Status of Competitor Market Orientations among Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in the South-South Geo-Political Zone of Nigeria

Abstract

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