Business orientation: Cliche or substance?

This paper reviews the orthodox treatment of production, product, sales and marketing business orientations in introductory marketing texts and suggests changes. Orientation is an important issue which has a profound effect on long run business success, particularly on the effectiveness of business strategy. It is recommended that the orthodox orientations should be revised to the following: marketing/customer orientation; accounting/cost orientation; production/technology orientation; R&D/innovation orientation. The examination of orientation suggests they should not be regarded as mutually exclusive, but rather that organizations need, to some extent, to be oriented to all four. This treatment of orientation may be a little more complex than the former but it remains simple enough for inclusion in introductory texts.