There are always ways to bring market orientation into the culture of a health and fitness organization. First, let us define market orientation. Market orientation focuses on a company identifying and meeting the needs and desires of clients through its own, or, through acquired services and products.
One way to bring market orientation into the culture of an organization is to get feedback from past customers. Have the marketing department conduct a survey, or even interviews, to find out what types of health supplements are needed to meet their goals. Did we as a company meet the goals? What can we do anything differently to help the progress along?
Once we have the answers to these questions, we can come up with a strategic plan to change, or implement new products and services to meet the goals of our existing and past clients (weight loss, muscle building, general nutrition, etc). To integrate this plan into the company’s culture, we could hold a mandatory seminar for all employees, where we explain the method to our madness: why we researched a market, what we found in our study, and the changes that we will make to our herbs, vitamins, and other products of accommodate our customers. For example, we could rent out a hotel conference room for the day and give an in depth presentation on why, and how, we will orient ourselves to a specific market – say, the diet pill market.
Another way to bring market orientation into the culture of an organization is to get feedback before entering a new market. First, hold an employee survey or ask various people throughout the company how they would feel about entering a new market with new products. Ask them what they think we should do before entering. Do they have any experience within the new market segment that we plan to enter? Have they made purchasing decisions with regards to this new market?
For example, we might be a vitamin manufacturer who decides to enter the diet pill market. We could use our employees for statistical purposes, asking them if they have ever dieted, ever used diet pills, and if they have had success. What made them buy diet pills and what were the best diet pills? Was it the cost, or maybe the value portrayed by the marketing efforts? Did they see results? What ingredients made the pills viable?
Once we have collected information, we can use it to come up with a marketing plan. We can then incorporate this into the company’s culture by holding a meeting to explain how the effort of employees has lead to the entering of a new market. We could use specific information obtained from company workers to model our plan and hit the new market. Some job descriptions and manufacturing processes will change, but this will hopefully be accepted with open arms since everyone was included in the process from day one. Picking something interested and appealing, such as diet pills, is probably the best was to go when altering a culture for market orientation.
Paul Guenther is a Website & SEO Analyst for Health-Supplements. Click for more information on vitamins, minerals, and health supplement tech news.
