Market orientation in an emerging economy – Egypt

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which Egyptian firms satisfy customers, how sensitive they are to rivals' reactions, their focus on long-term planning and finally, the extent to which Egyptian firms rely on interfunctional planning.

Quantitative data were collected just before the 25 January 2011 revolution. A total of 134 usable questionnaires were collected and showed evidence of reliability and validity. Data were interpreted using factor and regression analysis.

Key findings include the identification of the practice of the components of market orientation; customer orientation, competitor orientation, long-term perspective and interfunctional co-ordination. The main stress was on ‘interfunctional orientation’ followed by ‘customer and competitor orientation’ equally.

The Egyptian setting, considerable large number of questionnaires from only eight firms and the cross-sectional design of this study limits the generalisability of the findings to other contexts/environments.

The study contains lessons for practitioners and researchers in other developing countries. Also, it provides managers with insights on the importance of all market orientation components.

Keywords:

• market orientation
• Egypt
• customer orientation
• competitor orientation
• interfunctional co-ordination; long-term perspectives