EXECUTIVE MBA PROGRAMME

EMBA 603: MARKETING MANAGEMENT

LECTURER: Dr. BEDMAN NARTEH

“MAKE EITHER ECG OR GHANA WATER COMPANY A MARKET ORIENTED COMPANY”

SUBMITTED BY: NAME: HUSEINI MOHAMMED

INDEX NUMBER: 10326174

DATE : 01ST OCTOBER, 2010

INTRODUCTION

To achieve superior performance, a business must develop and sustain competitive advantage.
Competitive advantage which was once based on structural characteristics such as market power,
economics of scale, or a broad product line has today shifted it emphasis to capabilities that enable
business to consistently deliver superior value to its customers. Kohli and Jaworski (1990) state that
market orientation provides "a unifying focus for the efforts and projects of individuals, thereby leading
to superior performance." There is a strong relationship between market orientation and several
measures of business performance, including profitability, customer retention, sales growth, and new
product success.

BACKGROUND OF THE COMPANY

ECG was incorporated under company code, 1963, (Act 179) in February 1997 and succeeded ECG,
which was set up in 1967 by government (NLCD 125).Its mandate is to provide electricity power in
Ghana. The nature of business is to transmit, supply and distribute electricity. Ghana is divided in to
southern (Gt. Accra, Ashanti, Volta, Eastern, Central and Western regions) and northern zones (Brong
Ahafo, and Three Northern regions). ECG is a sole distributor of electricity in southern zone.

VISION

To be among the leading electricity distribution company in Africa in terms of quality, safety and
reliability.

MISSION

To provide quality electricity services to support economic growth and development in Ghana.

INTERNAL ANALYSIS

Strength: Skilled human resource base, Sole distributer (southern Ghana)

Weakness: Poor human relation (customer care), Lack of State of heart Technology, Weak financial
stand.

EXTERNAL ANALYSIS

Opportunity: Increasingly growing market for electricity consumption (Industries, offices and homes)
Threat: Low level of Akosombo Dam, Power of VRA (producer of electricity), power of
Gridco( transmitter of electricity), Lack of economic tariff chargings.

CORE COMPONENTS OF MARKET ORIENTATION

A business is market-oriented when its culture is systematically and entirely committed to the
continuous creation of superior customer value. Specifically, this entails collecting and coordinating
information on customers, competitors, and other significant market influencers (such as regulators and
suppliers) to use in building that value.

Customer Orientation

The heart of a market orientation is its customer focus. To create superior value for buyers continuously
requires that ECG understands a customer’s entire value chain, not only as it is today but also as it
evolves over time. Employees of market-oriented businesses spend considerable time with their
customers. ECG needs to encourage employee to visit a customer once a month, learn the customer's
needs, and be the customer representative on the company.To maintain the relationships that are critical
to delivering superior customer value, ECG needs to pay close attention to service, both before and after
sales. Because of the importance of employees in this effort, great care should be taken to recruit and
retain the best people available and provide them with regular training.

Competitor Focus

Creating superior customer value requires more than just focusing on customers. The key questions are
which competitors or potential competitors, and what technologies, and whether target customers
perceive them as alternate satisfiers. Superior value requires that ECG identify and understand the
principal competitors' short-term strengths and weaknesses and long-term capabilities and strategies.
Currently ECG has no competitor in the market segmentation (southern zone) in which it operates.
Never the less it should be looking out for potential competitor in unforeseen fu.

Inter functional Coordination

The third of the three core components of a market orientation is the coordination of personnel and other
resources from throughout the company to create value for customers. Any point in the buyer's value
chain is an opportunity for ECG to create value for the buyer firm. This means that any individual in any
function in ECG can potentially contribute to value creation. As Michael Porter (1985) explains: Every
department, facility, branch office, and other organizational unit has a role that must be defined and
understood. All employees, regardless of their distance from the strategy formulation process, must
recognize their role in helping a firm achieve and sustain competitive advantage.

CREATING SUPERIOR CUSTOMER VALUE

Service and Customer Satisfaction

To deliver superior service, ECG must understand what their customers expect, for exceeding those
expectations is the basis of enduring customer loyalty. Keeping an existing customer costs only about
one-fifth as much as attracting a new one. And as Kotler (1992) noted, "[Customer] defection is the
worst thing that can happen." So to build customer loyalty, businesses must make a long-term
commitment to understand their customers' expectations and how they change, motivate employees to
view customer satisfaction as a primary objective, monitor customer satisfaction frequently, and stay in
touch with customers after the sale.

