Contemporary Marketing: Marketing Management

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Contemporary Marketing: Marketing Management

Introduction

One of the most popular marketing models is tactical marketing. Tactical marketing is concerned with both the conceptual and operational levels, but programming mainly involves only the operational level. Programming encompasses accountability and the direction of particular activities, standards, budgets, and time schedules. The distinction, then, is one between stages of planning. Programming is the instrument by which strategies are implemented. Some plans are of a higher order than others. They control other plans and may be referred to as constraining or strategic influences.

The plans that are more minor in character may be referred to as tactical plans, since they do not directly affect the framework within which other plans are formulated and decisions are made (Bearden et al 2004). Strategic plans affect a number of subsequent plans and establish the limits and ranges of optional choices. They involve the greatest risk, since they bound the decision and planning area and give direction to the total marketing effort. Strategic plans are broad and comprehensive; they are the master plans. Tactical plans are more flexible, and they can be viable.

Main text

The importance of new product development is explored and causes for failure in exploiting new product opportunities are examined. Ways of screening out winners and losers in terms of new product opportunities are considered. Leading on from new product development, diversification is highlighted as an important strategy in the search for new strategic windows. An alternative strategy of vertical integration is also explored. Ansoffs product-market expansion grid provides a useful though not exhaustive framework for looking at possible strategies to cope with the problem of strategic windows and finding ways of creating overlapping strategic windows.

All four of the strategies suggested by Ansoff are discussed below along with others. The new matrix differentiates between organic and acquisitive market penetration. The former indicates reaching more of the target users through growth in the core, existing product offering. Acquisition, it is argued, if not a new product is an extended offering. It is only if a product is true of a generic unbranded nature that it can be regarded as offering the same product.

Market Penetration Strategy: product development strategy, increase purchase use by existing customers, new features win customers from competition, different quality levels, convert non-users, new products, Market Development Strategy: diversification Strategy, new market segments, through organic growth, new distribution channels, through acquisition, new geographic markets and through joint venture (Bearden et al 2004).

Tactical marketing differs in scope from strategic and operational intelligence, and, although only a minor part of the total intelligence complex, it can have great impact on company profits. Tactical intelligence is sometimes related to timing. Marketing effort loses some of its effectiveness if competitors expect it. Herein lies a value of sound intelligence. For instance, the use of intelligence to catch competitors off guard is an important element of product development and advertising campaigns.

Similarly, marketing plans and programs can be neutralized by premature leaks of information. Effective planning of marketing activities can be achieved only if market-related information is available. Such information must pertain to future potentials. Sales forecasting, which is both based on and part of marketing intelligence, furnishes management with information about what market conditions are likely to be during some specified future period (Bearden et al 2004).

The marketing mix, the companys offering of products and services to the marketplace, is portrayed at the upper level. The focal point of the marketing mix and of corporate activity should be customer satisfaction. Whether purchases result depends on customer perception of expected satisfaction from available alternatives. At the ultimate point of contact (perhaps in retail stores), customer forces and corporate forces meet. Here is the purchase decision-nexus that links the external customer and his environment with the internal corporate environment. A direct link exists between corporate concern with company and brand images and consumer concern with the self.

Whereas corporations react to enhance the former, consumers act in an effort to embellish the self (Bearden et al 2004). Therefore, the greater the consistency and parallelism are among product image, store image, and desired consumer self-image, the more likely it is that favorable purchase reaction will occur. Maintenance of the self is a basic preoccupation of consumers. The measurement problem is also affected by the kind of advertising. At one extreme we find direct-action advertising. Here a newspaper ad, a TV spot, or a direct-mail campaign is aimed at a sale to be held the following day by a retail establishment.

The advertising expenditure and results can be noted and good estimates of advertising effectiveness can often be made. At the other extreme, there is institutional or long-range advertising dedicated to image building. Advertising and personal selling may be used as complementary or supplementary market-communications activities. Their respective roles depend on company products, customers, and markets.

Often they are used in a complementary manner, with advertising paving the way for personal-selling activities. In other situations, such as in making industrial sales, personal selling is usually the most important component, while advertising may be a supplementary activity that helps create awareness. In either case, both should be coordinated by marketing managers. Salesmen should be aware of advertising plans and programs, and advertising campaigns should be developed within the boundaries of sales tasks, both of which should be viewed as mutually supporting functions. Under the marketing concept the sales-management responsibilities are broadened. Both management and sales representatives are asked to raise their sights (Bearden et al 2004).

