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Over the past several decades, the agricultural marketplace has transitioned from a completely price driven, homogeneous, commodity market towards a more differentiated and fragmented product market characterized by heterogeneous consumers, firms and value offerings. While the strategic landscape may have changed, many beef producers still focus their scarce managerial and capital resources solely on the improvement of production efficiency, often leading to mediocre performance. Within these new complex agricultural markets, such as the beef value chain, market oriented producers may be able to better utilize non-price signals to observe value opportunities, and thus achieve superior performance. Findings show that even within the context of production agriculture, a market orientation is a significant driver of firm performance. Secondly, this research shows that market oriented firms are able to clearly define how they provide value, and what impact value discipline clarity has on firm performance.

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Eric Micheels recently earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in agricultural economics. He received his Bachelors of Science degree in Agricultural Business with a minor in Agronomy from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and his Masters degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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