 2012)(Johnson, Martin and Saini, 2012)(Labbé and Musil, 2014)
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(Levine and Zahradnik, 2012)(Meyer-Waarden, Benavent and Castéran, 2013)(Ormrod, 2013)
(Pless, Maak and Waldman, 2012)(Taghavi Shavazi and et.al., 2015)(Toppinen, Wan
and Lähtinen, 2013)
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