An assessment of the dimensions and the stability of items in the MARKOR scale

The MARKOR instrument for the measurement of market orientation has received considerable attention in recent literature. Reports the results of two studies: one a mail survey of large service firms in the UK and one from Malta consisting of personal interviews with a range of firms from all sectors. Using confirmatory factor analysis in LISREL, five alternative models of the dimension structure of the market orientation construct are tested. This is followed by a reduction process to investigate the stability of the items in the final MARKOR scale. The findings suggest that MARKOR may lack generalisability across industries, economies and cultures and more fundamentally the conceptualisation on which it is based may need to be reassessed.