Marketing organizations in Hungarian and Polish firms: part 1

The first of several articles on the temporal development of intra‐firm marketing organizations, relates how Hungary and Poland have progressed strongly towards the free market economic system. However,social and political opposition is now threatening further rapid reform. Moreover, infrastructure deficiencies and managerial problems are constraining effective marketing. Outdated production orientation is inhibiting the adoption of marketing orientation in the state sector while firm smallness is limiting managerial specialization in the private sector. Concludes, from a mail survey of 1,786 Hungarian and Polish firms, that most existing organizations are inadequate. Marketing orientation is extensive in Hungary but sparse in Poland. Although companies adapt flexibly to market changes and assign marketing responsibility to chief executives, most do not have specialist marketing departments. In the minority of cases where specialist departments do exist, they do not have inferior status to other functions although neither are they closely integrated with them.