Beyond market orientation: When customers and suppliers disagree

The essence of market orientation is the successful management of a relatio nship between suppliers and customers. During the past 15 years, a body of scholarship on antecedents and consequences of market orientation has emerg ed. But what is the appropriate level of market orientation, and what happe ns when customers and suppliers disagree about the appropriate level of a s upplier's market orientation? To what extent does such disagreement concern ing market orientation affect the customer-supplier relationship ? Do answe rs to these questions vary by country? The authors examine these issues usi ng data from a survey of leading Japanese and U.S. business firms and their key customers that employed a unique matched supplier-customer sampling me thodology. The authors report several interesting results.