Introduction

Knowledge management orientation and marketing

An integrated model of marketing knowledge

Internal knowledge perspective

External knowledge perspective

Organizational outcomes from knowledge perspective

Discussion and implications

Future research direction

References

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and propose an integrated model of marketing knowledge from a tacit knowledge management perspective. This paper further aims at developing a linkage between explicit knowledge perspective (internal and external marketing) and tacit knowledge orientation of an organization, leading to improved business success. Design/methodology/approach – This paper develops a conceptual model showing the integration of the internal, tacit and explicit knowledge perspectives that results in improved business success. The proposed model and associated propositions are drawn from the synthesis of relevant knowledge and marketing literature.
Findings – Five major associated propositions are offered in the paper, which inform both scholars and practitioners about what constitutes a holistic market orientation and how organizations can achieve business success by adopting both an internal and external orientation to tacit and explicit knowledge management.
Originality/value – The model makes an original contribution to theoretical and organizational marketing management knowledge. It does this by extending the conceptual and operational boundaries of existing models of internal and external marketing, aimed at helping organizations achieve competitive advantage and business success.

Introduction

Organizations develop customer-oriented strategies to achieve strategic and sustainable business success. To execute an effective customer-focused strategy, organizations need to integrate their internal and external marketing activities (Ferdous et al., 2013; Lings, 1999). An internal market orientation perspective contributes to a better understanding of an organization, promotes its services to employees and helps employees adapt to the organizational procedural requirements and changes (Gummesson, 2000). In doing so, employees of any organization are more likely to be better equipped to deal with the requirements of the external market-oriented activities (Ferdous and Polonsky, 2014; Rodrigues and Pinho, 2010). According to Kohli and Jaworski (1990), market orientation entails three key elements – intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and intelligence responsiveness. According to them, to be market oriented, a company must generate information of the customers’ needs and wants and the factors affecting customers, disseminate or share collected information among the various departments of the company and respond to the information by designing and implementing products and services. For this purpose, Lings and Greenley (2005) provided an interchangeable view of internal marketing and suggested that this could be considered as internal market orientation, which could be parallel to external market orientation suggested by Kohli and Jaworski (1990). Thus, they suggested internal market orientation as the collection of information for the employees of the company, disseminating the collected information among the respective departments and responding to the disseminated information. Kaur et al. (2009), however, recommended that the three refined market orientation components (intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination and intelligence responsiveness), developed by Kohli et al. (1993) can be viewed as the core of the internal market orientation construct. As both internal and external market orientations involve the generation, dissemination and responsiveness of market information (Jaworski and Kohli, 1993; Slater and Narver, 1995; Lings, 2004; Greenley, 2009), the systematic processing of information about customers and competitors, including internal customers (i.e. employees), fosters a firm’s knowledge about the market (Zebal, 2018; Luca and Atuahene-Gima, 2007; Nonaka, 1994). Past studies have deemed organizational knowledge as “market information” that proceeds through a series of activities, namely, knowledge acquisition, knowledge distribution, knowledge interpretation and organizational memory (Huber, 1991; Morman and Miner, 1997). While organizations strive to be knowledgeable about their respective markets, issues arise when organizations fail to implement internal and external knowledge management processes. This paper argues that to be successful in business, organizations need to have a sound understanding of the processes involved in generating and creating accurate and actionable market knowledge drawn from both tacit and explicit knowledge perspectives.