Marketing Management Must Be Considered as an Overall Organizational Philosophy Rather Than Merely a Functional Area of Management

Marketing Management must be considered as an overall organizational philosophy rather than merely a functional area of management

Marketing is the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably (Chartered Institute of Marketing). American Marketing Association (AMA) in 1985 defined marketing as the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives. Drucker adds that “Marketing is so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function on a par with others such as manufacturing or personnel. It is first a central dimension of the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customers’ point of view.” The marketing concept is that managerial orientation that recognizes that success primarily depends upon identifying changing customer wants and developing products and services which match these better than those of competitors (Doyle 1987). Without customers, there would be no any employee in an organization. Both the employee and the organization exist because of the customer. As earlier defined, marketing aims at satisfying customer needs profitably. For this mere reason each person and every department exist because of a customer, they also need to recognize that other than operating in silos.

This reasoning leads to marketing orientation which Kohli and Jaworski (1990) defined in the following terms: a market orientation entails (1) one or more departments engaging in activities geared toward developing an understanding of customers’ current and future needs and the factors affecting them, (2) sharing of this understanding across departments, and (3) the various departments engaging in activities designed to meet select customer needs. In other words, a market orientation refers to the organization-wide generation, dissemination, and responsiveness to market intelligence.

A model which emphasizes that a firm should aim and work together to deliver value to the customer is Porter’s Value Chain Model developed by Michael Porter. Michael Porter has proposed the value chain as a tool for identifying ways to create more customer value. According to this model, every firm is a synthesis of activities performed to design, produce, market, deliver, and support its product. The value chain identifies nine strategically relevant activities—five primary and four support activities—that create value and cost in a specific business. The primary activities includes bringing materials into the business; converting materials into final products; shipping out final products; marketing, which includes sales; and service. Specialized departments handle the support activities of procurement, technology development, human resource management, and firm infrastructure. Infrastructure covers the costs of general management, planning, finance, accounting, legal, and government affairs.