Reto Felix and Wolfgang Hinck
Executive Summary
In this article, Felix and Hinck investigate market, consumer, and competitor orientation of medium-sized and large Mexican companies. During the past 20 years, Mexico has successfully transitioned from a highly protectionist environment to a market with exceptional potential for both domestic and foreign firms. Consequently, a large number of subsidiaries of U.S. and other international companies have begun serving Mexican consumer and industrial markets. At the same time, Mexico has developed its own multinational companies, such as CEMEX and Vitro, two of the many Mexican companies that are successfully competing with U.S. firms on a global basis. Because of the importance of the Mexican market and its firms and because an understanding of their strategies and performance can provide insights into the contemporary global environment, this article addresses the question of what constitutes the market orientation of Mexican firms and how market-oriented Mexican companies are along the main dimensions of the market orientation construct.
On the basis of a rigorous statistical analysis of data that the authors obtained from a sample of medium-sized and large Mexican companies randomly selected from the Mexican Entrepreneurial Information System’s list of registered companies, the study suggests that Mexican companies are especially strong with respect to profit orientation, customer orientation, and response implementation. The results also show that Mexican companies are strategically integrated. However, medium-sized Mexican companies are lower in external focus than are large companies. Notably, the assignment of marketing budgets and the use of defined marketing plans are still not common among all medium-sized and large companies in Mexico.
Felix and Hinck provide scholars, managers, and decision makers with a first impression of how companies in Mexico view market orientation in general and their own market orientation in particular in the context of global competition. For marketing practitioners interested in the Mexican market, the question of resource allocation is perhaps the most important one that arises from this study. Under the constraints of the Mexican economy, resource allocation is still more important than it is for most Western firms, and the right decisions are essential for the long-term survival of Mexican companies, which face not only traditional competitors from developed countries but also fierce competition from developing countries with even lower incomes and production costs. The question whether investment dollars (or pesos, respectively) will go toward monitoring customers or competitors is especially relevant.
Biography
Reto Felix is Professor of Marketing, Departamento de Administración, Universidad de Monterrey.
Wolfgang Hinck is Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Business, Louisiana State University.
Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 13, No. 1, March 2005
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