hange in the market through acquired information from the market. This
is connected with intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, and
responsiveness to show in market orientation.
If the environment is stable, firms would attain efficiency of the whole
process through deleting overlapped work as well as internal cooperation
to enhance internal efficiency. In this regard, they would importantly treat
collaboration between departments and standardized processes and, as a
result, they could manage improved processes. It could be explained as the
effect of interaction to come from internal orientation connected with work
standardization, process improving, and collaboration between departments.
The best universal division of these strategic viewpoints could be
regarded as Porter’s point of view. He suggested competitive strategies
such as cost leadership and differentiation which can be used in all
industries and these are based on an industrial structural viewpoint. He
insisted that firms select one of them. According to his strategic viewpoint,
the former is to stress efficiency of the internal process. To achieve it,
firms should attain collaboration between departments and work
standardization through pre-communication and this could save costs
through improving the whole process. As a result of attaining efficiency,
they can enjoy cost advantages compared to their competitors and sustain
a comparative advantage in the market. This can be regarded as benefits
through the attainment of internal orientation.
On the other hand, differentiation, the latter, means that firms have
superior advantages concerned with the quality of goods and/or services
compared with competitors. It also means a series of behaviors where they
understand customer needs and then they attain the needs from the
viewpoint of customer service. They could achieve differentiation
compared with competitors and, consequently, they could enjoy a
competitive advantage if they attain the needs. Therefore, it is similar with
the improvement of customer service which is achieved by market
orientation; that is, they create intelligence in the market, disseminate it
internally and make a response to it.
In these circumstances, internal orientation and market orientation
represent not just the firms focus on internal or external change but they
simultaneously achieve strategies like low costs as well as a high quality
of service through focusing on the inside and outside of the firm to attain
their goals.