The importance of learning organization concepts for strategic marketing. A quantitative research

Abstract

Kottler & Armstrong (2005) reported that main Strategic Marketing objective is to identify future consumer needs and develop the necessary products and services for its satisfaction. Senge (1990) characterized the learning organization as the one having the ability to continuously adapt to the environment and, due to that, be sustainable over time. Both concepts, strategic marketing and organizational learning, are based on the principle of environment knowledge and the organization's ability to respond to its needs. The main objective of this work is to test the hypothesis that organizations with higher capacity for learning (and more performing strategic marketing) have higher performance that those organizations with less ability to learn. To develop this work, an analysis has been developed based on existing organizational learning model with special reference to Senge (1990), Probst and Büchel (1997), Mintzberg and Quinn (1996), Kim (1993), Serrano and Fialho (2005) , Argyris (1999). The methodology has consisted on the elaboration of a questionnaire with which to assess the relevant factors in the model, taking into account the views of different stakeholders in the research (academics and organizations) and, than, a field work and subsequent statistical analysis. The results demonstrate that organizations with higher capacity for learning and higher level of strategic marketing have higher performance than those with lower learning ability.