A company’s business success depends on its ability to identify the needs of its customers and consequently, to provide products which satisfy their needs. Market oriented companies are capable of creating superior value for their customers which can lead to their superior business results. A key factor in the company's success is also industrial design which is often marginalized and only understood as something which is »nice to have« when in reality it should be the main strategic direction of the company. There are many studies which show that investing in design pays off, because investments lead to an increase in sales, market share and profits. The aim of this thesis is to explore the level of development of market orientation in Slovene furniture companies and furthermore explores the position industrial design has in these companies. The data was gathered by conducting semi structured interviews and later analysed using thematic analysis. The research showed that when talking about market orientation and design in the analysed furniture companies, we notice two quite different worlds. Using thematic analysis, we identified two main themes. In the first theme – strong market orientation – the interviewees talked about the importance of information gathering and spreading them throughout the company; they talked about customer orientation and about design as a competitive advantage. In the other theme – weak market orientation – the interviewees talked about sales orientation and what an important influencers the big, foreign furniture sellers are. In addition, there was an evident sense of neglect regarding industrial design.
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