Competitor orientation is an element of market orientation and suggests that a seller recognize the short-term weaknesses, strengths, and long-term capabilities and strategies of both the key, current, and potential competitors to attain sustainable performance (Narver & Slater, 1990). This component includes all regular activities, exercised information for short and long-term capabilities, and plans of both current and potential competitors in the target market. This component is done to assess their strengths relative to competitors to gain a competitive advantage (Blankson, Motwani & Levenburg, 2006). Hence, competitor-oriented enterprises are aware of the short and long-term capabilities of the key competitors. They give many efforts in creating advantage over competitors by responding rapidly to major competitor offers (Mahmoud & Hinson, 2012). According to Frambach, Prabhu, and Verhallen (2013), the aim of competitor orientation has to do with providing a strong foundation of intelligence regarding current and future competitors for strategic action. The business current and future competitors are found in firms with peculiar or nonpeculiar production, technology platform. Firms are expected to adjust to market dynamics caused by competitors. Better understand the changing market needs since a competitor-oriented firm's objective is to keep pace with or remain ahead of competitors (Ledwith & O'Dwyer, 2009). Competitor-oriented firms develop a comprehensive evaluation of targeted and possible rivals and utilize the substantial awareness to beat the rivals and achieve sustainable competitive advantage and performance (Lopez, Poen & Ordas, 2005;Olson, Slater & Hult, 2005;O'dwyer & Gilmore, 2017). Strategically, the organization shares information about its rivals, which could help build a sustainable competitive advantage (Grinstein, 2008). Therefore, the significance of competitor orientation is monitoring the organization's current and predicted future competitors to develop an awareness of their information and strategies (Kaliappen & Hilman, 2013;Zhou, Brown, Dev & Agarwal, 2007).SMEs play crucial roles in the development process in most of the developed and developing countries. They are characterized by dynamism, witty innovations, efficiency, and small size, allowing for a faster decision-making process. Over the years, there have been controversies in the literature concerning appropriate definitions of SMEs. Nigeria struggles to get a unified definition out of several inconsistent and ambiguous definitions proffered by several industries. Agencies, such as the 1992 review by the National Council on Industrial Standards, defined SMEs as enterprises with total
IntroductionAs the twenty first century progresses, environmentalism remains a critical social and business issue. According to Abratt (2016), from the beginning of the 1980s, there have been ecological issues such as global warming, the greenhouse effect, pollution, and climate changes which are directly related to industrial manufacturing and this continue to affect human health. Due to the increase of environmentalism which has dominated the world, there has been a rise in consumer concern with regards to environmental protection and great demand for environmentally friendly products (Charter & Polonsky, 2015). Hence, most firms have begun to use environmental marketing and environmentally friendly product development strategies that can preserve the environment while satisfying consumers' preferences. The higher the environmental friendliness and safety of an organization's product, the higher would be the rate of customer loyalty to it. Therefore, an organization will improve sales, profit and market share by increasing the production of products that are non-toxic and harmless to the environment. Hence, environmental marketing has been linked to increase in firms' operational and commercial performance (Fraj-Andres, Martinez-Salinas & Matute-Vallejo, 2008). Similarly, Hasan and Ali (2014) in their study noted that there exists a positive relationship between green innovation, green promotion and the firms' performance.Furthermore, environmental marketing has gained massive popularity globally over the past several years and its influence has spread across every industry. Many companies are redesigning the way they do business in order to incorporate sustainable practices in their processes to produce goods or services that are environmentally friendly. Businesses in Nigeria are slowly embracing this green economy revolution. There is growing concern by the Nigerian government and the consumers over the environmental impact of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Related studies on environmental marketing practices in Nigerian firms clearly indicated that the concept of environmental marketing is still not being given full attention. A study done by Leonidou and Morgan, (2015) on environmental marketing strategy adoption by Nigerian FMCG firms concluded that Nigerian is still in the process of completely adopting environmental
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