An Internet-Mediated Market Orientation (IMO): Building a Theory

Abstract

A market orientation (MO) has long been an essential concept in the marketing discipline. Advanced information technologies show a great potential for information acquisition, sharing, and dissemination, all of which are the essential processes of an MO. This paper proposes a framework of an Internet-mediated market orientation (IMO), in which the Internet functions as a transformer of the traditional MO into a more efficient and effective way of implementing an MO online toward sustaining competitive advantage. Theories from related disciplines are introduced to explain the relevancy of the use of the Internet on the MO process, and anecdotal evidences are provided to show how the traditional MO becomes an IMO by using various Internet tools in the Internet-mediated environment.