Abstract
Previous research has provided strong evidence for the benefits of embracing a market orientation, an organizational focus highlighting the needs of customers, and the creation of customer value. This study extends this focus on the customer to the individual worker level. A construct, customer mind-set (CMS), is developed that reflects the extent to which an individual employee believes that understanding and satisfying customers, whether internal or external to the organization, is central to the proper execution of his or her job. In this exploratory study, the authors develop a parsimonious scale for measuring CMS. Relationships between CMS and significant organizational variables are examined to establish CMS's validity and provide some tentative insights into its value to researchers and practitioners. The authors believe the CMS construct will allow for operational-level analysis of the extent to which a customer orientation is embraced throughout an organization, permitting managers to implement targeted improvement strategies.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Appiah-Adu, Kwaku. 1999. “The Impact of Marketing Mix Decisions on Performance: A Study of Foreign and Domestic Firms in a Liberalized Economy.”Journal of Global Marketing 13 (2): 7–30.
Armstrong, J. Scott and Terry Overton. 1977. “Estimating Nonresponse Bias in Mail Surveys.”Journal of Marketing Research 14 (August): 396–402.
Barksdale, Hiram C. and Bill Darden. 1971. “Marketers' Attitudes Toward the Marketing Concept.”Journal of Marketing 35 (October): 29–36.
Bar-Tal, Daniel. 1990.Group Beliefs: A Conception for Analyzing Group Structure, Processes, and Behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Bateman, Thomas S. and Dennis W. Organ. 1983. “Job Satisfaction and the Good Soldier: The Relationship Between Affect and Employee Citizenship.”Academy of Management Journal 36:587–595.
Behrman, Douglas N., and William D. Perreault, Jr. 1982. “Measuring the Performance of Industrial Salespersons.”Journal of Business Research 10 (September): 355–370.
Bennett, Joel B., Wayne E. K. Lehman, and Jamie K. Forst. 1999. “Change, Transfer Climate and Customer Orientation: A Contextual Model and Analysis of Change-Driven Training.”Group and Organization Management 24 (June): 188–216.
Berry, Leonard L. 1995.On Great Service. New York: Free Press.
Brown, Tom J., John C. Mowen, D. Todd Donavan and Jane W. Licata. 2002. “The Customer Orientation of Service Workers: Personality Trait Effects of Self and Supervisor Performance Ratings.”Journal of Marketing Research (1):110–119.
Churchill, Gilbert A., Jr. 1979. “A Paradigm for Developing Better Measures of Marketing Constructs.”Journal of Marketing Research 16 (February): 64–73.
—, Neil M. Ford, and Orville C. Walker. 1974. “Measuring the Job Satisfaction of Industrial Salesmen.”Journal of Marketing Research 11 (August): 254–260.
Crocker, Jennifer and Riia Luhtanen. 1990. “Collective Self-Esteem and In-Group Bias.”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58: 47–60.
Cronbach, L. 1970.Essentials of Psychological Testing. 3d ed. New York: Harper & Row.
Dawes, John. 2000. “Market Orientation and Company Profitability: Further Evidence Incorporating Longitudinal Data.”Australian Journal of Management 25 (September): 173–200.
Day, George S. 1994. “The Capabilities of Market-Driven Organizations.”Journal of Marketing 58 (October): 37–52.
Deming, W. Edwards. 1986.Out of the Crisis. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Advanced Engineering Study.
Deshpandé, Rohit. 1999.Developing a Market Orientation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
—, John U. Farley, and Frederick E. Webster, Jr. 1993. “Corporate Culture, Customer Orientation, and Innovativeness in Japanese Firms: A Quadrad Analysis.”Journal of Marketing 57 (January): 23–27.
Garvin, David A. 1988.Managing Quality. New York: Free Press.
Gerbing, David W. and James C. Anderson. 1988. “An Updated Paradigm for Scale Development Incorporating Unidimensionality and Its Assessment.”Journal of Marketing Research 25 (May): 186–192.
Gibson, Cristina B., Amy E. Randel, and P. Christopher Earley. 2000. “Understanding Group Efficacy: An Empirical Test of Multiple Assessment Methods.”Group and Organizational Management 25 (March): 67–97.
