The impact of market orientation on family firm performance

This study aims to investigate the effect of market orientation in a specific organisational context, namely family firms. Market orientation (MO) provides a firm with market-sensing and customer-linking capabilities. Because of their long-term strategies and customer-value orientation, family firms support the development of MO. It is proposed that responsive and proactive MO has a positive impact on the share of regular customers (repeat buyers), success with new products/services and sales growth of family firms. Based on a sample of 344 family firms, regression models confirm that MO shows positive correlations with success with new products/services and share of regular customer’s but not with sales growth. The typically strong orientation towards customer bonding and loyalty may prevent family firms from the acquisition of new customers and therefore hinder sales growth.