The market orientation concept in the private nonprofit organisation domain

The market orientation concept has become one of the central issues of scientific and entrepreneurial study in the marketing discipline. In fact, the theoretical and empirical contributions to this field of research have proliferated in various contexts throughout the last decade. One domain, however, in which market orientation investigation has been relatively limited until recently, is in private nonprofit organisations. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to delimit the market orientation concept in the private nonprofit organisation context. The alternative basic orientations adopted by these organisations are first assessed in order to specify next the meaning of market orientation from a dual perspective: as an organisational philosophy and culture, and as an organisational behaviour.