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Strategic Management Journal
Strat. Mgmt. J., 19: 1001–1006 (1998)
RESEARCH NOTES AND COMMUNICATIONS
CUSTOMER-LED AND MARKET-ORIENTED: LET’S
NOT CONFUSE THE TWO
STANLEY F. SLATER
1
* AND JOHN C. NARVER
2
1
University of Washington, Bothell, Washington, U.S.A.
2
Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Washington, Seattle,
Washington, U.S.A.
Christensen and Bower (1996) report the results of a study of how customer power contributes
to the failure of leading firms during a period of industry discontinuity. They conclude that
developing a customer orientation appears not to be wise advice under these conditions.
However, this conclusion is contradicted by long-standing theory and recent research in
marketing. In this commentary we distinguish between two forms of ‘customer orientation’ that
are frequently confused. The first, a customer-led philosophy, is primarily concerned with
satisfying customers’ expressed needs, and is typically short term in focus and reactive in
nature. The second, a market-oriented philosophy, goes beyond satisfying expressed needs to
understanding and satisfying customers’ latent needs and, thus, is longer term in focus and
proactive in nature. Based on theory and substantial evidence, the advice to become market-
oriented appears sound regardless of the market conditions a business faces. 1998 John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
INTRODUCTION
A ‘customer orientation’ has been criticized for
contributing to many things including incremental
and trivial product development efforts (Bennett
and Cooper, 1979), myopic R&D programs
(Frosch, 1996), confused business processes
(Macdonald, 1995), and even a decline in Amer-
ica’s industrial competitiveness (Hayes and
Wheelwright, 1984). Christensen and Bower
(1996: 198) add their voices to this chorus in
their analysis of the impact of disruptive technol-
ogies on industry evolution when they conclude
that ‘firms lose their position of industry leader-
ship %because they listen too carefully to their
customers.’ However, these views are seemingly
Key words: market orientation; innovation; corporate
culture; discontinuous change
*
Correspondence to: Stanley F. Slater, University of Wash-
ington, 22011 26th Avenue SE, Bothell, WA 98021-4900,
U.S.A.
CCC 0143–2095/98/101001–06$17.50 Received 6 January 1997
1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Final revision received 20 January 1998
at odds with the marketing concept that is the
foundation of modern marketing.
The marketing concept says that an organi-
zation’s purpose is to discover needs and wants
in its target markets and to satisfy those needs
more effectively and efficiently than competitors.
Until recently, the wisdom of the marketing con-
cept was based on anecdotal evidence or taken
as an article of faith by its proponents. In 1990
though, Kohli and Jaworski articulated a theory
of market orientation that they describe as the
implementation of the marketing concept. This
theory has been refined and built upon, valid
measures of the market orientation construct
developed, and a strong relationship demonstrated
between market orientation and specific measures
of business performance including profitability,
sales growth, and new product success (e.g.,
Jaworski and Kohli, 1993; Narver and Slater,
1990; Slater and Narver, 1994). This research
supports the conclusion of many experts on the
innovation process that a market orientation is
essential to success (e.g., Dougherty, 1990;
Leonard-Barton, 1995; Quinn, 1985).
1002 S. F. Slater and J. C. Narver
If the nature and benefits of being market-
oriented are so well documented in the marketing
literature, why does this debate continue in the
management literature? We propose that the prob-
lem has occurred because, without realizing it,
scholars are talking about two separate man-
agement philosophies. The first, being ‘customer-
led,’ is a short-term philosophy in which organi-
zations respond to customers’ expressed wants.
The second, being ‘market-oriented,’ represents a
long-term commitment to understanding customer
needs—both expressed and latent—and to
developing innovative solutions that produce
superior customer value. In the remainder of this
commentary we differentiate between these two
philosophies and describe the conditions under
which each may be successful.
