| Summary: | Poverty has been acknowledged globally as a challenge afflicting billions of people. Microfinance is seen as a means of alleviating extreme poverty through supporting low income customers, micro enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using microfinance products to ameliorate risks associated with the poor. Modern business success thrives on careful market and customer conscious behaviour of companies as a prerequisite for achieving market competitiveness and growth. This means market-focused organizations must continuously champion customer interests throughout the entire business through a strong marketing orientation. Also, market oriented organizations ought to carefully blend various marketing mix variables using strong marketing posture. The purpose of this study is to reveal the antecedents of marketing orientation among microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Ghana.
Using a qualitative approach, data were obtained through interviews from 18 microfinance sector experts comprising managers, academics, and advocates selected based on their strategic positions and roles within Ghana‟s MFI sector. The findings of the study identified a number of marketing antecedents that contribute to marketing orientation namely, deliberate customer engagement using local dialects and constantly sharing critical market findings among work colleagues with responsive action from top management to delight clients to remain competitive. The identification of these antecedents adds to knowledge about marketing orientation among microfinance institutions using basic marketing principles to bank the unbanked low income customers and SMEs.
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