Brand Strategies

Adopting a market orientation means that a brand commits itself to satisfying customer needs over the long run. Such an orientation combines three main components: a customer orientation, through which a brand strives to understand its target customers; a competitor orientation, through which a brand strives to understand what its competitors are doing; and interfunctional coordination, the organizational culture that orients employees in all departments of a business unit to understanding the brand's market in terms of both customers and competitors. This chapter uses the global hotel market, with its wide range of environmental conditions, to analyze the choice between a competitor orientation and a customer orientation. The results show that a customer orientation has a greater effect on hotels' performance than does a competitor orientation. By and large, the more developed a market's economy is, the more effective is a customer orientation. Conversely, a competitor orientation works better in a developing economy. Adopting a competitor orientation may also be detrimental to a brand's performance in a market environment with high levels of investor availability. This is likely because investors find markets in which other resources are already handy attractive, especially where the government's regulatory imprint is light or supportive and in other respects local business conditions are good.