An Impact Analysis Of Market Orientation And Its Linkages With Brand Performance

Brands are struggling to maintain their place in today’s competitive market.Survival of brands in the marketplace is increasingly becoming challenging without focusing on market orientation and adopting outstanding positioning strategies.The eventual diversification in the brand market leads to competition among brands,and thereby mounting challenges for them to cope with the competitiveness.Besides market competition,brand positioning is also a big challenge for the brands.Considering the importance of brand performance,prior marketing literature pay little attention to market orientation,positioning the brand and brand performance and still,the available literature in this area is lacking.The main focus of this dissertation is to bridge the gap in the literature of market orientation and brand performance.This dissertation establishes four empirical studies combining marketing tools to measure brand performance,including market orientation,internal branding,strategic brand management,and consumer perception.Firstly,this dissertation explores the importance of a positioning strategy with its five dimensions based on market orientation theory(MOT)and branding theory(BT)to demonstrate the relationship between market orientation and brand performance.The data,for this purpose,was collected from 220 managerial-level employees of different fashion brands and was analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling(PLS-SEM).The study’s empirical results show that proactive and responsive market has a significant and positive relationship with brand performance.The observed outcomes further explain that positioning strategies are essential to improving brand performance besides confirming the important mediating role of positioning strategies in the relationship between market orientation and brand performance.The study findings also illustrate the available literature of market orientation,positioning the brand and brand performance this provide a roadmap for brand managers to focus on market orientation and positioning for brand performance.Secondly,this study develops the framework based on the resource-based view(RBV)theory and the market orientation theory(MOT).This framework explores the links between multidimensional factors of marketing strategy,i.e.,customer orientation,competitor orientation,inter-functional orientation,employee orientation and customer-based brand performance.Data were collected from 270 higher-level employees of different garment brands to support the study model and subsequently analyzed using PLS-SEM to obtain results.These results also demonstrate that customer orientation,competitor orientation,and inter-functional orientation affect customer-based brand performance.Results further establish that employee orientation positively moderates the relationship between competitor orientation,inter-functional orientation and customer-based brand performance.The findings of this study are a valuable addition to the current literature and are valid for brands to improve their performance.Thirdly,this study creates a model based on brand theory(BT)emphasizing mainly on market orientation,internal branding,strategic brand management,market turbulence and their impact on brand performance.Data were collected from 394 managerial-level employees from various fashion brands.The analysis using PLSSEM reveals that two dimensions of market orientation have a significant and positive impact on internal branding,strategic brand management and brand performance.Results further explain that internal branding and strategic brand management considerably impact brand management while internal branding and strategic brand management positively mediate between market orientation and brand performance.Moreover,the outcomes show that market turbulence positively moderates between internal branding and brand performance.The study’s findings extend and provide guidance to the marketing professionals for brand improvement in different ways.Fourthly,this study investigates brand performance based on the brand equity model.To develop the study model,this study largely relies on B2C marketing,while the previous three studies aim to compute brand performance in the B2B context.Marketing experts believe that the B2C aspect of brand performance is equally vital as B2B aspect.Data were collected from 350 customers who visited different shopping malls to evaluate the study model.Collected data were analyzed using PLS-SEM to obtain the results.The study’s empirical results show that word of mouth and brand personality significantly impact brand equity.Results further elucidate that relationship quality positively impacts brand equity.Furthermore,relationship quality significantly mediates between word of mouth,brand personality,and brand equity.The study’s results strengthen the existing literature on brand equity.This study is also a substantive source for brand managers to consider the relationship quality along with the sources of "brand equity," including "words of mouth" and "brand personality" for improved decision-making and brand performance.