Marketing management

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Marketing

Key concepts

Product • Pricing • Place • Promotion

Distribution • Service • Retail
Brand management
Account-based marketing
Marketing ethics
Marketing effectiveness
Market research
Market segmentation
Marketing strategy
Marketing management
Market dominance
Promotional content
Advertising • Branding • Underwriting
Direct marketing • Personal Sales
Product placement • Publicity
Sales promotion • Sex in advertising
Promotional media
Printing • Publication • Broadcasting
Out-of-home • Internet marketing
Point of sale • Promotional items
Digital marketing • In-game
In-store demonstration • Brand Ambassador
Word of mouth
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Marketing management is a business discipline which is focused on the practical

application of marketing techniques and the management of a firm's marketing resources
and activities. Rapidly emerging forces of globalization have compelled firms to market
beyond the borders of their home country making International marketing highly
significant and an integral part of a firm's marketing strategy.[1] Marketing managers are
often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand
accepted definition of the term. In part, this is because the role of a marketing manager
can vary significantly based on a business' size, corporate culture, and industry context.
For example, in a large consumer products company, the marketing manager may act as
the overall general manager of his or her assigned product [2] To create an effective, cost-
efficient Marketing management strategy, firms must possess a detailed, objective
understanding of their own business and the market in which they operate.[3] In analyzing
these issues, the discipline of marketing management often overlaps with the related
discipline of strategic planning.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Structure
o 1.1 Marketing strategy
o 1.2 Implementation planning
o 1.3 Project, process, and vendor management
o 1.4 Organizational management and leadership
o 1.5 Reporting, measurement, feedback and control systems
• 2 See also
• 3 References
• 4 Further reading

• 5 External links

[edit] Structure
Traditionally, marketing analysis was structured into three areas: Customer analysis,
Company analysis, and Competitor analysis (so-called "3Cs" analysis). More recently, it
has become fashionable in some marketing circles to divide these further into certain five
"Cs": Customer analysis, Company analysis, Collaborator analysis, Competitor analysis,
and analysis of the industry Context.

Department analysis is to develop a schematic diagram for market segmentation,

breaking down the market into various constituent groups of customers, which are called
customer segments or market segmentations. Marketing managers work to develop
detailed profiles of each segment, focusing on any number of variables that may differ
among the segments: demographic, psychographic, geographic, behavioral, needs-
benefit, and other factors may all be examined. Marketers also attempt to track these
segments' perceptions of the various products in the market using tools such as perceptual
mapping.

In company analysis, marketers focus on understanding the company's cost structure and
cost position relative to competitors, as well as working to identify a firm's core
competencies and other competitively distinct company resources. Marketing managers
may also work with the accounting department to analyze the profits the firm is
generating from various product lines and customer accounts. The company may also
conduct periodic brand audits to assess the strength of its brands and sources of brand
equity.[4]

The firm's collaborators may also be profiled, which may include various suppliers,
distributors and other channel partners, joint venture partners, and others. An analysis of
complementary products may also be performed if such products exist.

Marketing management employs various tools from economics and competitive strategy
to analyze the industry context in which the firm operates. These include Porter's five
forces, analysis of strategic groups of competitors, value chain analysis and others.[5]
Depending on the industry, the regulatory context may also be important to examine in
detail.

In Competitor analysis, marketers build detailed profiles of each competitor in the

market, focusing especially on their relative competitive strengths and weaknesses using
SWOT analysis. Marketing managers will examine each competitor's cost structure,
sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product
differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry
developments, and other factors.

Marketing management often finds it necessary to invest in research to collect the data
required to perform accurate marketing analysis. As such, they often conduct market
research (alternately marketing research) to obtain this information. Marketers employ a
variety of techniques to conduct market research, but some of the more common include:

• Qualitative marketing research, such as focus groups

• Quantitative marketing research, such as statistical surveys
• Experimental techniques such as test markets
• Observational techniques such as ethnographic (on-site) observation

Marketing managers may also design and oversee various environmental scanning and
competitive intelligence processes to help identify trends and inform the company's
marketing analysis.

