Customer Orientation and Innovation – The Perspective of Top-Level Management

Abstract Research background: Scientific exploration of customer orientation also confirms the existence of connections which occur between the focus of an enterprise on the needs of its customers and the level of its innovativeness. For it is the customer and his/her needs that determine a company’s primary directions of development and, in the end, the customer decides whether to make purchases and accept the company’s offer Purpose: The goal of the present study is the systemization of knowledge within the scope of customer orientation and dependencies that exist between innovativeness and customer orientation. Research methodology: Inferences have been supported by the results of a CAWI quantitative survey conducted among 204 business leaders (top managers) from the Podlasie Voivodeship in Poland. Results: The study results confirm that customer orientation within a company can vary in form and differ in character as well as indicate that innovation can determine the level of customer orientation within an enterprise. Novelty: The study of the dependence between customer orientation and innovativeness is a challenge for management sciences and is subject to some limitations since both innovativeness as well as customer orientation are structures which are very complex and ambiguous. Innovation becomes a factor unifying a company with a customer because it guarantees the provision of new values and is the answer to the dynamic character of those changes.