THE CUSTOMER-LED BUSINESS
Customer-led businesses focus on understanding
the expressed desires of the customers in their
served markets and on developing products and
services that satisfy those desires. Typically, cus-
tomer-led businesses use focus groups and cus-
tomer surveys to enhance their understanding of
customer wants and perceptions of current prod-
ucts and services, and techniques such as concept
testing and conjoint analysis to guide the develop-
ment of new products and services (e.g., Leonard
and Rayport, 1997). Customer-led businesses may
also develop close relationships with important
customers to gain deeper insight into those cus-
tomers’ desires. Retail banking is one industry
that has widely adopted this philosophy with good
results (e.g., Timewell, 1994). Many successful
banks have developed customer information files
from data that are routinely collected in a bank’s
various production systems to improve their seg-
mentation and targeting efforts (Bank Manage-
ment, 1996).
On the surface the customer-led philosophy
seems sensible and compelling. What is the prob-
lem with it? The problem is that the philosophy
is reactive and short term in focus, and generally
leads to adaptive rather than generative learning
(Senge, 1990). The first troublesome aspect of it
is what Hamel and Prahalad (1994) call the
‘tyranny of the served market’ in which managers
see the world only through their current cus-
tomers’ eyes. As Christensen and Bower (1996)
1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strat. Mgmt. J., 19: 1001–1006 (1998)
point out, existing customers can substantially
constrain a firm’s ability to innovate because the
innovations may threaten the customers’ way of
doing business. Hamel and Prahalad (1994: 99)
lend their support when they comment, ‘Cus-
tomers are notoriously lacking in foresight.’ In
the disk-drive industry, the core competency that
satisfied customers became a core rigidity as man-
agers were unwilling to risk displeasing existing,
powerful customers.
Furthermore, the value of traditional market
research tools is limited when it comes to
developing innovative products or services
(Hamel and Prahalad, 1994). These techniques
rely on users being capable of articulating their
needs and also being able to help devise solutions
to those needs. However, latent needs cannot be
articulated and, thus, other approaches to learning
about markets must be utilized (Leonard-Barton,
1995; Lynn, Morone, and Paulson, 1996).
As positive as pursuing increased customer
satisfaction seems, it also brings a set of difficult
problems. The first is the development of a valid
measure of customer satisfaction. Customer satis-
faction surveys are unreliable indicators of inten-
tion to purchase or the likelihood of repeat busi-
ness. Many times they are poorly conceived and
conducted, measure the wrong activity or cus-
tomers, or do not assess relative value or satisfac-
tion (Reichheld, 1996). A second problem is
that if efforts to measure customer satisfaction
overwhelm other strategic performance indicators
such as those concerned with new product success
or organizational learning, management is likely
to focus only on the short term. This could easily
discourage risk taking in both product and process
development, thus leading only to incremental
improvements in current products and service
activities.
THE MARKET-ORIENTED BUSINESS
On the surface, market-oriented businesses
resemble customer-led businesses. This is an
important source of confusion about what is mar-
ket-oriented and what is customer-led. Following
is a description of behaviors that are bedrock
values in the market-oriented business. Though
these behaviors may, at times, be present in a
customer-led business, they are permanent
elements of a market-oriented business.
Research Notes and Communications 1003
Market-oriented businesses are committed to
understanding both the expressed and latent needs
of their customers, and the capabilities and plans
of their competitors through the processes of
acquiring and evaluating market information in a
systematic and anticipatory manner. They con-
tinuously create superior customer value by shar-
ing the knowledge broadly throughout the organi-
zation and by acting in a coordinated and focused
manner (e.g., Slater and Narver, 1995). Compared
to customer-led businesses, market-oriented busi-
nesses scan the market more broadly, have a
longer-term focus, and are much more likely to
be generative learners. Generative learning is
critical to innovation (Senge, 1990).
No information ‘is more important to a tech-
nology-based firm than information flowing in
from the market, as this information shapes
science into commercial product or service’
(Leonard-Barton, 1995: 177). Although market-
oriented businesses use many of the same tra-
ditional market research techniques as customer-
led businesses, they combine these with other
techniques to discover customers’ latent needs
and to drive generative learning. For example,
they observe closely customers’ use of products
or services in normal routines. By observing in
context, they acquire information about customer
needs that is not available from traditional market
research (Leonard and Rayport, 1997).
