Marketing Orientation and Product Orientation Comparison Report

This report, prepared for the Fundamental of Marketing module, explores the contrasting approaches of marketing orientation and product orientation. It begins by defining these orientations, highlighting how businesses prioritize either product quality or customer needs. The report then details the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, emphasizing the importance of understanding market dynamics and customer preferences. A SWOT analysis is employed to evaluate strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with a marketing-oriented strategy. Furthermore, the report outlines steps businesses can take to adjust their orientation, such as conducting market research and empowering marketing leaders. The conclusion underscores the significance of aligning business strategies with customer needs and market trends for long-term success, advocating for a customer-centric approach to product development and adaptation.

Fundamental of Marketing module
Tutor: Liz Kirrane
Submission Date: 12th October 2020
Middle Module Assignment
Introduction
Marketing theories have experienced numerous transformations since the beginning
of capitalism. Nowadays, organisational directions define how the business moves,
some businesses can choose a more product oriented approach, or other companies
may prefer a more marketing oriented approach. Choosing one of those two different
approaches will help to build the identity of the company. A product oriented
company will focus on its product, trying to give the best product as possible without
taking into account what the customer needs are. Conversely, a marketing oriented
company will focus mainly on customer needs and wants, a marketing oriented
business will put their effort into understanding every aspect of the market and the
motivations that encourage customers to purchase its goods or services.
Marketing Orientation and Product Orientation; Overview,
advantages and disadvantages.
Possibility of choice has dramatically increased over the last decade. So, businesses
have been challenged to design and develop goods and services that are
indispensable for customers; furthermore, showing sustainability and resilience is
becoming an essential task for every business, that is why companies decide to start
to study the behaviour and the preferences of their customers and instead to focus
only on further improvement to their product or service. Exploring factors that affect
their choices creates the chance to understand better their needs and their wants,
the result of this analysis allows the company to turn their product into something
more desirable and more aligned with the customer needs, giving the opportunity to
fill gaps in the market. However, there are still some organisations that prefer to be
more product oriented (Kokemuller, n.d).
It has been stated that a business that chooses a marketing oriented approach
wishes to achieve buyer value developing a relationship of trust, the organisational
goal is to identify the customer needs better than the competitors, and try to
anticipate what can provide to the client the maximum satisfaction. According to
Woodruff (2019) “Market orientation increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Paying attention to the customer increases loyalty and leads to repeat sales. Brand

loyalty creates a customer base that will be resistant to attempts by competitors to
steal your customers by offering lower prices or special introductory incentives.”
Conversely, a product oriented company ambition is to create the best product as
possible without taking into account what the customer needs or wants are, putting
the maximum effort into providing goods, price and advertising.
Product-Orientation:
Advantages:
- Product oriented companies have the goal of creating and developing goods that
can change the life of the customer, make their life more comfortable or happier.
- Product oriented companies, thanks to their experience, should lead to the highest
possible product quality and benefit.
-The chance of outsourcing functions, this means that they can have more focus on
the goods and its features.
Disadvantages:
- If a company put all the effort into selling just a quality product, ignoring what is
happening around you, new competitors or other market changes can devalue your
goods and put you quickly out of business (Milano, n.d).
- “Many successful marketers sell the benefits of their products, rather than the
features, to capitalise on consumers’ feelings and emotions” (Milano, n.d). If you are
not able to sell all the aspects or benefits of your product, this can lead to a missed
opportunity for profit.
- A product oriented organisation, is likely to be not able to offer chances for add-on
purchases or cross-selling, and this will limit the selling possibilities.
Marketing Orientation:
Advantages:
- A marketing oriented company is more flexible compared to a product oriented
company especially when it comes to facing changes in the environment, in fact, this
kind of company is ready to deal and solve every issue; furthermore is able to
respond promptly to every problem or change in the market.
- A Marketing oriented business, thanks to customer feedback, can improve their
knowledge of areas that need further development (Woodruff, 2019).

- Giving to the customers what they want should ensure a higher sales revenue and
increased profit, because customers are generally willing to pay more for a product
that they really desire.
Disadvantages:
- In order to understand better the customers’ needs and the market trend, intensive
research is required, which is usually expensive, and needs a large number of
resources to be put in place.
- Cost will increase, research and new technologies can be costly, and this will affect
the final price of your product.
- Competition in the market is growing fast, a large number of companies are now
choosing a marketing oriented approach; as a result, every business has to work
harder in order to capture the market (Course hero, n.d).
Marketing orientation vs Product orientation; which one is
the most appropriate for long term business success?
This paper assumes that both of the approaches can be beneficial if handled
correctly; however, the orientation of an organisation is determined by different
factors such as the nature of the market, the dimension of the business or which
sector the company operate. The marketing oriented company have a value that put
more effort into the satisfaction of the client. Conversely, product orientation is an
approach whereby a business puts more effort into a product hence focuses is
placed on quality and optimisation of performance; furthermore, understanding every
marketing strategy is essential before choosing which one is better suited to a
company for long term success (Njogu, 2020).
There are so many other advantages that marketing orientation can give to a
company, for example, ensuring that collaboration and connection are critically
stimulated; furthermore, they can benefit from their gathered data, in fact, practical
opinions gathered from consumers through feedback can create the basis of a long
term business development plan (Njogu, 2020). Those factors ensure long-term
success and are developed in order to increase the loyalty of clients and personnel,
increasing growth and modernisation in all business functions.
In a product orientated company we could be able to purchase a high quality product
with superior features or add ons; however, if the customer is not interested in it
there is less room to maintain the desirability of the product, that is why several
pieces of research show that a product oriented organisation may miss the chance to

