Marketing

© SYMPHONYA Emerging Issues in Management, n. 2, 2010 www.unimib.it/symphonya

Market-Driven Management: A Critical Literature Review

Niccolò Gordini*

Abstract In global markets corporations adopt a market–driven approach which takes the form of careful monitoring of the competition and skill in understanding the market, the operators who work on it, their key characteristics and their products, in order to choose the most suitable course of action, thanks to better and faster understanding of what is being achieved in the extended market space. The paper provides a critical review of the main literature on market-driven management, analysing its evolution from Japan to the USA and Europe. Keywords: Market-Driven Management; Critical Literature Review; Global Competition; Competitive Advantage

1. From Product Orientation to Marketing Management Until the 1950s, with demand exceeding supply (scarcity of supply), management models paid tribute to the scientific management (Taylor 1911; Ford 1922, 1926, 1930) model introduced by Ford in the 1930s. The Ford model, which was based on the idea of giving every citizen a car at an acceptable price, led to the introduction and spread of mass production in the United States. This model was perfect for the market conditions in the United States in the Twenties. The then Chairman of General Motors, Albert P. Sloan (1990), described these conditions pinpointing a radical transformation, between 1924 and 1926, that changed the automotive market from the production of a very few, very expensive units for a small number of customers, to the era of the good quality car for everyone. The Ford approach, which was based on the supremacy of product orientation and the theory of the scientific organisation of labour, was designed to achieve economies of scale based on standardised mass production, the rationalisation of the manufacturing process and a reduction in dead time, by the introduction of the assembly line1. Ford...