Market orientation, innovation and organizational commitment in industrial firms

The main purpose of this article is to study the antecedents (internal market orientation) and the consequences (innovation, organizational commitment and performance) of market orientation in industrial SMEs.This article follows a new approach: instead of analyzing the responses of CEOs to a questionnaire, commercial and marketing functional managers were addressed. Consequently, this is the first study of its kind involving industrial SMEs addressing those who implement the marketing strategy instead of those who define it.Based on 154 valid answers, the conclusions are that, at a significant level of 1%, the internal market orientation influences positively the external market orientation, the external market orientation influences innovation and innovation, in its turn, influences business performance. Moreover, market orientation and organizational commitment only influence performance at a 5% significance level.