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This is now often referred as ‘internal marketing. According to Ballplayer: Internal Marketing is any form of marketing in an organization which focus staff attention on the internal activities and need to be changed in order to enhance market place performance. Overall internal marketing is aimed at increasing customer awareness throughout the entire organization, together with the motivation of all employees to pay their part in achieving customer satisfaction.
RELATIONSHIP MARKETING: Perhaps the most significant development in the recent has been the growth of the notion of “relationship’. It is increasingly argued that the traditional concept of racketing do not adequately reflect the recognition of the ‘long term value’ of customer. The argument is that many of the traditional definitions of marketing, although stressing the importance of customer needs and satisfaction, are essentially concerned with maximizing then profitability of each transaction.
Kettle argues that the effective relationship marketer must supply good consistent quality backed up by good consistent services and fair prices’. The aim is to develop and maintain strong economic, technical and social ties with valued customers. COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) As in many other areas of our daily lives, marketing too, has been not only affected but some would argue, fundamentally changed through developments in technology and particularly developments which are related to and or stem from communications and information technology.
In particular, the ubiquitous computer continues to change the face of marketing practice. Examples of areas of marketing affected by developments of communication and IT range from techniques of marketing research and data collection which are increasingly computer based, wrought to developments which stem from database marketing such as the growth in direct marketing techniques.
Perhaps one of the most significant developments which has already affected marketing but which will grow in importance in the future the growth of the use of the Internet. ECOLOGICAUENVIRONMENTAL AND CONSUMER WELFARE ISSUES Recent years have witnessed an increased interest in protecting the environment, together with recognition of the complex and potentially fragile nature of the ecological system of our planet.
Coupled with these developments has been an increased emphasis in protecting consumers against marketing malpractice and dangerous or unhealthy products, Effective and aware marketers have responded to these developments by, for example, producing recyclable products and packaging, reducing pollution that the use of their product causes, and even protecting consumers against their own worst excesses by stopping the selling of certain products.
NOT-FOR-PROFIT AND NON- BUSINESS MARKETING A second important development in marketing practice has been the increasing use of marketing tools and techniques in not-for-profit and non- business organizations rotationally, marketing was conceived as a means of generating as sustaining profits, however, many organizations have objectives other than profits, and many are not business organizations in the conventional sense.
SERVICE MARKETING Unlike not-for-profit and non-business marketing, many providers of services have long recognized the value and importance of marketing and of being marketing oriented. The marketing concept applies Just as much to service products as to physical products, however, probably because of the growth in importance of services in the economics of many development countries; more and more attention as focused on the special issues and problems of applying marketing in this area.
The characteristics of services compared with tangible physical products gives rise to additional consideration in their marketing. GLOBAL MARKETING Business and trade, and hence marketing, have become more and more global in nature in recent years. As with services, the application of marketing in this case by companies trading across international frontiers is not new, but again, the growth in activity in this area, and particularly the spread of the global marketing organization, as focused more and more attention on this aspect of marketing. . Explain the meaning and relevance of Marketing Environment. The marketing firm operates within a complex, dynamic, external macro-environment. It is the task of the marketing oriented firm to link the resources of the organization to the requirements of consumers within the framework of opportunities and threats presented by this macro-environment. Hence, the marketing firm not only has to put consumer’s requirements at the top of its list of priorities, but it also needs continually to adjust to environmental factors.
Rather than establishing what the organization can produce and then going out and ‘selling it, the marketing-oriented firm first finds out the genuine needs and wants of consumers and then attempts to produce products and services that satisfy these requirements. In a wider sense, the marketing concept is more an attitude of mind or a customer-oriented business philosophy, rather than merely a functional area of management. Although a clear understanding of consumer’s requirements is of paramount importance in putting such a business philosophy into practice, there are also other factors to consider.
Kettle defines the general marketing environment as follows: a company’s marketing environment consists of the actors and forces that affect the company’s ability to develop and maintain successful transactions with its target customers. Such a definition includes all environmental forces outside of the firm’s marketing management function. This would also include inter-departmental influences. Russ and Kirkpatrick call the interaction between the marketing department and other functional areas of management the intra-firm environment.
