2. Advantages of Market Orientation

Plan:
1.What is Marketing and market orientation

2. Advantages of Market Orientation

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• 
  Market orientation is a strategic focus on identifying consumer needs and desires in order to define new products to be developed.
  
• 
  Established businesses like Amazon and Coca-Cola use market orientation principles to improve or expand their products or services.
  
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  Even consumer demands that are impractical today can inform long-range decision-making.
  

How Market Orientation Works

Market orientation is a customer-centered approach to product design. It involves market research aimed at determining what consumers view as their immediate needs, primary concerns, or personal preferences within a particular product category.
Companies may also employ additional data analysis to reveal trends and consumer desires that are not specifically expressed. A knowledge of these trends ideally can help product developers meet or even anticipate consumer needs. They may even inspire improvements that the consumer was not aware of as being an option.
This allows a company to focus its product development efforts on the characteristics that are most in-demand. With an increasingly global economy and the proliferation of choices for consumers, companies that adapt to a market orientation may benefit from a competitive advantage over other companies.

Advantages of Market Orientation

Market orientation often includes improvements in customer service and product support geared to solving concerns raised by consumers. This helps ensure customer satisfaction remains high with the company as a whole and promotes brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth advertising.
Marketing Orientation is a technique which focuses on meeting the customer requirements, their desires and wants and then designing an apt product. Many popular brands like Coca-Cola and Amazon have used this orientation approach to expand their market share and retain a lot of their customers for a long term. 
The orientation approach varies from product to market to customers. The main process involved in it is research and market scanning. It is significant to understand what the customer really wants. Their primary demands, immediate needs and even long term needs have to be combined and analyzed. 
Companies usually adopt analytical tools for understanding the patterns and behaviors of the customers. Once the company knows what the consumer wants, it can meet every demand and satisfy the customer. Product developers always look for something that will help them add something new to the product and make it more customer oriented. 
The advantage that marketing orientation has for companies is that it remains updated with all the latest technological advancements and spends a fair share of money over the innovations. 
The characteristics of Marketing Orientation are:

1. 
   It is totally customer oriented. The main focus area is the wants of the customers and to be profitable companies need to satisfy the customers.
   

2. 
   It also helps the companies analyze the threats and competitions. Sometimes companies cannot find out the threat it might face in the future. Using marketing orientation is a great way to analyze the potential threats.
   

3. 
   Product innovation and modifying the product according to the needs of the customers is the main goal.
   

4. 
   Following a marketing orientation approach is a great way to develop coordination among the teams and the departments.
   

There are 4 main stages that make up the marketing orientation process. These stages are- Initiation, Reconstitution, Institutionalization and lastly Maintenance. The first step focuses on the potential threats, second one is about embracing the changes, third deals with action and the last one is about meeting the customer demands. 
Implementing all these 4 stages in a well organized manner is important to successfully complete the marketing orientation strategy.