1.3 Looking for the fifth Business Orientation
In real life every “fifth” Business Orientation would be the mix of at least two of the 4 Business Orientations. But any combined orientation is a fifth Business Orientation in the same way as the southwest direction is a fifth cardinal point. Every theoretical attempt to define the fifth Business Orientation by other general term would fail at the question “of what?” or “whose?” and finally lead to 4 Business Orientations anyway. In other words, the suggested term could not exist by itself.
For instance, the suggestion that the fifth business orientation could be “Low price”, “Services”, “Operational Excellence” etc., would be always reduced to 4 Business Orientations by asking: “The Services of an Expert or Product maker?”, “The Operational Excellence of a Product maker or Self-Service organizer?” and so on.
On the other hand, companies often pursue more than just one Business Orientation. But it is difficult to measure the proportional shares of different Business Orientations within one business unit. For example, we can only guesstimate what the Expert orientation contribution share is (a shop assistant helping to find an individual solution) within the predominantly Self-Service orientation of a supermarket with cosmetic products:
