Abstract
D.Comm.
The market orientation construct describes the behaviours and activities necessary for
an organisation to become market oriented - in other words reflect its adoption of the
marketing concept. In this study an organisation's perceived level of market
orientation was determined using salespeople to assess the extent to which their
organisations exhibited market oriented behaviours. The results obtained revealed that
on the whole salespeople tend to see their organisation as having above average levels
of market orientation.
Market oriented organisations provide salespeople with a support system that enable
them to provide their customers with optimal satisfaction since everyone in the
organisation is focused on this objective. Salespeople operating in market oriented
organisations will tend to experience less role stress than those salespeople operating
in organisations with lower levels of market orientation. Salespeople with certain
personality traits are better able to cope with role stress and therefore these
individuals would probably be found in organisations with low levels of market
orientation. In this study the personality trait profiles of salespeople working for
organisations with different perceived levels of market orientation were determined
and the results obtained were correlated with their perceptions of their organisations
level of market orientation. The results obtained revealed that there was a correlation
between two of the salesperson's personality traits namely, gregarious and energies
and their organisation's perceived level of market orientation.
The personality dimensions measured in this study were also used to develop a model
whereby one could predict 68% ofthe overall respondents correctly in terms of their
customer or competitor orientations. Two factors namely apprehensive and
conservative, with a negative loading entered into the model in this order, would
enable one to predict the salesperson's dominant orientation.