The relationship between business orientations and brand performance
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to adopt a customer-centric value creation perspective to provideinsights into the contribution of business orientations, especially marketing orientation and innovationorientation to the creation of customer-centric value (customer equity and brand performance).Design/methodology/approach To undertake this examination, a model was developed andthen tested to validate its applicability in the context of both developed and developing economies. Thepaper includes partial least squares.Findings The findings demonstrate that being marketing-oriented and innovation-oriented appearsto be important in creating customers, keeping them, and increasing add-on selling to them and rewardsthe firm with greater brand performance in the marketplace. Importantly, these relationships areuniversally held across developed and developing business environments. Interestingly, marketingorientation was found to contribute more to the creation of customer-centric value than innovationorientation in developing business environment, whereas the opposite was found in the context ofdeveloped business environment.Research limitations/implications The data incorporate only the subjective measures ofcustomer-centric value. Future studies can use financial measures to complement the self-reportingapproach used in this paper. This dual-approach to measuring the value of customers to the firm(customer equity) and brand performance would provide additional insights into the customer-centricmarketing literature.Practical implications The findings suggest that managers should strive to develop a high levelof marketing orientation and innovation orientation as two efficient ways to achieve higher levels ofcustomer equity. They are also advised that if their firms are more effective in acquiring potentialcustomers, retaining current customers, and enhancing add-on selling, they see their brands performbetter. Importantly, the findings also provide guidance for managers on how to allocate their resourcesto key business activities (e.g. marketing and innovation) in the context of international business(developing versus developed business environments).Originality/value This study contributes to customer-centric marketing theory by enhancingunderstanding of the contribution of marketing and innovation to the creation of customer-centricvalue in different business environments. This study also contributes to the business orientationliterature by demonstrating the utility of a cultural-behavioral approach in measuring marketingorientation and innovation orientation.