Market Orientation in Commodity Marketing: The Necessary Link Between Marketing and Production

A perusal of online information about commodities results in a wealth of information related to the global commodity markets. However, little, if any, of the information provides insight into the actual marketing that occurs in the commodity markets. Since success in commodity marketing relies upon a delicate blending of supply and demand variables, the strategic approach employed in this paper is to explore commodity marketing within the context of customer intimacy, value differentiation, coordinated decision making, and operational excellence. The example provided in the paper shows how supply and demand for a commodity product were examined simultaneously at a relatively large agricultural firm headquartered in South America. Mapping these elements of a market orientation onto this example from an agriculture business shows that commodity markets can have a market orientation even though the product itself has few aspects of differentiation. When implemented successfully, this market orientation will help create margins often lacking in commodity businesses.