Market Orientation and Development of Innovative Solutions in the Mobile Telecommunications Third Generation Networks

Abstract

This article summarizes and evaluates different aspects of the market orientation research carried out by various researches. The relationship between market oriented enterprise and the learning organisation is investigated. Market orientation is regarded as the resource of the organisation facilitating the learning process and the development of innovations. The main problem of this research is the anticipation of customer needs in the constantly changing environment. Market orientation theory is used to find a solution to the problem and construct a general framework for a better intelligence generation, information processing in the company and response to this information in order to satisfy the identified customer needs in the most effective way. The research problem is addressed through the investigation of the organizational learning processes and the development of innovations. The focus of this research - market orientation ensuring the implementation of long-term goals of a company and satisfaction of the fast changing customer needs. One of the main objectives of the theoretical research is the identification of the most important aspects of company orientation towards the market and the suggestion of the ways to anticipate changing customer needs. The empirical research is carried out in the sector of mobile telecommunications. In Lithuania mobile operators are operating under the saturated market conditions. The enhancement of service revenues in the mobile telecommunications sector can be achieved by developing usage stimulating content applications and data services. Data services are rapidly developing together with the increased data speed in the third generation (3G) mobile networks. The number of mobile internet data users is increasing. The operators in the market have to use the right momentum to capture this developing segment of customers in the mobile telecommunications market. The competitive advantage is achieved by those operators who are the first in the market with new developments. The second major objective of the research is to perform an empirical research of mobile telecommunication companies and verify the obtained theoretical results. This study seeks to define the relations between market orientation, innovations and organizational learning in the mobile telecommunication sector. In order to assess the innovativeness of a company the innovation scale was developed based on the organization innovativeness criteria introduced by Capon, Farley and Hulbert (1988): the first criterion is evaluating how often a company is the first-to-market with new products and services compared to the competition; the second criterion is evaluating the market stage (growth, maturity, decline) at the moment of introduction of a new product or service; the third criterion evaluates the novelty of implemented technologies. The results of the empirical research are suggesting that faster implementation of innovative solutions in the mobile communications market can be achieved through the global partnerships, fostering generative learning principles and encouraging the development of innovations.