Paper info

Market orientation: a promising metaphor for culture and collaboration in industrial networks

Arto Rajala , Kristian Möller and Matti Tuominen

The paper was published at the 18th IMP-conference in Perth, Australia in 2002.

Recent research on market orientation and close customer relationships addresses how firms create market intelligence and adapt to their environments. However, our understanding ofmarket-oriented firms is incomplete because it does not fully incorporate with cultural linkages and collaboration in buyer-seller relationships. Actually, it has been neither investigated nor understood well the interplay between market orientation and close customer relationships, and, further, whether the interplay is affected by a firm's internal cultural postures. The authors present a conceptual framework for examining the interplay betweenthe key constructs in industrial context. Our results indicate a strong positive association between market orientation and customer intimacy, and, further, this interplay is influenced by our cultural factors - market focus and industry recipe - adopted.