Role of Marketing

1. Role Of Marketing

Strategic Role of Marketing

Strategy: A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.

Marketing strategies involve the marketing department identifying or determining the following:

• The group of customers who will form the largest market

• Research the target markets current and potential wants and needs
• Develop the product for the target market will want to buy

• Create an effective marketing mix which will meet customer needs and wants and also meet the business sales and profit goals.
• Marketers need to monitor changes in the external environment through external analysis.

• External Analysis - monitoring the unmet needs of consumers, identifying strength and weaknesses of competitors, trends in the market place, technological changes, consumer and economic environment.

• Businesses need to adapt the business product offering to the changing consumer environment.

Interdependence with other key business functions 

• Interdependent - the individual functions are not able to work without each other.
• Operations - once product is designed, then it needs to be manufactured to a defined quality.
• Human Resources - training and employment
• Finance - allocate funds for market research, design, training & new equipment. Work with all departments on budgets and sales expectations.

Production, Selling & Marketing Approaches

Marketing has changed a lot since the early Industrial Revolution.

Phases:

1. Production

1. Selling

1. Marketing

The Production Approach 1820-1920 - "If we make it...they will buy it."

• Lead to "Fordism" a social and economic system based on mass manufacturing, standardisation or product and relatively high wages.
• Products are made with little differentiation and were based mainly on technological advances.
• Henry Ford famously said that the customer could have any colour T Ford "as long as it was black."
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Selling Approach 1920-1960's

Increasing competition dealt with by aggressive selling. E.g. door to door salesmen. Businesses advertised on radio and newspapers to compete.