Market-Driven Quality

Customer satisfaction is the most heavily weighted category in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award. The examiners look for evidence of customer understanding, commitment, and impressive
results. It has never been truer that quality must be defined by the customer. Achieving high quality
requires continuously monitoring what customers want by ECG.

Innovation and New Product Development

The academic research was recently supported by Fortune's finding that the most important
characteristic of America's fastest growing companies is "putting the customer first - listening,
understanding, serving" (Deutschman 1991). The success of these businesses is attributable to
innovative new products, not just brand extensions, which can be lucrative without being very "new."
Thus ECG should invest in R&D to develop new products to meet current demand.

MARKET ORIENTED STRATEGIES

ECG top management leadership is a necessity for the transition to a market orientation. As Harold
Leavitt explains (1987): To accomplish this, senior management provides general guidelines for
business unit managers on how the culture should change, empowering them to initiate and tailor
customer value strategies. In addition, top management sets specific business unit standards for customer
satisfaction and other measures of market performance. The role of top management is facilitative,
deftly combining top-down strategy guidelines while encouraging bottom-up strategy insights and
responsiveness. By communicating and discussing business unit successes with other units in the
organization, top managers reinforce success and increase organizational learning. Most important,
senior managers lead by example. ECG can adopt the following two approaches/strategies in other to
boost its profitability and increase consumer confidence.

Programmatic approach: The first, and more conventional, strategy is outlined by Beer, Eisenstat, and
Spector (1990), whereby managers attempt to implant the market orientation "ethic" and culture directly.
The philosophy underlying this approach is that organizational change is the result of changes in
individual beliefs and behaviors. Therefore, the focus is on the attitudes and activities of individuals.
Businesses that use a programmatic approach to organizational change often adopt change programs
because they are fashionable rather than because management recognizes some intrinsic value in them.

Adaptive approach: According to Narver and Slater (1991), this approach is superior to the
Programmatic approach. Under this approach, management and employees continuously learn from their
efforts to create buyer value. They adjust strategy, structures, systems, and staffing based on such
learning. Key performance measures are developed early and short-term performance improvement
goals are set. Even though management has made a long-term commitment, the mood is one of
impatience. Results of some sort are expected early in the program; continuous improvement is expected
throughout the program.

Market Orientation and Continuous Learning

Market conditions and competitive threats never stand still. As the requirements for attaining a
sustainable competitive advantage change, so must the particulars of the three core components of
market orientation. Intelligence gathering by ECG becomes important, gathering intelligence from
customers about competitors and the marketplace through R & D. Market orientation is not a
preordained set of specific structures or behaviors. Rather, the three core components are manifested in
the organization's culture and climate, and must be continuously adapted, as required, to create and
maintain superior customer value within a given market. Ray Stata (1989), CEO of Analog Devices,
warns that "the rate at which organizations learn may become the only sustainable source of competitive
advantage."

CONCLUSION

To successfully achieve customer orientation, business intelligence gathering and dissemination on the
customers and the competitors is the key. Top management commitment should be geared positively
towards the introduction of appropriate structures, reward and motivation schemes to ensure successful
implementation.
REFERENCE

M. Beer., R. Eisenstat, and B. Spector, "Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change," Harvard
Business Review, November-December 1990, pp. 158-166.

A. Deutschman, "America's Fastest Risers," Fortune, October 7, 1991, pp. 46-68.

A.K. Kohli and B.J. Jaworski, "Market Orientation: The Construct, Research Propositions, and
Management Implications," Journal of Marketing, April 1990, pp. 1-18

P. Kotler, "Marketing's New Paradigm: What's Really Happening Out There," Planning Review,
September-October 1992, pp. 50-52.

H.J. Leavitt, Corporate Pathfinders (Homewood, IL: Penguin Books, 1987).

J.C. Narver and S.F. Slater, "Becoming More Market-Oriented: An Exploratory Study of the
Programmatic and Market-Back Approaches," Marketing Science Institute Working Paper, Report No.
91-128, October 1991.

M. Porter, Competitive Advantage (New York: The Free Press, 1985).

R. Stata, "Organizational Learning - The Key to Management Innovation," Sloan Management Review,
Spring 1989, pp. 63-74