They also work closely with lead users (Tabrizi
and Walleigh, 1997). A lead user to a market-
oriented business is quite different from what
Christensen and Bower (1996) describe, however.
Rather than merely being large customers that
currently are very important to the business, they
are customers, or potential customers, who have
needs that are advanced compared to other market
members and who expect to benefit significantly
from a solution to those needs (von Hippel,
1986). ‘To push out the boundaries of current
product concepts, it is necessary to put the most
advanced technology possible directly into the
hands of the world’s most sophisticated and
demanding users’ (Hamel and Prahalad, 1994:
102). This type of exploration often leads to the
discovery of new solutions to unexpressed needs
(Leonard-Barton, 1995). Thus, a true lead user
should be a window into the future and not an
anchor in the past.
Of course the future can never be fully known
in a dynamic and turbulent market. Therefore,
1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strat. Mgmt. J., 19: 1001–1006 (1998)
for generative learning, market-oriented busi-
nesses conduct market experiments, learn from
the results of those experiments, and modify their
offerings based on the new knowledge and
insights (Hamel and Prahalad, 1994; Slater and
Narver, 1995). Lynn et al. (1996; see also Leon-
ard-Barton, 1995; Morone, 1993) describe how
companies such as Motorola, General Electric,
and Corning maintain strong market positions by
utilizing the ‘probe and learn process.’ In this
process, the initial product is only the first step
in the development process, not its culmination.
The initial product is a prototype that becomes
the foundation for subsequent, more-refined gen-
erations that follow. Of course, this requires both
financial and managerial commitment. However,
strong leadership is a characteristic of market-
oriented businesses.
Market-oriented businesses also escape the tyr-
anny of the served market by searching for
unserved markets (Hamel and Prahalad, 1994).
The unserved market represents potential—those
who might be customers. New products and
unserved markets are the catalyst for organi-
zational renewal in the market-oriented business.
A final point is that a market orientation is not
amarketing orientation. Marketing is only one
function of the business. A business is market-
oriented only when the entire organization
embraces the values implicit therein and when
all business processes are directed at creating
superior customer value.
IMPLICATIONS FOR COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE
Is either of these philosophies a source of com-
petitive advantage? An organization has a foun-
dation for sustained competitive advantage when
it possesses skills or resources that provide
superior value to customers and that are difficult
to imitate. Table 1 illustrates the key features of
each approach.
In a relatively stable environment (e.g., retail
banking), responding quickly to evolving cus-
tomer wants and focusing on customer satisfac-
tion may provide the foundation that enduring
relationships are built upon. These relationships
can be durable and valuable, and thus provide a
foundation for competitive advantage (Reichheld,
1996). In a turbulent environment though, the
1004 S. F. Slater and J. C. Narver
Table 1. Key differences between customer-led and
market-oriented
Customer-led Market-oriented
Strategic Expressed wants Latent needs
orientation
Adjustment style Responsive Proactive
Temporal focus Short-term Long-term
Objective Customer Customer value
satisfaction
Learning type Adaptive Generative
Learning Customer surveys Customer
processes observation
Key account Lead-user
relationships relationships
Focus groups Continuous
experimentation
Concept testing Selective
partnering
more enduring advantage is an ability to antici-
pate evolving customer needs and to generate
new value-creating capabilities based on that
knowledge (D’Aveni, 1994; Leonard-Barton,
1995).
Successful technology-based innovations must
be accepted first by early adopters who tend to
be market visionaries. Their expectation is to
exploit the new technology to achieve advantage
over their competitors who use the old solution.
They are willing to accept a partial, but poten-
tially superior, solution from the supplier and
to work closely with the supplier to refine the
technology or the product to meet their needs.