Grönroos, Christian. 1981. “Internal Marketing—An Integral Part of Marketing Theory.” InMarketing of Services. Eds. J. H. Donnelly and W. R. George, Chicago: American Marketing Association, 236–238.
—. 1985. “Internal Marketing Theory and Practice.” InServices Marketing in a Changing Environment. Eds. M. Block Thomas, G. D. Upah, and V. A. Zeithaml. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 41–47.
—. 1990.Service Management and Marketing. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Gummesson, Evert. 1991. “Marketing-Orientation Revisited: The Crucial Role of the Part-Time Marketer.”European Journal of Marketing 25 (2): 60–75.
Guzzo, Richard A., P. R. Yost, R. J. Cambell, and Gregory P. Shea. 1993. “Potency in Groups: Articulating the Construct.”British Journal of Social Psychology 32: 87–106.
Hackman, J. R. and E. E. Lawler III. 1971. “Employee Reactions to Job Characteristics.”Journal of Applied Psychology 55: 259–286.
Han, Jin K., Namwoon Kim, and Rajendra K. Srivastava. 1998. “Market Orientation and Organizational Performance: Is Innovation a Missing Link?”Journal of Marketing 62 (October): 30–45.
Hauser, John R., Duncan I. Simester, and Birger Wernerfelt. 1996. “Internal Customers and Internal Suppliers.”Journal of Marketing Research 33 (3): 268–280.
Hoffman, K. Douglas and Thomas N. Ingram. 1992. “Service Provider Job Satisfaction and Customer-Oriented Performance.”Journal of Services Marketing 6 (2): 68–78.
Houston, Franklin S. 1986. “The Marketing Concept What It Is and What It Is Not.”Journal of Marketing 50 (April): 81–87.
Hunt, Shelby and Robert Morgan. 1995. “The Comparative Advantage Theory of Competition.”Journal of Marketing 59 (2): 1–15.
Hurley, Robert F. and G. Tomas M. Hult. 1998. “Innovation, Market Orientation, and Organizational Learning: An Integration and Empirical Examination.”Journal of Marketing 62 (July): 42–54.
Jaworski, Bernard J. and Ajay K. Kohli. 1993. “Market Orientation: Antecedents and Consequences.”Journal of Marketing 57 (July): 53–70.
Juran, Joseph M. 1988.Juran's Quality Control Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kelley, Scott W. 1992. “Developing Customer Orientation Among Service Employees.”Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 20 (1): 27–36.
Kerlinger, F. N. 1973.Foundations of Behavioral Research. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Kohli, Ajay K. and Bernard J. Jaworski. 1990. “Market Orientation: The Construct, Research Propositions, and Managerial Implications.”Journal of Marketing 54 (April): 1–18.
——, and Ajith Kumar. 1993. “MARKOR: A Measure of Market Orientation.”Journal of Marketing Research 30 (November): 467–477.
Kotler, Philip. 2000.Marketing Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lytle, Richard S., Peter W. Hom, and Michael P. Mokwa. 1998. “SERV*OR: A Managerial Measure of Organizational Service-Orientation”Journal of Retailing 74 (4): 455–489.
Mohr-Jackson, Iris. 1992. “Broadening the Market Orientation: An Added Focus on Internal Customers.”Human Resource Management 30 (4): 455–467.
Mowday, Richard T., Richard M. Steers, and Lyman W. Porter. 1979. “The Measure of Organizational Commitment.”Journal of Vocational Behavior 14 (April): 224–247.
Narver, John C. and Stanley F. Slater. 1990. “The Effect of a Market Orientation on Business Profitability.”Journal of Marketing 54 (October): 20–35.
Netemeyer, Richard G., James S. Boles, Daryl O. McKee, and Robert McMurrian. 1997. “An Investigation Into the Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors in a Personal Selling Context.”Journal of Marketing 61 (July): 85–98.
Nunnally, Jum and Ira H. Bernstein. 1994.Psychometric Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.
O'Hara, Bradley S., James S. Boles, and Mark W. Johnston. 1991. “The Influence of Personal Variables on Salesperson Selling Orientation.”Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management 11 (1): 61–67.
