Marketing implementation in the UK engineering industry

Abstract

Based on a survey of 205 CEOs in the UK engineering industry, demonstrates that engineering companies have made a small, but progressive, move towards implementing a marketing orientation philosophy, but need to do much more if they are to be internationally competitive. In the survey 40 per cent of the firms were either product or production oriented, 7 per cent of them classified themselves as sales oriented and only 53 per cent of the companies professed to be marketing oriented. Marketing orientation tends to be overstated, as the role of marketing is largely seen as one of selling with emphasis on communications. Market research is extremely poorly funded. Planning tends to be short term and financially oriented. Provides evidence that marketing‐oriented firms are more likely to achieve higher profits than those that are not.