Direct marketing campaign for a month:

TV ad 5 times a day on two national channels
Data / Company List Building and Account Profiling
Online Marketing
Email sends once a week during a month.
Telephone calls to registered consumers

The average cost per TV ad is $500. It is expected that the company will need $7 000 a month to provide this campaign.

The internal control system controls company resources to design the marketing mix in response to opportunities. It involves appraisal, evaluation, and adjustment. Appraisal refers to the monitoring information and preliminary assessment phase of marketing activities, which notes current situations. Evaluation of the current situation, the goals and targets, and the deployment of resources enables review of the market- It is expected that response rate will be 15 % of all e-mail. As for TV ads, the company expects to attract 30 % of the target market (Bearden et al 2004).

Marketing activity cannot be confined just to advertising standards because they limit its scope and opportunities. The product and service mix and the communications mix are examples. Middle-range systems refer to marketings cohesiveness with other functional activities within the firm, such as finance or production. Credit and inventory systems are in this class. Large systems focus on the relationships among manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers, or among us retailers.

In general, when discrete marketing operations are differentiable, a marketing system may be recognized. When marketing activities are distinguishable and unique, and cannot be managed effectively within existing operating systems, they are perceived as separate systems. Then a system external to existing systems is required to control and service these activities. Thus, a new management system is created. Large systems are comprised of several management systems (Kotler and Keller 2005).

Two concepts, coordinate and linkages, are fundamental to the integrated characteristics of the systems viewpoint. The first of these reflects the joining of marketing elements and marketing subsystems into a total system. It is internally focused and concerned with the integration of component parts-the interfaces at terminals (Kotler and Keller 2005).

Coordinate is applied directly to implementation of the marketing mix where advertising, personal selling, product development, physical distribution, channels, pricing, sales promotion, and other marketing factors are integrated to achieve the desired impact on the marketplace. Linkages are externally focused, and refer to the joining together of two or more major systems that can and do function as separate, distinct, and independent middle-range or large systems.

Systems thinking stresses adaptive change and adjustment. It emphasizes the dynamic impact of market environments and the need for corporate adjustment. A decision hierarchy is established, and decisions made at the level of the total system are more important than those at any subsystem level. Thus conflicts and tradeoffs among subsystems are considered. What is best for the whole system need not be for anyone department or particular element.

For example, decisions about the total marketing budget could be unfavorable to any one department, such as advertising or marketing research. Change factors, which are externally induced, deal with the internally generated responses of systems to environmental changes and include adaptation, plasticity, elasticity, learning, growth, and dynamics. Decline and decay factors focus on the disintegration and breakdown of systems and are concerned with overloads, disturbances, dysfunctioning, stress, and degeneration. Questions may be raised about the appropriate structural forms that marketing systems should adopt (Kotler and Keller 2005).

Survival and systems effectiveness are the ultimate tests, and those elements and arrangements approved by the marketplace over time are best. It is evident that systems suitable at one period in a market may not be at another, and a posture of continuous adjustment should be taken by management. The product and service mix is concerned with all the elements and ingredients that make up the actual product, from product development through consumer purchases.

The mix is concerned with pricing, branding, variety, assortment, product planning, product development, product lines, packaging, labeling, warranties, and servicing. It stresses the innovative powers of the firm to change products in order to conform more adequately to consumer wants and needs. It implies that customer specifications are translated into product development and then into the products. The product thus stems from the marketplace and not the production line.

RSPCA is one the non-for-profit organizations the aim of this organization is to prevent cruelty of animals and violation of their rights. Its advertising and marketing communication campaign aim to attract attention of large public and highlight the main problems and issues concerning animal rights. The communications mix pertains to all the informational and persuasive ingredients used in communicating with the marketplace (see Appendix 1,2,3).

It is designed to furnish information to actual and potential customers and members of the distribution system. Included in the communications mix are advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, display, merchandising, and special sales aids. Marketing managers are continuously being obliged to produce the best total mix of ingredients to meet the demands of both the marketplace and the company.

They must develop a system by integrating the three submixes into a whole. An understanding of forces that constrain and influence marketing effort, and at the impact of the interaction of a combination of marketing ingredients, is helpful in achieving this system. Although it may be impossible to determine the optimum marketing mix, it is usually within the realm of reason to develop logical, adequate, coordinated marketing programs (Kotler and Keller 2005).

