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Marketers need to be creative and Imaginative as well as capable in making scientific and mathematical approaches to analyses data and utilities hem effectively to achieve the organization’s objectives. This paper addresses the importance of both aspects and where a scientific approach or an artistic approach is required, Sergei Cayman, marketing vice president of Coca-Cola at the time New Coke was released in 1985, said (Myron 2000): Marketing is 100 percent science. There’s nothing artistic about marketing… It’s like accounting. It’s understanding your competition, it’s about understanding who you’re going to grow business from.
It’s understanding trends, it’s research, it’s science. It’s thinking it through and inventing It all the time. The only way to do It Is you do It with facts. It’s not a gut- based discipline it’s a science; it’s a fact-based discipline. Coca-Cola introduced New Coke because of the threat of competition and they felt needs of refreshment after ninety-nine years history of the original Coke. New Coke was well received in the blind test and Coca-Cola decided to replace their original Coke with New Coke, but New Coke did not work out.
Coca-Cola overvalued the outcome of their research, and they did not see that their customers did not want something new. However. This ease could be considered as a failure as well as a success of Coca-Cola. It failed with New Coke but the released original Coke named as Coke Classic became more popular than before and the threat of competition got less. Organizations have to define their products not as what the companies make or produce but as what they do to satisfy customers (Pride et al. 2007, p. 5). Defining customers’ needs and wants give direction to what the company must do to satisfy them (Pride et al. 007, p. 35). Customers’ needs are always changing and preference Is perishable as Cayman described (Myron 2000). To understand customers’ needs and be able to respond to them efficiently, organizations need to establish an information system to store and analyses data to Identify patterns of buying behavior and variables. For example, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business strategy to manage the development of a company. The acquisition and retention of its customers and to create long-term value between them Jackson 2005, p. 76). 1 OFF customers’ needs.
Marketers should keep eyes on competitors’ strategies and examine the influence to their own. Data about market shares, product movement, ales volume, and expenditure levels will be useful to find out the difference from others and to know the own position in the market. You need to figure out which portion of your cash flow is generated by that investment, and to come up with the metric, companies must be willing to spend the time and energy on special studies or projects (Mueller & Hirsh 2003, p. 6). Marketing objectives should be written and be able to be measured accurately (Pride et al. 007, p. 35). This is one of the major reasons that many marketers support the science theory of marketing. Developing an integrated Decision Support System (DES) will allow for better measurement and management of a CRM system Jackson 2005, p. 76) and enable firms to make decisions based solely on the impact on customers’ perceptions and profitability Jackson 2005, p. 91). CRM is primarily a customer- focused strategy whereas DES can be thought of as the infrastructure that can measure, capture and deliver performance.
Together CRM and DES can generate a knowledge environment that maximizes customer value and measures, monitors and provide intelligence to company and customer performance profitability Jackson 2005, p. 7). ROI marketing is another management concept to help understanding how to spend dollars to attain the highest possible return on the marketing investment and its goal is to bring measurable data to bear on areas that in the past were rarely measured (Mueller & Hirsh 2003, up. 1, 2).
Marketing Management is scientific not only because it depends on researches and analyses but also requires the assessment of an organization’s capabilities, human resource allocations, calculation of an appropriate level of inventories at low logistical costs such as Just-in-Time TIT) concept. Paying attentions to consumer rights, report social responsibility and ethics are important as well to keep customer satisfactions. It requires a wide range of technologies and highly scientific methods to pull them all together and it cannot be managed by solely an artistic approach.
Cayman claimed marketing is science but he also said there is art in the execution of a tactic’ (Myron 2000) and even ROI marketing does not attempt to wring the art out of marketing… , since creativity is essential to effective marketing (Mueller & Hirsh 2003, p. 2). Taking an artistic approach alone would not be enough because it often does to capture the long-term needs of society. Marketers need to contribute in creating branding strategy, product strategy, and communication strategy, not only with understanding of their customers in depth but also with creativities and passions.
Marketers need to motivate, convince and move the co-workers in all the departments in the organization to share the same target with them. For this, marketers also need a strong leadership, project management skills and personal magnetism. Marketing management is a scientific exercise because it heavily depends on customers’ needs are, and how to satisfy them. To ease managing complex scientific approaches and to make it measurable, several methods and technical supports system have been developed.
However, a momentum of high demands by customers could be missed if marketers spend too much time on analysis, and decisions made based on detailed research and analysis sometimes do not work as expected. Marketing research or analysis could be done by anyone if they once learn techniques how to do it. To make a difference, an essence of art is required. Believe and use intuitions, inspirations, creativities and innovations to pick up meanings from the research and analysis results.