Market Orientation and Organizational Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises in Puttalam District

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship of Marketing Orientation on Organizational Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Puttalam District. On one hand, the study identifies the components of market orientation related with Business performance and on the other hand the significant association between Market Orientation and SMEs’ Business Performance. The study focused on three (3) dimensions related to market orientation and one dimension related to business performance. The selected sample for the study contained 110 owners from 110 SMEs in Puttalam district using convenient sampling method. The level of measuring variables was interval and the relevant statistical techniques for these measures were correlation and regression analyses. Data analysis was conducted by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Four hypotheses were tested to assess the empirical relationships among variables. Looking at the overall association among the variables it was observed that there is a high positive correlation between the market orientation and business performance (r = 0.931). Subsequently, factors such as customer orientation, competitor orientation and inter-functional coordination were found to be significantly impact on business performance of SMEs. Finally, these findings may lead to making some recommendations to improve the current level of market orientation factors of owners in SMEs which might lead to an increase in their business performance. Therefore, this study attempts to bring a validated framework to inform a suitable market orientation factors for the SMEs.