[edit] Marketing strategy

Main article: Marketing strategy

If the company has obtained an adequate understanding of the customer base and its own
competitive position in the industry, marketing managers are able to make their own key
strategic decisions and develop a marketing strategy designed to maximize the revenues
and profits of the firm. The selected strategy may aim for any of a variety of specific
objectives, including optimizing short-term unit margins, revenue growth, market share,
long-term profitability, or other goals.
To achieve the desired objectives, marketers typically identify one or more target
customer segments which they intend to pursue. Customer segments are often selected as
targets because they score highly on two dimensions: 1) The segment is attractive to
serve because it is large, growing, makes frequent purchases, is not price sensitive (i.e. is
willing to pay high prices), or other factors; and 2) The company has the resources and
capabilities to compete for the segment's business, can meet their needs better than the
competition, and can do so profitably.[3] In fact, a commonly cited definition of marketing
is simply "meeting needs profitably." [6]

The implication of selecting target segments is that the business will subsequently
allocate more resources to acquire and retain customers in the target segment(s) than it
will for other, non-targeted customers. In some cases, the firm may go so far as to turn
away customers who are not in its target segment.The doorman at a swanky nightclub, for
example, may deny entry to unfashionably dressed individuals because the business has
made a strategic decision to target the "high fashion" segment of nightclub patrons.

In conjunction with targeting decisions, marketing managers will identify the desired
positioning they want the company, product, or brand to occupy in the target customer's
mind. This positioning is often an encapsulation of a key benefit the company's product
or service offers that is differentiated and superior to the benefits offered by competitive
products.[7] For example, Volvo has traditionally positioned its products in the automobile
market in North America in order to be perceived as the leader in "safety", whereas
BMW has traditionally positioned its brand to be perceived as the leader in
"performance."

Ideally, a firm's positioning can be maintained over a long period of time because the
company possesses, or can develop, some form of sustainable competitive advantage.[8]
The positioning should also be sufficiently relevant to the target segment such that it will
drive the purchasing behavior of target customers.[7]

[edit] Implementation planning

Main article: Marketing plan

The Marketing Metrics Continuum provides a framework for how to categorize metrics
from the tactical to strategic.

After the firm's strategic objectives have been identified, the target market selected, and
the desired positioning for the company, product or brand has been determined,
marketing managers focus on how to best implement the chosen strategy. Traditionally,
this has involved implementation planning across the "4Ps" of marketing: Product
management, Pricing, Place (i.e. sales and distribution channels), and Promotion.

Taken together, the company's implementation choices across the 4Ps are often described
as the marketing mix, meaning the mix of elements the business will employ to "go to
market" and execute the marketing strategy. The overall goal for the marketing mix is to
consistently deliver a compelling value proposition that reinforces the firm's chosen
positioning, builds customer loyalty and brand equity among target customers, and
achieves the firm's marketing and financial objectives.

In many cases, marketing management will develop a marketing plan to specify how the
company will execute the chosen strategy and achieve the business' objectives. The
content of marketing plans varies from firm to firm, but commonly includes:

• An executive summary
• Situation analysis to summarize facts and insights gained from market research
and marketing analysis
• The company's mission statement or long-term strategic vision
• A statement of the company's key objectives, often subdivided into marketing
objectives and financial objectives
• The marketing strategy the business has chosen, specifying the target segments to
be pursued and the competitive positioning to be achieved
• Implementation choices for each element of the marketing mix (the 4Ps)

[edit] Project, process, and vendor management

Once the key implementation initiatives have been identified, marketing managers work
to oversee the execution of the marketing plan. Marketing executives may therefore
manage any number of specific projects, such as sales force management initiatives,
product development efforts, channel marketing programs and the execution of public
relations and advertising campaigns. Marketers use a variety of project management
techniques to ensure projects achieve their objectives while keeping to established
schedules and budgets.

More broadly, marketing managers work to design and improve the effectiveness of core
marketing processes, such as new product development, brand management, marketing
communications, and pricing. Marketers may employ the tools of business process
reengineering to ensure these processes are properly designed, and use a variety of
process management techniques to keep them operating smoothly.

Effective execution may require management of both internal resources and a variety of
external vendors and service providers, such as the firm's advertising agency. Marketers
may therefore coordinate with the company's Purchasing department on the procurement
of these services.

[edit] Organizational management and leadership

Marketing management may spend a fair amount of time building or maintaining a

marketing orientation for the business. Achieving a market orientation, also known as
"customer focus" or the "marketing concept", requires building consensus at the senior
management level and then driving customer focus down into the organization. Cultural
barriers may exist in a given business unit or functional area that the marketing manager
must address in order to achieve this goal. Additionally, marketing executives often act as
a "brand champion" and work to enforce corporate identity standards across the
enterprise.

