A qualitative examination of market orientation measurement scale for Vietnamese instant coffee industry : case: Trung Nguyen, Nescafé, and Vinacafé

Abstract

Market orientation is a topic that draws much attention of marketing researchers since the 1950s. There has been many studies contribute to the understanding of this subject. And, researchers find out that market orientation brings many benefit to the company. Most of the studies adopt qualitative method and are conducted in cross-industry context. The cross-industry analysis while provide a broad view of market orientation and business performance, it lacks of focus on a specific industry. Previous theses confirm the relationship between market orientation and business performance in different industries. There exists an urge to concentrate the focus on a specific industry. Moreover, the author realizes that the market orientation has not yet received much attention in Vietnam because Vietnamese company lacks of knowledge and tool to apply it into practice. As a result, this thesis comes into exists with the purpose to provide readers knowledge about market orientation, benefits of market orientation, and how to measure it in the Vietnamese instant coffee context. The outcome of the research points out that the market orientation positively affects business performance of case company. In addition, the study reveals that traditional measurement scales for market orientation need modification to fit the practice of Vietnamese companies. The modified version of measurement scale is presented as one of the outcomes of this study. This proposed measurement scale will help Vietnamese instant coffee companies to keep track of their business activities and improve company performance. The thesis has achieved its objectives. After reviewing, the validity and reliability of the study are confirmed. However, the study inevitably has some limitations that this study is restrictedly applied to instant coffee industry and that it is geographically limit to Vietnamese market. The sample of this study is small and restraints the ability to generate a general theory. Hence, further research should be conducted to generalize the thesis results.