Marketing’s Responsibility for the Value of the Enterprise or Organization

Memorandum

To: Dr. Brenda Cullen

From: Nhan Nguyen – 15202524 (Fulltime MBA 2015-2016)

Subject: Marketing’s responsibility for the value of the enterprise or organization

The word “marketing” has become commonplace in business conversations for many years and people usually think of marketing as advertising and selling. However, the concept of marketing should be understood in sense of customer-oriented roles. The aim of this memo is to identify the responsibilities of marketing for the value of the enterprise and organization, based on my personal understanding and awareness of marketing.

Marketing, being put on the context of modern economy, is managing profitable customer relationships to create the value for customers in order to capture the value from them in return. Considering the modern concept of marketing, I am convinced that marketing has five core responsibilities in creating the value of enterprise or organization, as follows:

• Meeting customer demands
• Creating customer value
• Identifying competitive advantages
• Building relationships with customers
• Capturing values from customers

Meeting customer demands

Customers have their own needs, wants and demands but occasionally they do not know exactly what is the most value for themselves. Therefore, the role of marketing is to do market research, interact with customer to understand what they want and which problems they need to solve. A young student gets up early and spends many hours in a long queue to wait for an iPhone 6s not because she needs a cellphone, but because she wants to be one of the first persons owning the newest version of iPhone and be stylish in front of her friends. Apple has understood what the young student and the other customers want, and by positioning iPhone as a stylish and desirable smartphone, Apple has met the demands of customers and has solved their problems.

Creating customer value

Among several offerings on the marketplace, customers tend to choose the product or service which has the highest customer value, and the role of marketing is to create this value. Each customer has a different need and expectation for a product or service, so that marketing’s responsibility is to maximize the customer value by offering benefits and appropriate price. For example, between Etihad Airlines and Air Asia, some still choose Etihad Airlines to purchase for a long trip from Vietnam to Ireland even though the price of Etihad is much more expensive than that of Air Asia. The reason is probably that Etihad has created the customer value with 5-stars service, good facility and on-time performance. Customer value requires the interaction, time and customer experience to be created. Furthermore, customers’ expectation plays a vital role in creating this value. Once customers are satisfied with the product or service, they perhaps recommend the product or service to their friends and family, and the effect of word of mouth will be able to create long-term customer equity for the enterprise. On the other hand, if a customer feels unsatisfied about the product or service, the impact would probably be severe. Therefore, the responsibility of marketing is to set the right level of expectation and transmit appropriate messages to customers.