be aligned with customer need, with a consequent loss in revenue and decreased
competitivity into the market.
Using SWOT analysis to overcome weaknesses and build
strengths.
This report will now analyse the SWOT analysis as a tool to overcome weakness
and improve strength. “The SWOT analysis is a widely used methodology which can
be met not only in business practice, but also in the area of municipalities. The
analysis frequently ends with the initial definition of various factors like strengths and
weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organisation” (Vaněk, Mikoláš and
Žváková, 2012).
Strengths:
Marketing oriented approach would make durable resilience thanks to flexibility and
progress, furthermore effective communication to functions, more famous brand,
loyal customer base, a solid balance sheet, distinctive technology.
Weaknesses:
These are what stop an organisation from performing at its best level. A marketing
oriented organisation, for example, there can be inadequately designed systems,
stretched funds, or a waste of resources; these are all the issues that a marketing
oriented company should resolve.
Opportunities:
They refer to positive external things that can give to the company an advantage,
furthermore; they are able to monitor their competitors attentively and take every
action required in order to be more competitive into the market.
Threats:
Active and dynamic markets require a reaction to every issue promptly before it’s too
late, a product oriented organisation usually is not ready to give response quickly to
every market change.
What steps a business may take to adjust its orientation
There are a few steps that a company can take into account in order to change its
orientation; this paper will now evaluate some of them. Research published by
Subjecto.com (2019) state: “Performing qualitative market research to understand
fully how the customers take new ideas and how they think of them. It helps in
identifying gaps during service and product delivery and hence working on them.”

Customer data is another very useful tool that can be used to recognise target
customer segments, and this will help to position goods and services in order to
meet customer needs. Furthermore, several pieces of researches remark on the
importance that marketing managers and marketing leaders are empowered and can
perform thoughts internally and externally. Allow customers further ways to get in
touch and reach the organisation and by hosting in-person events and networking
opportunities are other very useful approaches in order to turn an organisation into a
marketing orientation. Embracing a marketing philosophy, collecting information
about all elements of the market, stakeholders and competitors.
However, there are some challenges that every organisation may face when trying to
change its orientation; for example, they need to put in place financial resource into
research. Dealing with such a significant amount of data can waste a large amount
of time in order to determine which data is essential and which are not relevant to the
business purpose.
A large amount of time and money will be required in order to guarantee training and
support to all the employees who will be putting in place the new orientation and
gather a massive flow of data, then will come the turn of changing routines with new
ones.
Conclusion
To summarise; all the research done for this paper has demonstrated that in product
orientation the business goals are to gain profit by just selling a product, this kind of
organisation’s focus is only to improve their product and to decrease the production
cost. Conversely, in marketing oriented organisations, the company aims to satisfy
all the customer needs and wants in order to increase their revenue.
All the organisations should focus on customer and marketing orientation in order to
develop their product accordingly with customer wants and market trends;
furthermore, they need to be able to solve any problem or change any features when
the customer needs it, in order to be more competitive in the market and then adjust
their product in order to meet everyone needs all the time.
References
Course hero. (n.d) 12 Advantages and disadvantages of marketing orientation of
Boots There | Course Hero. Coursehero.com. Available at:
https://www.coursehero.com/file/p1sihdp/12-Advantages-and-disadvantages-of-
marketing-orientation-of-Boots-There/ [Accessed 08/10/2020]

Kokemuller, N. (n.d) What Are the Advantages & Disadvantages of Marketing
Orientation? Small Business - Chron.com. Available at:
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-marketing-orientation-
22985.html [Accessed 07/10/2020]
Milano, S. (n.d) The Disadvantages of Product Orientation to a Business. Small
Business - Chron.com. Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-
product-orientation-business-45985.html [Accessed 07/10/2020]
Njogu, T (2020). Difference Product Orientation and Market Orientation.
DifferenceBetween.net. Available at:
http://www.differencebetween.net/business/difference-product-orientation-and-
market-orientation [Accessed 08/10/2020]
Subjecto.com. (2019) Consumer Orientation: Product and Market Orientation -
Subjecto.com. Available at: https://subjecto.com/consumer-orientation-product-and-
market-2/ [Accessed 08/10/2020]
Vaněk, M., Mikoláš, M. and Žváková, K. (2012). Evaluation Methods of Swot
Analysis / Metody Vyhodnocení Swot Analýzy. GeoScience Engineering, 58(2),
pp.23–31.
Woodruff, J. (2019) The Advantages of Marketing Orientation. Small Business -
Chron.com Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-marketing-
orientation-20975.html [Accessed 06/10/2020]