_______________________________________________________________________
Outline the various marketing orientations a company may adopt and indicate which of their orientations are still relevant in today’s increasingly competitive world. Give examples to substantiate your arguments.
_______________________________________________________________________
Companies use marketing management to help choose target markets and build profitable relationships with customers. To do so, a company can adopt one or more of the five marketing orientations, these being: the product orientation, the production orientation, the selling orientation, the marketing orientation and the societal marketing orientation.
According to the Selling orientation, the company’s entire focus is on selling and hence making a lot of sales. The company does not bother about the market demand, they just want to sell what they produce. This concept is practiced when the firm is into the business making products which the consumers do not know much about. We call these unsought goods. A good example of such products is Insurance Policies.
In the Product orientation, it is extremely important to consider market equilibrium which means that the market is stable and sole supply is equal to demand. If supply is greater than the demand, the price would go down and vice versa. The company aims at making a continuous effort towards product improvement and innovation. Here the firm may face problems when substitute products are available. It happens many times that firms fail to predict the future taken into account the challenge of substitutes. For example: consumers may prefer airplanes rather than trains or modern digital cameras instead of film cameras.
The company following the Production orientation believes in the fact that it should produce goods efficiently and try to bring down the prices so that products become affordable.The firm undertakes mass production and makes