The interplay of marketing performance measurement and market orientation leading to high business performance in manufacturing SMEs

Whereas marketing performance measurement (MPM) and market orientation (MO) are among the most studied marketing concepts, there is still a lack of knowledge about the configurations leading to high business performance. Therefore, we performed a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) in the context of 150 manufacturing SMEs combining customer, competitor, and financial metrics of MPM, MO level, and both subjective and objective business performance. The goal was to identify MPM and MO configurations leading to high business performance. We found, identically with the prior research, that high-performing SMEs benefited from the combination of high MO and focusing only on particular domains of MPM (customer, financial). However, contrary to the previous investigation, we also found configurations in which a high MO level was not necessary for high business performance when substituted with the appropriate MPM system, dominated by competitor metrics. Our study supports the conclusion of diverse paths to business success.