Market Orientation in the Nonprofit Sector: Taking Multiple Constituencies into Consideration

Abstract

Although nonprofit organizations deal with multiple stakeholders, most nonprofit market orientation-organizational performance research to date has focused exclusively on client/customer market orientation in a single nonprofit subsector. This study investigates orientation towards client/customer and government funder markets in multiple nonprofit subsectors. Overall results, based on data collected from 453 nonprofit organizations in Canada and analyzed using structural equation modeling, confinn that nonprofit organizations hold multiple market orientations, that these orientations are independent constructs that vary substantially in strength across organizations, that orientations towards different markets impact different performance dimensions, and, finally, that different resource structures affect market orientation-performance relationships. Results also indicate that the implementation of the marketing concept provides different benefits in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors.