Market Driven
Defining a Market Driven Company
November 7, 2007 by Josh · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Financial, MBA
This isn’t a normal blog post but rather me sharing a paper I recently wrote to describe to a superior what it means to be a ‘Market Driven’ company. It is a long read but I think the information is applicable to many people regardless of title or position in a company.
Defining a Market Driven Company:
Describing Characteristics of Market Driven Companies for Your Superiors
Colgate has declared, “Our mission is to find needs and fill them, not make products and sell them” (Day, 1999, p. 8 ). These words and similar slogans are often used by companies to emphasize and reassure the customers and employees that the company is market driven and customer centric. Unfortunately these slogans are just words and being a “Market Driven” company means and takes much more than regurgitating the CEO’s PR gem of the month. In order for a company to be market driven it is important for the whole company to be on board and actively seeking to remain market driven. The culture of a market driven company is an ongoing effort on several fronts including relationships, exchanges, internal knowledge and competitors. George Day describes a market driven company as one with, “a superior ability to understand, attract and keep valuable customers.” (Day, 1999, p. 5). Day adds to this definition of market driven companies by qualifying that these companies have, “a willingness to keep reorienting themselves as markets change.” (p. 25). These definitions provide the base which is built on by a company having an externally oriented culture, distinctive capabilities and configuration which allows the company to adapt (p. 7). The key to this setup is that a market driven company cannot pick and choose these elements. It is necessary to have all of them due to the multiplicative nature of being market driven. By taking away one part of the market driven definition and elements
November 7, 2007 by Josh · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Financial, MBA
This isn’t a normal blog post but rather me sharing a paper I recently wrote to describe to a superior what it means to be a ‘Market Driven’ company. It is a long read but I think the information is applicable to many people regardless of title or position in a company.
Defining a Market Driven Company:
Describing Characteristics of Market Driven Companies for Your Superiors
Colgate has declared, “Our mission is to find needs and fill them, not make products and sell them” (Day, 1999, p. 8 ). These words and similar slogans are often used by companies to emphasize and reassure the customers and employees that the company is market driven and customer centric. Unfortunately these slogans are just words and being a “Market Driven” company means and takes much more than regurgitating the CEO’s PR gem of the month. In order for a company to be market driven it is important for the whole company to be on board and actively seeking to remain market driven. The culture of a market driven company is an ongoing effort on several fronts including relationships, exchanges, internal knowledge and competitors. George Day describes a market driven company as one with, “a superior ability to understand, attract and keep valuable customers.” (Day, 1999, p. 5). Day adds to this definition of market driven companies by qualifying that these companies have, “a willingness to keep reorienting themselves as markets change.” (p. 25). These definitions provide the base which is built on by a company having an externally oriented culture, distinctive capabilities and configuration which allows the company to adapt (p. 7). The key to this setup is that a market driven company cannot pick and choose these elements. It is necessary to have all of them due to the multiplicative nature of being market driven. By taking away one part of the market driven definition and elements
Cited: Day, G. S. (1999). The Market Driven Organization. New York: The Free Press. How does this resonate with your organization? Any readers have thoughts on being market driven?