Balanced market orientation: qualitative findings on a fragile equilibrium

Purpose – The paper focuses on services marketing implementation synthesizing previous knowledge from the fields of internal and external marketing. Although academic debate over the modeling of internal and external market orientation has lately emerged, services marketing literature lacks a relevant theoretical foundation.Design/methodology/approach – Following a qualitative research design applied to the tourism sector, in‐depth interviews were conducted at three different levels (managers, employees and customers). In total, 37 hotel managers, 46 employees and 42 guests participated in the process of capturing the essence of the fragile equilibrium between internal and external marketing adoption.Findings – Findings from the content analysis were consistent with the literature, unveiling an important number of elements, which formulate the components of the balanced market orientation, namely: market orientation adoption, internal marketing implementation and systematic monitoring of the service deliv...