Importance of Marketing Department

Introduction

Amongst the most important departments is the marketing department. It is the department that enables the producer’s goods to deliver their product to the consumers easily and effectively. Every business that intends to grow should have this department.

Elements of marketing

The parties; In general, the consumer is ready to sacrifice in the form of money, time and effort to obtain their specific needs.  A consumer’s aim is to get his needs satisfied up to the limits of his ability. The consumer, on the other hand, analyses the needs of the consumer and determines if he is able to meet them while at the same time making a profit. The marketing department at this level identifies the homogeneous groups. These are groups of consumers who have a common need or desire.

These groups are referred to as market segments. A producer selects one or more of these segments that he can profitably serve. The selected segment then becomes his target market. An enterprise has a specific market offering which he intends to fulfill his customers and once he does, he is said to have attain his main objective which is to maximize long-term profitability of his operations. To achieve this, the producer must know and understand what is going on in the market place. This information is obtained by conducting a market research which is conducted by the marketing department.

Market offering; there are four ways of determining its total market offering

Product: This is the service or product with its added characteristics that enrich its value for the consumer. They include, guarantee, packaging, after-sale services and quality. Ensure you do not view the product in isolation but instead as part of SleepWell’s total market offering. The total market offering forms a close part of the product.

Distribution: It is the passage of the product from the producer (SleepWell) to the consumer and identifies the specific areas where the product can be offered for sale.

Communication: it entails deciding on how to inform the customer about the product. The consumer must be informed about the product, be persuaded to purchase it and be prompted of its ability to satisfy his needs. The marketing management uses advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling to achieve these results.

Pricing: It requires SleepWell to decide on the cash value the business requires in return for the product ensuring a satisfactory profit margin. It should also be acceptable to the consumer so that he accepts to purchase the product.

Once decisions are aimed at the target market, it is known as strategy. These four strategies (production strategy, distribution strategy, pricing strategy and communication strategy) constitute the market strategy.

The marketing environment; the marketing environment of a company like SleepWell comprises internal and external factors that affect the marketing system of the company. Some of these factors are controllable while others are uncontrollable. As the marketing environment changes, it is the responsibility of the marketing department to review the companies policies. The marketing environment is further divided into macro and micro environment.

The macro environment comprises of environmental factors over which the company has no control. They include; demographic, economic, physical, technological, social and cultural factors. While the company has no control over these factors, it can adjust its policies to fit with them.

Micro environmental factors on the other side are factors the company has control over. They include suppliers, marketing intermediaries, consumers, competitors, the public, and employees. In cases where the company is able to control its factors, the company may opt to change the factors or to adopt them as they are. While making this decision, the company should keep its productivity and profitability a priority.

Market orientation

Market orientation is the market strategy in which the producer focuses on discovering the needs of the customer and meeting them. If SleepWell Company decides to adopt this marketing strategy, they are going to be better able to meet the needs of its customers. To attain market orientation, a business has to embrace a market based philosophy and implementing a method for following market performance and restructuring its production in order to meet the needs of the market. A company also needs to measure the profitability of the business if it intends to succeed as a market based company.

SleepWell business needs to adopt this marketing strategy for various reasons. First, the consumers will keep changing with the changes in demographics, consumer behavior. Second, consumers will have to keep changing as technologies change and barriers to international competition change. Third, the social, cultural, and economic forces will keep shifting. As they shift, the environment in which the market operates will change. This means that if a company does not go with the changes, the probability of survival of the company will reduce.

One very important benefit of orientation is the survival of the business in the long-run. This means that the changes that happen will not collapse the company. Instead, they will only make SleepWell to be a better and bigger business. This way, the family that owns SleepWell will have a strong sustainable business that will stand the test of time.

However, there are some short-run benefits to this strategy of marketing as well. First, a business that has a market-based orientation leads to better customer satisfaction. This is because market orientation is customer-related factors. First, a market orientation strategy is customer focused. This implies that the business is obsessed with understanding the needs of the consumer and satisfying them. Secondly, market orientation is competitor oriented. During research, the producer understands the competitors’ source of advantage, marketing strategies, and competitive positions. Third, it has cross-functional teams that are dedicated to production, development and delivery customer solutions which improves customer satisfaction and response.

A market orientation strategy further has a customer centric alignment. This is the ability of a business involves employees at all levels in customer satisfaction. By so doing, the needs and desires of the customer are prioritized. The entire business thus commits itself to meeting the needs of the customer and ensuring quality. By so doing, profits are earned over time.

Marketing orientation also promotes adaptability in the business. The business ensures that it has immediate feedback from consumers. The business is thus enables the producer to make improvements and product adjustments as desired by the customers.

The cost of adopting marketing orientation is one factor that prevents companies from adopting it. A market orientation strategy generally requires a lot of investment in market research so as to understand the customer’s needs and desires. For a small company like SleepWell that lacks expertise, it requires then that it will require the employment of an independent research firm to research on the market. While this results in in dividends in the long-run, it still requires upfront funds. However, the funds are in most cases returned in the form of profits due to the customer retention nature of customer orientation.

References

Swoboda, B., & Elsner, S. (2013). Transferring the Retail Format Successfully into Foreign Countries. Journal Of International Marketing, 21(1), 81-109

Elements of Marketing Strategy. (2014) South-Western

Funaru, M. M., & Baranov, A. A. (2012). Environmental Marketing – Element For Asserting the management of sustainable Development. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series V: Economic Sciences, 5(1), 53-58