Abstract:

It is without doubt that considerable research on market orientation has reached nearly three decades old, along with the two prominent theories being widely cited namely Narver and Slater’s MKTOR and Kohli and Jaworski’s MARKOR. Not until recently that market orientation conduct has evolved, diffused and transcended across organizational context onto individual employee. Within the Malaysian scenario, stringent capital requirements, heightening competition and turbulent economic forces made it more difficult for financial institutions to maintain healthy asset growth. Given the importance of business banking asset in the system, the phenomenon of interest falls on the B2B salespeople. Their ability to be resilient in adapting to the market forces is crucial for these firms to be competitive. Thus, this study seeks to understand the factors that enhance their performance, namely individual market orientation (I-MARKOR) and learning orientation. Data were gathered from 80 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople from several licensed local and foreign financial institutions in Kuala Lumpur. Several factors of I-MARKOR are reported to be significant predictor of prescribed performance, while learning-oriented behavior is found to have interaction effects on certain I-MARKOR dimensions. This paper contributes to the enrichment of the existing literature on market orientation and learning orientation by proposing a model that was empirically tested to be a valid and reliable predictor of job performance. By assessing and profiling the market oriented behaviour of their salespeople, firms will be able to focus on the right competencies training and market-focused performance appraisal.