The influence of market orientation on firm's innovation performance has received growing attention among scholars since the construct was introduced in management research by Kohli and Jaworski (1990), as well as Narver and Slater (1990). Furthermore numerous studies have shown that market orientation has a significant positive impact on the innovation performance (Baker and Sinkula 2007; Langerak, Hultink et al. 2007; Paladino 2007). Although these studies have made a substantial contribution for a better understanding, their research focus is mainly limited solely on the product development process and its performance. Nevertheless given that the innovation process within the R&D can be divided in two, partly parallel executed process: the technology development process and the product development process (Lakemond, Johansson et al. 2007), a separated investigation of the effects of market orientation on product development performance on the one hand and on technology development performance on the other hand, seems to be worthwhile to gain a deeper understanding of the effects of market orientation on firm's innovation performance. In addition both development processes have distinct specific characteristics. For example technology development emphasizes a more learning-intensive and discovery-oriented approach, hence one might think a strong market orientation could constrain this. However, none of the studies on market orientation, examining the effects of market orientation specifically on technology development performance. Therefore, our research project aims to shed light on the following questions:
1. What is the effect of market orientation (i.e., proactive and responsive customer orientation) on technology development performance?
2. Taking a contingency perspective: Which influence have certain contextual factors on this relationship?
In our project we apply the understanding of market orientation as a corporate culture which leads to three behaviour patterns, described as follows: competitors orientation, customer orientation and interfunctional coordination (Narver and Slater 1990). Recent studies have shown that the contingent behaviour of these three components is different (Gatignon and Xuereb 1997; Lukas and Ferrell 2000). Hence, they should be treated as distinct construct (Gao, Zhoub et al. 2007). However, very few studies have addressed this criticism in examining the effects of these three components of market orientation separately (Hult, Ketchen et al. 2005). Among these components "customer orientation" which emphasizes putting customer' s interest first, is seen by many scholars as the most fundamental aspect of market orientation (Deshpand and Farley 1993). Its effect on innovation consequences (i.e. enhancing innovativeness vs. leading to more marginal innovation) is still unresolved (Grinstein 2008). Having the statements above in mind, we concentrate solely on one component of market orientation: customer orientation. For the operationalisation of customer orientation, we used the recently extended construct, separating customer orientation into a responsive and a proactive part (Narver, Slater et al. 2004). In addition to understand the contingent value of customer orientation we examined potential moderating effects due to external company factors (i.e. demand uncertainty and technology dynamic), as well as internal company factors (i.e. degree of hierarchy, centralisation and vertical integration). We will present empirical data from hightechnology industries in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. For the underlying empirical data a survey research utilizing questionnaires is used.
