Market orientation versus innovative culture: two routes to superior brand performance

Purpose - The paper aims at providing insights into how market orientation and organisational culture together contribute to brand performance, shedding light on the nexus between innovative culture and market orientation, and examining the relative importance of innovative culture over market orientation in affecting brand performance. Design/methodology/approach - In a cross-sectional survey, a variance-based structural equation modelling was used to test hypotheses on a convenience sample of 180 marketing executives in Australia. Findings - Organisations with a strong innovative culture appear to recognise that building a successful brand depends not always on the interpretation of feedback received from current customers and competitors, but instead on organisations' ability to innovatively develop unique ways of delivering superior value to customers. The findings were consistent with this advice to both market orientation and innovative culture. In addition, the findings indicate that market orientation is a response partially derived from the organisation's innovative culture. Finally, it was also found that organisational culture was relatively more important than market orientation in affecting organisational performance. Originality/value - The paper advances the understanding of performance-based market orientation research by investigating structural relationships among market orientation, organisational culture, and organisational performance at the micro level (e.g. brand performance).