In larger organizations, especially those with multiple business units, top marketing
managers may need to coordinate across several marketing departments and also
resources from finance, research and development, engineering, operations,
manufacturing, or other functional areas to implement the marketing plan. In order to
effectively manage these resources, marketing executives may need to spend much of
their time focused on political issues and inte-departmental negotiations.

The effectiveness of a marketing manager may therefore depend on his or her ability to
make the internal "sale" of various marketing programs equally as much as the external
customer's reaction to such programs.[6]

[edit] Reporting, measurement, feedback and control systems

Marketing management employs a variety of metrics to measure progress against

objectives. It is the responsibility of marketing managers – in the marketing department
or elsewhere – to ensure that the execution of marketing programs achieves the desired
objectives and does so in a cost-efficient manner.

Marketing management therefore often makes use of various organizational control

systems, such as sales forecasts, sales force and reseller incentive programs, sales force
management systems, and customer relationship management tools (CRM). Recently,
some software vendors have begun using the term "marketing operations management"
or "marketing resource management" to describe systems that facilitate an integrated
approach for controlling marketing resources. In some cases, these efforts may be linked
to various supply chain management systems, such as enterprise resource planning
(ERP), material requirements planning (MRP), efficient consumer response (ECR), and
inventory management systems.

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of and marketing effectiveness various

marketing initiatives is a significant problem for marketing management. Various market
research, accounting and financial tools are used to help estimate the ROI of marketing
investments. Brand valuation, for example, attempts to identify the percentage of a
company's market value that is generated by the company's brands, and thereby estimate
the financial value of specific investments in brand equity. Another technique, integrated
marketing communications (IMC), is a CRM database-driven approach that attempts to
estimate the value of marketing mix executions based on the changes in customer
behavior these executions generate.[9]

[edit] See also

• Predictive analytics
 • Strategic management
• Enterprise Marketing Management
• Marketing Effectiveness
• Marketing performance measurement and management
• Commercial operations management
• Marketing Resource Management

[edit] References
1. ^ Joshi, Rakesh Mohan, (2005) International Marketing, Oxford University Press,
New Delhi and New York ISBN 0-19-567123-6
2. ^ Marketing Management, 12th ed.. Pearson Prentice Hall. 2006. ISBN 0-13-
145757-8.
3. ^ a b Clancy, Kevin J.; Peter C. Kriegafsd (2000). Counterintuitive Marketing. The
Free Press. ISBN 0-684-85555-0.
4. ^ Keller, Kevin Lane (2002). Strategic Brand Management, 2nd ed.. Prentice
Hall. ISBN 0-13-041150-7.
5. ^ Porter, Michael (1998). Competitive Strategy (revised ed.). The Free Press.
ISBN 0-684-84148-7.
6. ^ a b Kotler, Philip.; Kevin Lane Keller (2006). Marketing Management, 12th ed..
Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-145757-8.
7. ^ a b Ries, Al; Jack Trout (2000). Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (20th
anniversary ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-135916-8.
8. ^ Porter, Michael (1998). Competitive Advantage (revised ed.). The Free Press.
ISBN 0-684-84146-0.
9. ^ Schultz, Don E.; Philip J. Kitchen (2000). Communicating Globally. Palgrave
Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-92137-2.

[edit] Further reading

• Lenskold, James D. (2003). The Path to Campaign, Customer, and Corporate
Profitability by James D. Lenskold. McGraw-Hill Professional.
ISBN 0071413634. http://books.google.com/books?id=-
ByzlitSB9QC&dq=Lenskold,+Jim.+Marketing+ROI.+Marketing+ROI:
+The+Path+to+Campaign,+Customer,
+and+Corporate+Profitability+By+James+Lenskold&source=gbs_summary_s&c
ad=0. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
• Patterson, Laura (2008). Marketing Metrics in Action: Creating a Performance-
Driven Marketing Organization. Racom Communications. ISBN 1933199156.
http://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Metrics-Action-Performance-Driven-
Organization/dp/1933199156/ref=sr_1_6?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qisbn=1225704819&sr=1-6. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
• Masi, R. J.; Weidner, C. K, AS (1995). Organizational culture, distribution and
amount of control, and perceptions of quality. Group & Organization
Management. doi:10.1177/1059601195202004.2
[edit] External links
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of
Marketing
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_management"
Categories: Business | Marketing | Strategic management

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