The target audience of RSPCA campaign is large public interested in social affairs and environmental movements. This target audience involves all social classes and professions, all races and religions. For example, in advertising there are a large number of variations in appeals, layouts, designs, headlines, copy media, etc., that make for a very large combination of elements. A product can have various combinations of packages, brands, labels, tastes, and appearances; it can come in various shapes, colors, sizes, and materials, and be offered with numerous services and privileges. It can be promoted through various sales devices, displayed at various levels in the channels of distribution, and sold at varying prices, discounts, and markups.

Hence, it is evident that the development of a marketing mix is not a straightforward, simple task. It is to be expected that marketing managers will make errors in selecting an effective mix, and that they will not arrive at the optimum one. It behooves them, nevertheless, to take a logical stand and develop effective marketing strategy through analysis of evidence and information bearing on the impact of marketing factors on sales to the ultimate customer.

The marketing mix must be dynamic. It must be adjusted to the changing forces of the market. Also, the mix for different companies making the same product will vary. Businesses strive to develop the most profitable mix by combining ingredients to produce a total system that conforms to market forces (Perreault et al 2003).

The message style is neutral but the tone is angry. Some general guides can be suggested for developing an effective marketing mix, although it is always a difficult task.

A close interrelationship exists among marketing factors, Marketing executives must consider the combined effects of decisions how decisions made in one marketing area affect other aspects of the marketing mix.
A marketing program must be evaluated and altered over time.
Through trial and error, executives must evaluate different: combinations of marketing elements and come up with a program that will give good, rather than optimum, impact, the realization of an optimum program being highly improbable.
Although the general marketing elements may be common, the variations in product, price, channel, and promotional elements companies can employ to best serve customers vary from industry to industry and firm to firm.
In developing the marketing mix, qualitative factors are equally important as quantitative factors.
Promotional devices are difficult to evaluate. They often substitute for, and can also reinforce, one another (Perreault et al 2003).

It is possible to assume that the campaign achieves its objectives and attracts attention of large target audience. The development of an effective marketing mix is a complicated task. It is almost synonymous with marketing planning, since it is concerned with the integration and coordination of all the information required to plan an optimal marketing mix. It is the approach to the establishment of an effective mix that becomes important, rather than the achievement of scientific laws or mathematical models that will guide marketing management to a supposed optimum policy (Perreault et al 2003).

Within marketing and related subject-matter areas, cross-communication is often difficult because of the terminology used by specialized personnel and disciplines. Through mathematical models, disciplines may be reduced to a common language that may reveal relationships and the pertinence of research findings among disciplines, and uncover models hitherto not emphasized. In physical distribution, computer applications deal with such problems as the number of distribution centers to establish, where to locate them, the customers to service from specific warehouses, the quantities to ship to warehouses from each factory, and the amount of inventory to carry at each distribution point.

Many studies using computers to determine costs and allocation of physical distribution resources have proven highly beneficial. Through use of computers, both linear programming and simulation techniques have been applied to physical distribution as a means of reaching the most practical decisions possible (Perreault et al 2003).

In RSPCA campaigns, the communications process is concerned with the dissemination of stimuli and their perception, impact, use, and effectiveness. Marketing communications have meaning to the extent that an individuals predisposition or experience permits him to see, hear, or read them. Two predisposition factors govern the relationship between a message and its recipient. These are the sender set and the customer set. The former includes media, appeal, advertiser, copy, theme, and layout.

The latter, containing the individual differences of people and their psychological, social, and economic situations, intervenes between the sender and the receiver of marketing information (Perreault et al 2003). It is not only the message, but also the way in which it is presented, that results in communications. For example, gestures, manipulation of objects and symbols, facial expressions, posture, and stance are all part of the total communication.

Both the source of the communication and the message itself can influence the reactions of the recipient. Credible sources tend to get better acceptance. Audience characteristics are also important in determining what is communicated. People select what they watch or hear. The result is selective exposure followed by selective perception and retention. Communications that agree with predispositions are more likely to be heard than those that do not. This self-selection can be either deliberate or subconscious. As audiences also misinterpret messages by evading or misperceiving those that counter their predispositions, communications are most effective when they reinforce existing inclinations.

Bibliography

Bearden, W. O., Ingram, Th. N., LaForge, L.W. 2004, Marketing, Prentice Hall.
Kotler, Ph, Keller, K. 2005, Marketing Management. Prentice Hall.
Perreault, W.D., Cannon, J.P., McCarthy, E.J. 2003, Marketing: Principles and Perspectives. McGraw-Hill/Irwin; 4 edition.
RSPCA. 2008. Web.

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