Resumen de Market orientation and performance in portuguese smes - a research proposal
Ricardo José de Ascensão Gouveia Rodrigues
Small and médium sized firms (SMEs) represent 98% of the Portuguese firms. As a consequence, the health and the wealth of the Portuguese economy depend heavily on the performance of the SMEs sector. Recent studies have shown that business performance is related to the firm-wide ability to genérate, disseminate and respond to market intelligence, that is, to acquire and act upon relevant information about the market players. This ability is labelled market orientation, and is composed of value-creating behaviours for the customer. Although, as mentioned before, several studies have been undertaken on the relationship between market orientation and business performance, most of them focus on large firms, some of the few exceptions to this scenario being the works of Appiah-Adu (1997) and Pelham (1997, 2000). This paper is a research proposal for a doctoral thesis, which main purpose is to study the relationship between market orientation and performance in the Portuguese SMEs.
