Chapter 05 – Capabilities for Learning about Customers and Markets
Chapter 05
Capabilities for Learning About Customers and Markets
1. Investments in enhancing and shaping interpretation may create a more durable competitive
advantage than investments in obtaining additional information.
2. Market sensing is concerned with the ability of organizations to continuously learn about
their markets, and acts as an antecedent to market orientation.
3. Market orientation is both a culture and a process committed to achieving superior supplier
value.
4. Searching for latent customer needs primarily involves understanding customer needs
through interaction with front-line employees who are in direct contact with customers.
5. Market-driven organizations are primarily interested in static events, rather than factors that
cause change, in the markets.
6. Knowledge intensity identifies both market risk and new opportunities for growth.
7. The markets are best understood if the firm has a fixed view on what information will
influence the firm.
8. Unbundling information from its physical carrier will provide access as well as speed in
Chapter 05 – Capabilities for Learning about Customers and Markets
organizations.
9. Market-oriented firms emphasize enhanced operating efficiency and reduced costs through
automating information processing.
10. Typically, the MIS does not interact in the decision-making process and is primarily used
in collecting data.
11. Strategic _____ refers to a firm’s awareness of what is happening and what is going to
happen next, as a basis for rapidly developing effective responses to change or new
opportunities.
A. sensitivity
B. alliance
C. equity
D. network optimization
12. Strategic _____ refers to a firm’s capability to consistently identify and seize
opportunities more quickly and effectively than rivals.
A. alliance
B. agility
C. stock
D. equity
13. _____ is a key capability of the market-driven organization, concerned with the ability of
organizations to continuously learn about their markets, and acts as an antecedent to market
orientation.
A. Market penetration
B. Market capitalization
C. Market sensing
D. Market segmentation
Chapter 05 – Capabilities for Learning about Customers and Markets
14. _____ is both a culture and a process that consists of information acquisition, broad
information dissemination, and shared diagnosis leading to coordinated action.
A. Market liquidity
B. Market valuation
C. Market capitalization
D. Market orientation
15. The market sensing process of _____ helps to study and understand changes that occur in
the markets and avoid complacency in reacting to such changes.
A. building open-minded inquiry
B. analyzing competitors’ actions
C. listening to front-line employees
D. searching for latent customer needs
16. The market sensing process of _____ gives detailed attention to rivals’ tactics and
strategies to develop understanding of their plans and capabilities.
A. building open-minded inquiry
B. analyzing competitors’ actions
C. listening to front-line employees
D. searching for latent customer needs
17. The market sensing process of _____ includes motivating the involvement of staff who
are in contact with customers in building understanding of change, new opportunities and
threats.
A. building open-minded inquiry
B. analyzing competitors’ actions
C. listening to front-line employees
D. searching for latent customer needs
18. The market sensing process of _____ includes finding discontent through dialogue,
observation, and engagement with clients.
A. building open-minded inquiry
Chapter 05 – Capabilities for Learning about Customers and Markets
B. analyzing competitors’ actions
C. listening to front-line employees
D. searching for latent customer needs
19. The market sensing process of _____ includes actively looking for new opportunities in
the market.
A. scanning the periphery of the market
B. encouraging experimentation
C. listening to front-line employees
D. searching for latent customer needs
20. The market sensing process of _____ includes building a culture and process around
continuous curiosity and new ideas.
A. scanning the periphery of the market
B. encouraging experimentation
C. listening to front-line employees
D. searching for latent customer needs
21. Megagro, a groceries retail chain, demonstrated the market sensing process of _____
when it hired researchers to survey the refrigerator contents and lifestyles of 90 families—
checking average family size, gross family income, what the families ate for breakfast, and
how often they shopped for groceries.
A. scanning the periphery of the market
B. encouraging experimentation
C. searching for latent customer needs
D. analyzing competitors’ actions
22. The learning processes of market-oriented companies include a sequence of activities
beginning with _____.
A. information distribution for synergy
B. objective inquiry
C. mutually informed interpretations
D. accessible memory
23. Which of the following learning process activities can leverage the value of the
information by cutting across business functions to share information on customers, channels
of distribution, suppliers and competitors?
A. Objective inquiry
B. Mutually informed interpretations
C. Information distribution for synergy
D. Accessible memory
24. Which of the following activities is to be avoided when engaging in the process of market
learning?
A. Searching for new ideas without a fixed view
B. Interpreting collected information based on managers’ views
C. Bundling information based on specific business functions
D. Accessing prior information
25. Which of the following learning process activities involves matching the vision of
executives, like managers, to the information collected?
A. Mutually informed interpretations
B. Information distribution for synergy
C. Accessible memory
D. Objective inquiry
26. _____ is the part of the learning process of market-oriented companies that emphasizes
the importance of keeping and valuing prior information.
A. Objective inquiry
B. Information distribution for synergy
C. Mutually informed interpretations
D. Accessible memory
27. Which of the following organizational scanning initiatives would require the use of
external consultants for fresh perspectives on the business to be incorporated in strategic
Chapter 05 – Capabilities for Learning about Customers and Markets
decision making?
A. Using existing functional groups
B. Outsourcing
C. Creating ad hoc issue groups
D. Establishing a high-level lookout team
28. _____ is “the systematic gathering, recording, processing, and analyzing of marketing
data, which—when interpreted—will help the marketing executive to uncover opportunities
and to reduce risks in decision making.”
A. Marketing research
B. Systemic marketing
C. Marginal analysis
D. Market segmentation
29. A _____ provides raw data to decision makers throughout a firm.
A. marketing decision-support system
B. marketing information system
C. management information system
D. market function team
30. _____ integrates data that are not easily found, assimilated, formatted or readily
manipulated with software and hardware into a decision-making process that provides the
marketing decision maker with assistance when needed.
A. Market sensing
B. Management information system
C. Marketing information system
D. Marketing decision-support system
31. List the market-sensing processes used by market-driven companies.
Chapter 05 – Capabilities for Learning about Customers and Markets
32. What are the activities included in the learning processes of market-oriented companies?
33. Give an account of the barriers that affect the market learning processes.
Chapter 05 – Capabilities for Learning about Customers and Markets
34. Give an account of how internet-based research helps in creating new market information.
35. What is the role of management information systems (MISs) in data collection?