Market Orientation Practices and Its Effect on Performance in case of Basic Cooperative Enterprises in South Gondar Zone

Appropriate alignment between firm strategic orientation is crucial because of its impact on performance. For the last some decades, strategic orientations gained substantial attention from scholarly interest and literature. Entrepreneurial orientation and market orientations are strategic orientations, which are believed to significantly affect firm performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate The Effect of market orientation on cooperative enterprises’ performance in case of south Gondar zone of Amhara Region, Ethiopia. 174 self-administered questionnaires were filled by the manager and/or employees of cooperative enterprises. In this study, both descriptive and inferential data analysis technique were employed. The result shows manager and/or employees in cooperative enterprises are male-dominated.Furthermore, market orientation dimensions of customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination have a significant and positive effect on cooperative enterprises’ performance.More importantly, the different magnitude of market orientation dimension effect on cooperative enterprise performance indicates firms must be vigilant in investing their scarce resources and involvement in activities that leverage market orientation in a way that contributes to performance. However, level of competition was not found to moderate the effect of market orientation of performance. small and medium enterprises.The findings reveal that the performance of cooperative enterprises is affected by market orientation that justifies the managers/employees of cooperative enterprises needs to be more market oriented to create a well-built market orientation environment that enables them intensively competitive in the fastchanging market environment and to improve their performance. This study could serve as a framework for policymakers and stakeholders to set up a strategy towards cooperative enterprises are more strategically oriented. This study can also provide an opportunity to expand the research on other