University of Twente Student Theses
The Relationship between Marketing Function Development and Market Orientation on Firm Performance of Manufacturing Business-to-Business SMEs
Moellering, Lea (2019) The Relationship between Marketing Function Development and Market Orientation on Firm Performance of Manufacturing Business-to-Business SMEs.
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| Abstract: | It is generally assumed that a company’s marketing function and market orientation has a positive impact on firm performance. However, small and medium-sized B2B enterprises in the manufacturing industry seem to abandon the effective marketing function development. To further investigate this finding, the relationship between marketing function development and market orientation and how this influences a company’s performance is investigated. Additionally, advantages and disadvantages of having a highly- developed marketing function were found as well as reasons why marketing is challenging in small and medium sized manufacturing B2B firms. To investigate this research problem, a pre-study was done by conducting seven interviews with marketing managers of B2B firms in the manufacturing industry. Thereafter, a questionnaire was published, and the 36 responses were analyzed through SPSS and ADANCO. The findings indicate a positive relationship between market orientation and marketing function development as well as positive relationships with firm performance in one construct or split into two. The firm performance indicators had to be split to get a statistically significant outcome, meaning that the performance construct consists of profitability and market share measures. When having a high level of marketing function development as well as a high level of market orientation, the level of firm performance increases the most. Marketing is seen as a valuable act to increase a company’s customer base but there are many reasons why companies decide against implementing a highly-developed marketing function. One of the most common reasons is that companies do not want to grow any more, because they are reaching a capacity limit. In order to get the highest level of firm performance that is reachable through marketing, a company should both be market oriented as well as having a highly-developed marketing function. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Clients: | STEM Industrial Marketing Center, the Netherlands |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 83 economics, 85 business administration, organizational science |
| Programme: | Business Administration MSc (60644) |
| Keywords: | Market orientation, Marketing function development, Firm performance, Small and medium-sized enterprises, B2B, Manufacturing industry, Marketing |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/78814 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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