===Organizational orientation=== ( Marketing )

In this sense, a firm's marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from an organization's marketing department would be used to guide the actions of other departments within the firm. As an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.

The production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production and promotion of the product. Inter-departmental conflicts may occur, should a firm adhere to the marketing orientation. Production may oppose the installation, support and servicing of new capital stock, which may be needed to manufacture a new product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure, since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.

====Herd behavior====
'''''[[Herd behavior]]''''' in marketing is used to explain the dependencies of customers' mutual behavior. ''[[The Economist]]'' reported a recent conference in [[Rome]] on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior.<ref>{{cite news | title= Swarming the shelves: How shops can exploit people's herd mentality to increase sales | publisher= The Economist | date= 2006-11-11 | page= 90}}</ref> It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including [[smart card]] technology and the use of [[RFID|Radio Frequency Identification Tag]] technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a [[Florida Institute of Technology]] researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts." Other recent studies on the "power of social influence" include an "artificial music market in which some 19,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs" ([[Columbia University]], New York); a [[Japan]]ese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on "sales data from department stores and research companies;" a [[Massachusetts]] company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about "which products are popular with like-minded consumers" (e.g., [[Amazon.com|Amazon]], [[eBay]]).

====Further orientations====
* An emerging area of study and practice concerns ''[[internal marketing]]'', or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers, see also ''[[employer branding]]''.
* ''[[Diffusion of innovations]]'' research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.
* With consumers' eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising messages, marketers are turning to forms of ''[[permission marketing]]'' such as ''[[branded content]]'', ''[[custom media]]'' and ''[[reality marketing]]''.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marketing&action=edit&section=6