However, these visionaries often are small indi-
vidually and collectively with respect to the
potential market. They are the true lead-users
though, so market-oriented suppliers expend con-
siderable effort to identify and work closely with
members of this market segment to develop and
to refine the concept (Moore, 1991).
This is a critical step in the commercialization
of the technology as the solution embraced by
the visionaries becomes the core of the product
that will be adopted by early majority buyers.
The early majority are pragmatists in that they
require a clear understanding of how adoption of
the new technology will create economic value
for them. Pragmatists require the supplier to pro-
duce a whole solution that is more effective
or efficient than the buyers’ current solution.
Pragmatists are unlikely to be true lead-users
1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strat. Mgmt. J., 19: 1001–1006 (1998)
because of their investment in and commitment
to the traditional solution. However, the market-
oriented supplier must work effectively with the
pragmatists to demonstrate economic value
because the pragmatists represent the mainstream
market (Moore, 1995).
We suggest that the lead-users that Chistensen
and Bower characterize as myopic are actually
pragmatists. The market-oriented business values
both visionaries and pragmatists but can discern
between them and can develop appropriate
relationships with each. The ability of the market-
oriented business to facilitate the development of
innovative products is supported by Atahuene-
Gima’s (1995: 287) finding that ‘market orien-
tation is more strongly related to new product
performance at the early stage of the product life
cycle than at the late stage . . . Such an environ-
ment seems to warrant greater market intelligence
and information sharing within the firm.’
Also, since the market-oriented business takes
the long-term view, it is willing to cannibalize
sales of existing products by introducing next-
generation products. As Hewlett-Packard’s CEO,
Lew Platt, has said, ‘If we don’t eat our own
lunch, somebody else will’ (Moore, 1995: 85).
Other recognized innovators such as Motorola,
Monsanto, Corning, General Electric, and Intel
follow the same philosophy and focus their R&D
efforts on market-defined opportunities. In other
words, their innovations are the result of a tech-
nology capability that is shaped by an understand-
ing of latent market needs (Morone, 1993).
Thus, a market orientation consists of norms
for behavior that guide the business in learning
quickly from and about different types of needs,
and responding in an entrepreneurial manner to
deliver superior customer value. The capabilities
arising from a market orientation enable the busi-
ness to identify and exploit discontinuities in its
served market(s) as well as unserved markets. As
a form of business culture, a market orientation
is difficult for competitors to observe and under-
stand, much less to imitate (Slater and Narver,
1995) and, thus, is a competitive advantage
(Barney, 1986).
CONCLUSION
It is important to recognize that the customer-
led and market-oriented philosophies represent
Research Notes and Communications 1005
different degrees to which businesses actively
attempt to understand their markets. A customer-
led philosophy tends to be reactive and short
term in its orientation, and focuses on customers’
expressed desires and on measures of customer
satisfaction. Being customer-led may be success-
ful in relatively predictable environments where
it is most important to take care of a stable
served market. It also may be attractive to some
managers in dynamic environments because of the
uncertainty and risk associated with attempting to
lead the customer. However, being customer-led
in a dynamic environment will rarely lead to a
position of competitive advantage since it pro-
vides insufficient stimulus for the significant inno-
vation that discontinuous change requires.
Peter Drucker (1974) suggested that the two
essential activities of business are ‘innovation’
and ‘marketing.’ Without the other, neither is
sufficient for long-term success. A market orien-
tation is concerned with understanding both
expressed and latent customer needs. Like cus-
tomer-led businesses, market-oriented businesses
listen closely to the voices of their customers.
However, they recognize that different types of
customers provide different types of information.
Moreover, those voices are only one source of
information on which plans and strategies should
be based. Their commitment to continuous market
learning, to discovering latent needs and unserved
markets, and to organization-wide mobilization of
resources, enables them to achieve market-
focused innovation and to sustain competitive
advantage in all types of markets.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We gratefully acknowledge the Marketing Science
Institute’s support of our research in this area
and the helpful comments of two anonymous
SMJ reviewers.
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