Companies usually like to claim that they are
market-oriented; however, many studies reveal that businesses typically rely on
short-term financial indicators, only a small percentage of firms consider time
spent on consumers as important, and marketing is considered as a cost rather
than an investment. Companies, however, need to understand their own and their
environment's operations in order to set the right objectives, manage their
tangible and intangible resources, and achieve the best possible performance.
This paper focuses on performance measurement and its relation to market
orientation, marketing activity, objectives and marketing resources. This
research reveals that though marketing's role in the organisation seems to be
significant managers' commitment to marketing often remains at an attitudinal
level, and they tend to overestimate their marketing efforts. Furthermore,
customer-based measures seem to be good indicators of market-orientation, still
managers consider financial and market performance measures to be more
important. This paper supports the finding that market orientation and business
success are strongly related to one another.