Marketing orientation in the European Union mobile telecommunication market

Purpose The main objectives of the paper are: to analyse marketing orientation application specifics in mobile telecommunication enterprises; and to develop and test an instrument for measuring the level of marketing orientation in the enterprises of the mobile telecommunication industry. Design/methodology/approach The marketing orientation instrument was derived from systematic comparative analysis of the relevant marketing literature, supplemented by additional criteria relating to innovation and organizational learning. The empirical research method was expert assessment, conducted by means of online questionnaires. Correlation analysis and comparison with data from secondary sources were employed to test the validity of the procedure. Findings The empirical research findings confirmed positive relationships between marketing orientation, enterprise performance and learning orientation in the target industry, but not between marketing orientation and innovativeness. Research limitations/implications The paper reports a field study of marketing orientation in the mobile telecommunications industry in the 15 countries of the pre‐2004 European Union. After acceptance of the new members into the EU there is a need to investigate the marketing orientation of the mobile communication operators in the newly accepted EU countries. Practical implications The proposed marketing orientation instrument can be used to solve the issues of marketing orientation development. An enterprise is expected to achieve better performance results by improving operations related to each criterion of the measuring instrument, under conditions of constant monitoring and learning. Originality/value The proposed marketing orientation development instrument is supplemented with additional innovation and organizational learning criteria. The first empirical marketing orientation research was performed for mobile telecommunication enterprises in the EU and confirmed positive relations between the marketing orientation level and the performance results of the EU mobile telecommunication operators. This research presents the empirical evidence that marketing orientation positively correlates with the constant organization learning.