An Empirical Investigation of the Effect of Market Orientation and Entrepreneurship Orientation Alignment on Product Innovation

This article develops a concept of an alignment between market and entrepreneurship orientations and reports the results of a study designed to investigate its effect on a firm’s product innovation. A sample of 181 firms was classified into four categories labeled as market/entrepreneurship orientation (ME), entrepreneurship orientation (EO), market-oriented (MO), and conservative (CO) firms. One-way ANOVA and planned contrast tests (PCT) were used to identify whether or not specific product innovation decisions, activities, and performance vary across the groups. The results indicate that these groups of firms significantly differ with respect to both subjective and objective measures of new product performance, and with product innovation strategies and activities pertaining to timing of market entry, product quality, marketing synergy, proficiency of market launch, and management support for innovation. Further, the findings suggest that these groups of firms are not significantly different with respect to perceived environmental hostility and intensity of market competition. This finding suggests that the groups of firms are robust across environments and that the findings presented in this study are not an artifact of environmental variation. Managerial and research implications of the results are discussed.