Market Orientation and Performance of Universities

The study examined the influence of customer orientation, market intelligence, competitor orientation, and inter-functional coordination on university performance in terms of students’ enrolment and retention, number of programmes and overall customer satisfaction. The study was guided by Ohmae’s 3C model, social capital theory and relationship marketing theory. The target population was 63 universities in Kenya. The study revealed that market intelligence generation, competitor orientation, and inter-functional coordination positively and significantly influence university performance. Further, the results showed that inter-functional coordination improves both customer satisfaction and number of programmes and that competitor orientation improves both customer satisfaction and number of programmes when universities are categorized into private and public. The study thus concludes that a university should be market-oriented, and embrace market intelligence generation by disseminating gathered market information on competitors and students’ needs across all university departments. Inter-functional coordination was also found to play a key role in University performance.