Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the validity and reliability of the MKTOR scale in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to test its applicability.

Theoretical framework: Market orientation has been a pivotal subject for numerous strategic management scholars since the 1990s.  Its primary emphasis is on customer satisfaction, which significantly influences organisational performance.  Historically, various studies have utilised the MKTOR scale, recognised as one of the most valid and reliable metrics of market orientation, across diverse contexts.  However, there exists a scarcity of empirical data pertaining to emerging nations, with the majority of these research findings focusing on large enterprises within developed economies.  The present study seeks to revalidate the most adaptable and extensively employed measure of market orientation within India's small-scale sector, owing to the context-specific nature of this framework construct.

Design/methodology/approach: 248 manufacturing SMEs in India were chosen at random.  The original MKTOR scale was refined and its validity was established using confirmatory factor analysis with maximum likelihood estimation.

Findings: The scale’s reliability and validity were successfully established, providing support for the scale's generalizability.

Research, Practical & Social implications: By analyzing well-established approaches in understudied fields, especially in developing countries, thepresent study significantly adds to the corpus of information already available on market orientation.  Practitioners viewed this as extremely relevant since market orientation has a substantial impact on corporate performance.   Managers will gain important insights into a company's market orientation through the use of this scale, which has been successful in the Indian context. These insights include “customer orientation”, “competitor orientation”, and “interfunctional coordination”, all of which can be used to improve performance.

Originality/value:The adoption of such results within the framework of emerging economies is illogical, as a great deal of the research concerning market orientation predominantly focuses on well-established industrial economies across the globe. This study seeks to revalidate the most flexible and widely utilised measure of market orientation within India's small-scale sector due to the construct's context-specific nature.