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There has been little empirical investigation of a relationship between market orientation and performance, which is assumed to exist in the strategic management and marketing literatures. This limited empirical evidence is equivocal, and is dominated by only two US studies. The overall aim of the study reported in this article was to build on this limited empirical evidence about a relationship, by achieving new insights from another national business culture, namely the UK. Unlike the US evidence, the results from this study suggest that the influence of market orientation on performance is moderated by environmental variables. They suggest that market orientation may not be advantageous in highly turbulent markets, and in conditions of low customer power and high technological change. SUMMARY

Internal marketing has been discussed in the management and academic literature for over three decades, yet

Orientation to the diverse interests of stakeholder groups is central to strategic planning, and failure to address the interests of multiple stakeholder groups may be detrimental to company performance. However, some companies may be unable to address all these interests, owing to a scarcity of resources, and the impact of multiple stakeholder orientation may be influenced by the environment. Despite calls by leading writers in the literature, there is no empirical evidence about the potential association of orientation to multiple stakeholders with company performance. The results of a study of UK companies designed to elucidate this association are reported in this paper. Although the results give some support to the proposition that orientation to multiple stakeholders is positively associated with performance, such associations are contingent on the external environment, as they are moderated by competitive hostility, after controlling for the intervening effects of market growth.

Despite the importance of market orientation in the marketing and strategic management literature, it has been the subject of few conceptual and empirical studies. Also, the latter have addressed only the degree of market orientation and not its nature or form. The empirical study reported in this article focuses on the form of market orientation. Five different forms of market orientation were identified, along with three factors that discriminate between them. Although there are some performance differences between the forms of market orientation, the market environments that they are associated with are not sigdicantly different. As well as providing additional empirical evidence, the results provide empirical support to, and extensions of, the conceptualization of market orientation given in the literature.