Toward the measurement of market orientation : scale development and validation

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the dimensionality of the market orientation (MO) scale. Design/methodology/approach: This is a firm-level study. A purposive sample of 400 firms (with 2–3 key informants from each firm) has been taken to study the MO of the firms. The psychometric testing of the MO scale was done using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings: The results have shown that the dimensionality of MO exhibits a different pattern across the sample. The four factors delineated dimensions explain more than 62% of the variance in the data set and are found to be the valuable and versatile measure of MO. Overall, the results provide enough evidence of the validity, reliability and generalizability of the MO scale. The results of SEM indicate a satisfactory nomological validity of the scale. Originality/value: The study develops a valid measure of MO with a major focus on market intelligence. The study proposes MO as a function of customer orientation, competitor orientation, inter-functional coordination and market intelligence which was largely ignored in the marketing literature.