MARKET ORIENTATION

Market Orientation at Nestle Water

Table of Contents

Introduction1

The extent to which the company is market oriented2

Learning from customers2

Competitive advantage4

Barriers to the development of market orientation5

Benefits of market orientation for Nestle Water7

Conclusion8

References10

Market Orientation at Nestle Water

Introduction

Nestle is the world market leader for bottled water. It is a multinational company that has a presence in 36 countries across the globe. It caters to the world market through 67 brands created, marketed, and distributed by its work force of more than 30,000 employees. It duly calls itself the healthy hydration company and provides “water for life”. Drinking water keeps the body hydrated and maintaining the desired level of hydration on a daily basis is a vital part of healthy living. According to the Euromonitor market report, Saudi Arabia presents a large market for bottled water, whereby the annual increase in the demand for bottled water is as high as 6.7% and presents a great opportunity for Nestle Water to enter the Saudi market. It is because of this reason that Nestle Water, in the year 2002, acquired the biggest water factory, Al Manhal Water Factory, in the Middle East.

To maintain its prestige in the Middle Eastern market, Nestle water realized that it will have to offer a mixture of international and local brands to cater to the needs of this diverse market. Any company develops products either on the basis of a marketing orientated approach or a product orientated approach. Strategic marketing called for the need to become market oriented and market savvy. Market orientation, put very simply, means that the company responds to the needs of the customers taking input from the customers rather than imposing on them what the company feels is best for them (Hunt & Lambe 2000, p. 28). Most successful companies around the world have adopted a market oriented strategy of product development either wholly or in combination with the product or sales oriented approach.

The paper discusses the extent to which Nestle Water, KSA is a market oriented company, what barriers it faced to becoming a market oriented company when it first entered the market and how a market oriented approach has helped the company in achieving its goal of market leadership.

The extent to which the company is market oriented

Market orientation entails great learning opportunities for any business. Nestle fully realized the need for market orientation and is highly oriented to the Saudi market. World market of today is dynamic in that the continuous innovation is the goal of most of the companies that face stiff competition (Erdil 2003, p. 5). At Nestle Waters, KSA market orientation is deeply embedded in the roots of the organizational culture.

Learning from customers

Market orientation at Nestle Waters, KSA entails organization wide generation of market intelligence and dissemination of this intelligence across all departments Matsuno & Mentzer 2000, p. 15). For this purpose, Nestle Waters spends a generous amount of its budget on an annual basis on market ...