Is Your Company Really Market-driven?

We now know that being customer-oriented is only part of what it means to be market-driven. About fifty years ago, Peter Drucker, the management philosopher, appeared to __0__ what it means to be market-driven when he described the so-called “marketing concept”. He __21__ marketing with customer orientation. He said that to be market-driven meant always __22__ the customer first and continuously improving the value of the service to the customer. Profit was the reward for creating a satisfied customer. Drucker used General Electric as an example of the new marketing __23__. The US company has __24__ its new product development process so that it begins with research into customers’ needs and wants, rather than by __25__ market-testing ideas which have been developed in laboratories.

Unfortunately, Drucker’s marketing concept __26__ strategic guidance. He described an organizational culture – a set of values and beliefs about the importance of the customer – which makes a company customer-oriented. However, he did not offer any __27__ on how to become market-driven: that is, knowing which customers to serve or how to go about serving them.

In recent years, marketing scholars have __28__ the definition of being market-driven to include not just customer orientation but also __29__ of competitors’ product offerings and the discipline of profit orientation in the analysis of product/market opportunities. This broader concept of market orientation __30__ that of customer orientation.

0. a. summarize             b. conclude            c. point                 d. draw

21. a. referred        b. concerned          c. equated              d. balanced

22. a. having          b. putting        c. doing                 d. taking

23. a. instance        b. means        c. occurrence        d. approach

24. a. differed        b. fitted                 c. modified            d. transferred

25. a. simply          b. easily                 c. clearly        d. barely

26. a. lacked          b. missed        c. deducted            d. subtracted

27. a. aspects         b. issues                c. ways                 d. guideline

28. a. grown          b. expanded           c. spread        d. prolonged

29. a. compensation       b. account             c. consideration             d. attention

30. a. returns         b. substitutes         c. replaces             d. supplies