The effects of market and service-orientation on the success of solution providers in the German manufacturing sector

As a central aspect of the marketing concept is market orientation. However, the concept has been criticized, e.g. by pointing out that market orientation mainly concentrates on customer-focused activities, rather than on competitor-focused activities, what indicates towards an individualized product with high customer involvement. Especially in the manufacturing industry individualization in regard of a combination of products and services offers a huge differentiation factor. There has been a debate about the need for a shift from a product-centric view towards a service-dominant perspective. Hence, the concept of market-orientation has to be evaluated against this background. In addition, the authors argue that service-orientation has to be integrated in the concept, because of the growing importance especially for so-called solution provides with a focus on product/service-combinations. This study analyzes 173 companies in the German manufacturing industry to measure the effects of market- and service-orientation. In addition, we widened the well-known scale of Narver and Slater [57] including service-orientation. The results show that some aspects of market orientation can explain success of services. However, service-orientation seems not to have an effect on the success of new products, whereas implicit success factors of services a highly effected.