A firm's market orientation is an important factor influencing its
ability to successfully develop and introduce new products. To measure
market orientation, Narver and Slater's MKTOR scale has been accepted in
the literature as a valid and reliable scale. In fact, it can be
considered state of the art. This study, though, challenges the validity
of that scale in high-tech industries and transition economies. As part
of a larger study, the scale was used to measure the market orientation
of 10 Russian high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises, next to
other measures of market orientation. These were the respondent's
perceptions of their market orientation; the firm's philosophy on
selling goods/services or solving customer problems; and in-depth
interview questions on goals, strategies, network ties, targeted market
segments, and competitive advantage. It was found that the firms
obtained high scores on the MKTOR scale but that these scores were
accompanied by ideas and behaviors reflecting a low or even lacking
market orientation. On a scale from 1 to 7, the firms average 6.2 on
customer orientation, but at the same time, they are not aware that they
do not have customer-focused strategies and do not fully understand the
chain in which they operate. Further, the average on competitor
orientation is 5.4. Some firms have competitor-oriented characteristics,
but others are ignorant of their competition and believe in their
technological superiority as a source of competitive advantage.
Analyzing these anomalies, it is concluded that the scale requires a
minimum level of marketing knowledge of respondents. Without such
knowledge, the MKTOR scale is susceptible to the respondent's
unconscious incapability, thereby producing invalid results. In the 10
Russian cases, the respondents did not have much experience or education
in marketing, which explains why they were incapable of adequately
answering the items of the MKTOR scale. The results of this study help
to explain the ambivalent findings in the literature about the effect of
market orientation on innovation and new product development in
high-tech sectors and transition economies. The paper concludes with
suggestions on how market orientation could be better measured in such
contexts. It is suggested to replace the Likert-scale by a semantic
differential scale, where statements reflecting product, production, and
sales orientations are confronted with statements reflecting a market
orientation. Given the importance of experience and education in
marketing as positive antecedents, measures of these factors should be
included in the scale as well. With these adaptations, measures of
market orientation will be more factual, will require less knowledge of
marketing terminology, will reduce bias caused by respondents'
perceptions, and will prevent ambiguity in terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM
AUTHOR]