Content area
Full Text
George Balabanis: University of Wales, Swansea, UK
Ruth E. Stables: Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Hugh C. Phillips: Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Any debate about the validity of extending the marketing concept beyond the domain of the classical commercial organization seems to have been settled. The plethora of textbooks and articles on the topic of marketing in non-profits witnesses not only the acceptance of the validity of the extension but an elevation of the status of marketing in this sector. However, in practice many non-profit organizations seem to have equated marketing with visible communications and certain marketing techniques used to raise funds - rather than an overall guiding philosophy (Lovelock and Weinberg, 1989). As Mokwa (1990, p. 49) argues, the challenge for non-profits is "to expand marketing beyond public relations function and beyond communications dimensions into a coherent philosophy and methodology for effecting and integrating multi-public exchange relationships". This plea is echoed in almost every marketing textbook on non-profits but there is little empirical evidence that the sector has taken it on board. The implicit or explicit claim attached to this plea is that such an initiative would improve performance. However, mostly this claim remains empirically unsubstantiated. It emerges that the main issues are not to what degree charities have applied marketing techniques but to what degree have they adopted the marketing concept as a guiding philosophy, and how this has affected their performance.
The objective of this study is to measure the degree of adoption of the marketing concept, as a management philosophy, in (the top 200 British) charities over the last five years and to assess its effects on performance. This paper initially reports the role and nature of marketing in charitable organizations and the hypotheses to be tested are formulated. The research methodology used is then described and the measurement instrument is discussed. Subsequently, the observed differences in market orientation in the last five years are considered. After examining the effects of organizational size and departmentalization on market orientation, the impact of market orientation on performance is analysed. Finally, the findings of the study are summarized and the limitations and directions for future research are discussed.
Marketing in charities
The Charity Commission (1992) provides a...