Column 4 · Market Orientation · Era 3, Competitive Advantage (1980s)
Marketing Culture
Formulation, process · Landmark · Cluster II, Resources and Orientation
Description
Deshpandé and Webster defined organizational culture as the shared values and beliefs that give members norms for behavior and set a research agenda linking culture to marketing effectiveness, within which market orientation is a type of culture.
Managerial Implications
Customer focus is a cultural trait, carried in shared values and norms, not a department. Leaders shape it through what they reward, whom they promote, and which stories they tell. Before launching a customer initiative, diagnose the culture: if engineers or finance set the norms, customer programs will be tolerated rather than adopted. Changing culture takes years, so start with visible leadership behavior.