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Marketing is the activity, conducted by organizations and individuals, that operates through a set of institutions and recesses for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging market offerings that have value for customers, clients, marketers and society at large ( AMA, 2007). This definition does not only focus on satisfying the needs of the customer, instead it tries to explain the interactions between consumers and suppliers. Although marketing would seem to be less relevant to the needs of business, some researchers believe that its status could be improved through appropriate approaches.
This essay will argue that in spite of being confronted with certain decline within the deeds of transaction, marketing still could make a great contribution to business after reform. In order to demonstrate this, this essay will firstly describe the situation that marketing faces in contemporary firms and then several reasons why marketing is becoming increasingly unimportant to the firms will be addressed after that. In addition, it will also make response to the crisis that marketing has been beset with. The emergence of marketing crisis in current companies makes sense to some extent.
According to Elizabeth and Pauline (2009, cited McGovern et al. 2004), in a duty of 30 large American companies, there are more than 30 percent of respondents demonstrating that less than 10 percent of their time is allocated to discussing marketing or customer related issues at board level. It could be easily observed that the status of marketing has been slumped in firms for some time from this situation. Besides the problems at board level, the authority of marketing department slashes in contemporary firms.
The responsibilities of marketing has been apportioned to other departments such as human resource management, sale and product engineering (Elizabeth and Pauline, 2009). Therefore, the power of marketing become divided into segments so that its performance is eliminated. In addition, there is no continuously financial support from the firms for marketers. As the expenditure of marketing is regularly fluctuating on the balance sheet, cutting marketing budgets will always be the prior consideration during the financial destitution period (Elizabeth and Pauline, 2009).
As a result, this situation probably causes problems for developing marketing strategy in companies. Indeed, there is still be a short-term tactical approach only concentrating on immediate profit in rims. In this approach, due to the pressure of financial markets and shareholders, short-term tactical outcomes such as sales volume and market share are accentuated (Webster, 2005). This might lead marketer myopia which means the marketers are incapable to perceive the social environment and long run business (Sheet and Cissoids, 2005).
In terms of the relationship between marketing and consumers, the most difficult part for marketing, the situation seems to be not optimistic. To be more specific, marketing loses credibility with consumers because of its image problem Sheet and Cissoids, 2005) and marketing role is far more than supplying goods as well as satisfying consumers’ need. As previous views assert, to some extent, marketing is gradually being irrelevant to the needs of business while it is far from In order to ameliorate the serious situation that marketing faces, researchers believe that there are certain approaches should be done by marketers.
According to Fargo and Lush (2004), the traditional goods-centered view of marketing might obstruct a whole recognition for the role of services and might partially blockade a full comprehension of marketing in general. Thus, a shift from a goods-centered logic to a service-centered logic is necessary. Being consumer oriented is the initial part of the service-centered logic; the rest are cooperating with and receiving information from consumers and getting accustomed to their individual and dynamic need (Fargo and Lush, 2004).
Establishing a new relationship with customers is another essential approach for facilitating marketing behavior. Marketing activities should be conducted more closely with the consumer in order to regain credibility with them (Elizabeth and Pauline, 2009; Sheet and Cissoids, 2005). Further more, companies should share all the information they have with consumers and then cooperate with them to have co-creation products. For example, some Mini owners in the USA spruce their cars up in attire for Halloween and some have added shark fins on the covering of their Mine’s.
It is a untraditional combined idea between Mini USA and their consumers but might create and enhance both the brand’s and customers’ extra value. In addition, reintegrating marketing into the firm is also needed. Despite many companies have a designated chief marketing officer (COM), the position of COM rarely filled by a person with marketing capacity (Sheet and Cissoids, 2005). Thus, it is of necessity to re-skill marketing through certification.
Besides this, bringing back all the original functions of marketing and re-establishing board level support should also be taken into account during reintegration. Although these approaches mentioned above might not cope with all the situations that marketing faces, it is obvious that they work in majority of circumstances. In conclusion, it can clearly be seen that marketing is facing the crisis because of robbers at board level, slash of power, less financial support, problems in strategy, and problems with customers.