Oliver, Richard L. and Erin Anderson. 1994. “An Empricial Test of the Consequences of Behavior-and Outcome-Based Sales Control Systems.”Journal of Marketing 58 (October): 53–67.
Parasuraman, A., Valarie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry. 1988. “SERVQUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring Consumer Perceptions.”Journal of Retailing 64 (Spring): 12–40.
Saxe, Robert and Barton A. Weitz. 1982. “The SOCO Scale: A Measure of the Customer Orientation of Salespeople.”Journal of Marketing Research 19 (August): 343–351.
Schein, Edgar H. 1999.The Corporate Culture Survival Guide: Sense and Nonsense About Culture Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Schneider, Benjamin and David E. Bowen. 1985. “Employee and Customer Perceptions of Service in Banks: Replication and Extension.”Journal of Applied Psychology 70 (3): 423–433.
— Susan S. White, and Michelle C. Paul. 1998. “Linking Service Climate and Customer Perceptions of Service Quality: Test of a Causal Model.”Journal of Applied Psychology 83 (2): 150–163.
Schonberger, Richard J. 1990.Building a Chain of Customers: Linking Business Functions to Create the World Class Company. New York: Free Press.
Senge, Peter M. 1990.The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday.
Shapiro, Benson P. 1988. “What the Hell Is ‘Market Oriented’?”Harvard Business Review 66 (November–December): 119–125.
Sharma, Subhash. 1996.Applied Multivariate Techniques. New York: John Wiley.
Siguaw, Judy A., Gene Brown, and Robert E. Widing II. 1994. “The Influence of Market Orientation of the Firm on Sales.”Journal of Marketing Research 31 (1): 106–116.
Slater, Stanley F. and John C. Narver. 1994a. “Does Competitive Environment Moderate the Market Orientation-Performance Relationship?”Journal of Marketing 58 (January): 46–55.
— and —. 1994b. “Market Orientation, Customer Value, and Superior Performance.”Business Horizons 37 (March/April): 22–28.
— and —. 1995. “Market Orientation and the Learning Organization.”Journal of Marketing 59 (July): 63–74.
Smircich, Linda. 1983. “Concepts of Culture and Organizational Analysis.”Administrative Science Quarterly 28 (September): 339–358.
Szymanski, David M. 1988. “Determinants of Selling Effectiveness: The Importance of Declarative Knowledge to the Personal Selling Concept.”Journal of Marketing 52 (January): 64–77.
Webster, Frederick E., Jr. 1994.Market-Driven Management. New York: John Wiley.
Williams, Larry J. and Stella E. Anderson. 1994. “An Alternative Approach to Method Effects by Using Latent-Variable Models: Applications in Organizational Behavior Research.”Journal of Applied Psychology 79 (June): 323–331.
Williams, Michael R. 1992. “Organizational Culture as a Predictor of the Level of Salesperson's Customer Oriented Behavior.” Ph. D. Dissertation. Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma City.
Zeithaml, Valarie A., A. Parasuraman, and Leonard L. Berry. 1990.Delivering Quality Service. New York: Free Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Karen Norman Kennedy is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of South Florida. Her research interests include customer orientation and cultural change in organizations, as well as the evolving role of customers and employees in today's marketplace. Her work has been published in theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, theJournal of Services Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, and theJournal of Marketing Education.
Felicia G. Lassk is an assistant professor in the Marketing Group of Northeastern University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of South Florida. Her research interests include customer orientation, salesperson job involvement, and measurement issues. Her articles have appeared in the theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Industrial Marketing Management, and theJournal of Marketing Education, among others.
Jerry R. Goolsby is the Hilton/Baldridge Eminent Chair of Music Industry Studies at Loyola University New Orleans. He received his Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. His research interests include issues related to market orientation and its implementation, customer and employee relationships, and sales interactions. His work has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and other marketing journals.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kennedy, K.N., Lassk, F.G. & Goolsby, J.R. Customer mind-set of employees throughout the organization. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 30, 159–171 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1177/03079459994407
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/03079459994407