Abstract:
This study is an empirical investigation into the extent to which LPG dealers are market oriented and the degree of their sales performance. For the convenience of analysis, study was restricted to seven provinces namely Central, North Central, Eastern, Southern, Western, Sabaragamuwa and Uva Provinces. With the aid of nonrandom convenience judgment sampling technique which helped to get sample on comparable basis 198 LPG dealers were selected.
For collecting data, 198 questionnaires which were received back without rejection were administered among the selected respondents. In reviewing the scores obtained by LPG dealers over five year time period ranging from 2004 to 2008 it seems that the scores obtained by LPG dealers above 100% and between 100%- 80% are less than marks scored between 80%-70% and below 60% as revealed by the annual dealer scorecard evaluation process, 2004-2008. Further it was noted from preliminary data survey that customer expectation has not been satisfactorily fulfilled by the LPG dealers. (A.C. Nelson’s Report, 2008). Thus, the central problem of this study was why such poor situation has taken place in this sector?
The key objective of this study was to examine the extent to which LPG dealers are market oriented. Specific objectives were to identify the marketing practices of dealers to retain existing customers, to identify the endeavor made by the LPG dealers to attract new customers, to identify how often LPG dealers share customer feed-back and competitor information with staff and to provide a better set of suggestions to get LPG dealer market oriented and to get their sales performance higher.
Consistent with these objectives research questions were raised. They are; what is the degree of market orientation? What is the attempt made to retain existing customers? What is the endeavor made to attract new customers? How often do LPG dealers share customer feed-back and disseminate competitor information with staff? In addition to descriptive statistical tools which were used to present data, correlation analysis was employed to test the respective hypotheses. For more clarification SPSS computing software version was associated. Based on the results of discussion it was able to make a conclusion that intelligence collection, intelligent dissemination and response to intelligence highly affect the sales performance subject to the moderation made by market orientation.
