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Marketing Solutions

Marketing management

We define marketing management as the art and science of choosing target markets and building profitable relationships with them. This involves obtaining, retaining and developing customers through creating and delivering and communicating superior customer value.

Thus, marketing management involves managing demand, which in turn involves managing customer relationships.

Demand management

Most people think of marketing management as finding enough customers for the company’s current output, but this is too limited a view. The organisation has a desired level of demand for its products. At any point in time, there may be no demand, adequate demand, irregular demand or too much demand, and marketing management must find ways to deal with these different demand states. Marketing management is concerned not only with finding and increasing demand, but also with changing or even reducing it.

For example, the Eden Project is an ecologically appealing attraction in the west of England that has a series of huge ‘biomes’ with climates and plants from deserts to rainforests.

Unfortunately, in summertime it has trouble meeting demand during peak usage periods that typically occur when holidaymakers try to escape a rainy day at the coast. In these and other cases of excess demand, the needed marketing task, called demarketing, is to reduce demand temporarily or permanently. The aim of demarketing is not to destroy demand, but only to reduce or shift it. Thus, marketing management seeks to affect the level, timing and nature of demand in a way that helps the organisation achieve its objectives. Simply put, marketing management is demand management.

Building profitable customer relationships

Managing demand means managing customers. A company’s demand comes from two groups: new customers and repeat customers. Traditional marketing theory and practice have focused on attracting new customers and creating transactions – making the sale. In today’s marketing environment, however, changing demographic, economic and competitive factors mean that there are fewer new customers to go around. The costs of attracting new customers are rising. In fact, it costs five times

as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep a current customer satisfied. Thus, although finding new customers remains very important, the emphasis is shifting towards retaining profitable customers and building lasting relationships with them.Companies have also discovered that losing a customer means losing not just a single sale, but also a lifetime’s worth of purchases and referrals. Thus, working to retain customers makes good economic sense. A company can lose money on a specific transaction, but still benefit greatly from a long-term relationship. The key to customer retention is superior customer value and satisfaction.

Marketing management practice

All kinds of organisations use marketing, and they practice it in widely varying ways. Many large firms apply standard marketing practices in a formalised way. However, other companies use marketing in a less formal and orderly fashion. Companies such as easy Jet and Dyson achieved success by seemingly breaking all the rules of marketing. Instead of commissioning expensive marketing research, spending huge sums on mass advertising and operating large marketing departments, these companies practised entrepreneurial marketing. Their founders, typically, live by their wits. They visualise an opportunity and do what it takes to gain attention. They build a successful organisation by stretching their limited resources, living close to their customers and creating more satisfying solutions to customer needs. It seems that not all marketing must follow in the footsteps of marketing giants such as Procter & Gamble.

However, entrepreneurial marketing often gives way to formulated marketing. As small companies achieve success, they inevitably move towards more formulated marketing. They begin to spend more on television advertising in selected markets. They may also expand their sales force and establish a marketing department that carries out market research. They embrace many of the tools used in so-called professionally run marketing companies. Before long, these companies grow to become large and, eventually, mature companies. They get stuck in formulated marketing, poring over the latest Nielsen numbers, scanning market research reports and trying to fine-tune dealer relations and advertising messages. These companies sometimes lose the marketing creativity and passion that they had at the start.

They now need to re-establish within their companies the entrepreneurial spirit and actions that made them successful in the first place. They need to practise entrepreneurial marketing, that is, to encourage more initiative and ‘entrepreneurship’

at the local level. Their brand and product managers need to get out of the office, start living with their customers and visualise new and creative ways to add value to their customers’ lives.

The bottom line is that effective marketing can take many forms. There will be a constant tension between the formulated side of marketing and the creative side. It is easier to learn the formulated side of marketing, which will occupy most of our attention in this book. However, we will also see how real marketing creativity and passion operate in many companies –whether small or large, new or mature – to build and retain success in the marketplace.

Marketing management philosophies

We describe marketing management as carrying out tasks to achieve desired exchanges with target markets. What philosophy should guide these marketing efforts? What weight should be given to the interests of the organisation, customers and society? Very often these interests conflict. Invariably, the organisation’s marketing management philosophy influences the way it approaches its buyers.

There are five alternative concepts under which organisations conduct their marketing activities: the production, product, selling, marketing and societal marketing concepts.

The production concept

The production concept holds that consumers will favour products that are available and highly affordable, and that management should therefore focus on improving production and distribution efficiency. This concept is one of the oldest philosophies that guide sellers.

The production concept is a useful philosophy in two types of situation. The first occurs when the demand for a product exceeds the supply. Here, management should look for ways to increase production. The second situation occurs when the product’s cost is too high and improved productivity is needed to bring it down. For example, in the early years of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford’s whole philosophy was to perfect the production of the Model T so that its cost could be reduced and more people could afford it. He joked about offering people a car of any colour as long as it was black. The company won a big share of the automobile market with this philosophy. However, companies operating under a production philosophy run a big risk of focusing too narrowly on their own operations.

After some time, Ford’s strategy failed. Although its cars were priced low, customers

did not find them very attractive. In its drive to bring down prices, the company lost sight of something else that its customers wanted – namely, attractive, affordable vehicles. The gap left by Ford gave rise to new market opportunities that rival General Motors was quick to exploit.

The product concept

Another important concept guiding sellers, the product concept, holds that consumers will favour products that offer the most quality, performance and innovative features, and that an organisation should thus devote energy to making continuous product improvements. Some manufacturers believe that if they can build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to their door. But they are often rudely shocked. Buyers may well be looking for a better solution to a mouse problem, but not necessarily for a better mousetrap. The solution might be a chemical spray, an exterminating service or something that works better than a mousetrap. Furthermore, a better mousetrap will not sell unless the manufacturer designs, packages and prices it attractively, places it in convenient distribution channels, and brings it to the attention of people who need it and convinces them that it is a better product.

A product orientation leads to obsession with technology because managers believe that technical superiority is the key to business success.

The product concept also can lead to ‘marketing myopia’. For instance, railway management once thought that users wanted trains rather than transportation and overlooked the growing challenge of airlines, buses, trucks and cars. Building improved trains would not satisfy consumers’ demand for transportation, but creating other forms of transportation and extending choice would.

The selling concept

Many organisations follow the selling concept, which holds that consumers will not buy enough of the organisation’s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort. The concept is typically practised with unsought goods – those that buyers do not normally think of buying, such as Readers Digest and double glazing. These industries must be good at tracking down prospects and convincing them of product benefits.

The selling concept is also practised in the non-profit area. A political party, for example, will vigorously sell its candidate to voters as a fantastic person for the job. The candidate works hard at selling him or herself – shaking hands, kissing babies, meeting supporters and making speeches. Much money also has to be spent on radio

and television advertising, posters and mailings. Candidate flaws are often hidden from the public because the aim is to get the sale, not to worry about consumer satisfaction afterwards.

Most firms practise the selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their aim is to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants. Such marketing carries high risks. It focuses on creating sales transactions in the short term, rather than on building long-term, profitable relationships with customers. It assumes that customers who are coaxed into buying the product will like it. On the other hand, if they do not like it, they may forget their disappointment and buy it again later. These are usually poor assumptions to make about buyers. Most studies show that dissatisfied customers do not buy again. Worse yet, while the average satisfied customer tells three others about good experiences, the average dissatisfied customer tells 10 others of his or her bad experiences.