Market Orientation and SMEs Performance

The objective of the study is to investigate the nature of relationship between market orientation and manufacturing performance of small and medium scale enterprises in India. In this study, data were collected through field survey of owner/manager of small scale manufacturing units located in Agra and Firozabad cities. A well establish scale was used to measure the market orientation construct, its validity was reestablished in Indian context. The study utilised multiple correlation and regression analysis for testing the hypotheses. This study found a positive and significant relationship between dimensions of market orientation-customer orientation, competitors' orientation, and inter-functional coordination-and manufacturing performance. However, it was only the customer orientation component of market orientation which significantly explains the variances in manufacturing performance. This study puts focus only on manufacturing firms; sample size could have been taken more which was not possible in this study because of financial and time constraints. Study indicates that Indian small scale manufactures should not only focus on customer need, but they should also consider their competitors' strategies and internal functional mechanism, so that they can face competition and could survive. Many researchers have argued that this type of researches are available for large scale firms, especially in developed countries, but as far as developing countries are concerned there is scarcity of such research initiatives specially in small scale firms context. So by the means of this study, researchers want to contribute in enriching the literature.