Market Orientation for the Public Sector Providing Expert Services for SMEs

Abstract

LERLA HUMERINTA-PELTOMAKI IS A researcher at the Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland, and Niina Nummela is an Assistant Professor at the same university. In this paper, the authors attempt to characterise the small business market for expert services. The aims of the paper can be summarised as follows: to distinguish the characteristics of users and non-users of expert services; to evaluate the overall potential for future uise of expert services; to analyse the characteristics of potential users of expert services. This paper is part of a large ongoing research project concerning expert services and SMEs in Finland. The empirical analysis is based on the responses of 400 firms. The results reveal that possibilities do exist for a market orientation in the public sector. The authors have suggested a typology of SMEs according to current and future use of expert services. This typology enables the service providers to define their customers and also to design strategies for handling each customer group individually. The identification of different customer types creates an opportunity for exploiting large-scale demand, which is a requirement for the effectiveness of service providers in the public sector. SMEs see a market orientation on the supply side in terins of a more proactive supply effort to provide information regarding the services.