It is important, in order to understand the influences of external environment forces, to appreciate that, although the marketing function is the channel through which the firm adapts to change in external conditions, marketing’s ability to carry out this role is also influenced by internal factors. The general marketing environment, therefore, consists of all the factors and forces influencing the marketing function. This includes both internal and external forces. Internal forces, I. E. , the intra lifer environment, are largely within the control of the firm.
It is the generally uncontrollable forces outside the firm in the macro- environment that pose the most important sources of opportunities and threats to the company. Kettle reserves the term ‘macro-environment’ to denote other external forces such as demographic, economic, political, technological, and socio-cultural forces. The term ‘macro! -environment’ denotes all these forces and agencies external to the marketing firm. Some of these outside factors and forces will be somewhat ‘closer’ to the firm than others, for example immediate suppliers and competitors. 3.
Explain the procedure in Marketing Planning. Market oriented strategic planning is the managerial process of developing and maintaining a feasible balance between the organization’s objectives, skills, and resources and its changing market opportunities. Strategic planning aims at shaping the company’s business and products to yield target profit and growth. The Marketing Manager plays a vital role in strategic planning process. He defines the business mission, analyses the environmental, competitive, and business situation, and finally develops objectives, goals and strategies.
The planning procedures that happen at various levels are as below: 1 . Corporate strategic planning: These are Lana made by the corporate headquarters to guide the entire enterprise. 2. Division planning: It covers the making of decisions on the amount of resources to be allocated to each division. 3. Business unit strategic plan: Each business unit devises a strategic plan to carry that business unit into a profitable venture. 4. Product marketing plan: Each product line or brand within a business unit develops a marketing plan for achieving its objectives in the market.
The above mentioned planning steps are discussed in detail as follows: Corporate and division strategic leaning: The corporate establishes the framework within which divisions and business units prepare their plans. This is done by defining the mission, policy, strategy and goals of the company. The corporate headquarters undertakes four planning activities: 1 . Defining the corporate mission: Every company has a mission or purpose and a well worked out mission statement, encourages and motivates the employees with a shared sense of purpose, direction and opportunity. . Establishing strategic business units (SSW) : The company has to establish strategic business units on the axis of the following three dimensions: customer groups, customer needs and technology. 3. Assigning resources to each Subs: The senior management studies the company’s portfolio and classifies its business by profit potential. After the company’s strategic business units are identified, appropriate funding is assigned to each unit. 4.
Planning new businesses and downsizing older business: New businesses can be of the following types – intensive growth opportunities (to achieve further growth within the company), integrative growth opportunities (to build or acquire sinuses related to the company’s current business) or diversification growth opportunities (adding new businesses that is totally unrelated to the company’s current business) Business strategic planning: This occurs in the following steps: The unit defines its specific mission, it performs overall evaluation of company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SOOT analysis), it develop s specific goals based on the SOOT analysis, it develops a strategy to achieve the goal, it develops detailed supporting programs to help in the strategy, it implements the Lear strategy and well planned supporting programs and finally, it keeps a track of the new developments and results and controls the strategy accordingly. Product marketing planning: Each product level (product line, brand) must develop a marketing plan for achieving its goals. A marketing oriented company attaches great significance to gathering information on which plans are based.
Their activities center around customer needs and satisfaction. The Marketing Manager deals with the following questions: Who are our customers? What do they buy? How do they consider value? When do they buy? 4. Explain pricing policy? Pricing is an essential part of any business strategy. It is of great importance to the producer, wholesaler, retailer and the consumer. For an organization, price creates the revenue to support existing and future opportunities. Sometimes, survival of an organization may depend upon product pricing policies. In a competitive market, importance of pricing cannot but be overemphasized. Pricing Policy decisions are influenced by numerous factors.
Of the numerous factors affecting pricing decisions, Cost, Demand and Competition are the major ones: 1) Product cost: Product cost is he total expenditure incurred in terms of money by the producer of the product which includes expenditure towards procurement of materials, employment of workers, using machinery including power, communication/distribution channels, expenditure incurred on sales force etc. 2) Demand for the product : Higher the price, lower the demand, and vice versa, other things remaining the same is the popular law of demand. Thus, demand for the product influences the price and vice versa. 3) Competition : When there is competition, neither an individual nor an organization can really influence price. Under severe competition, price will follow the direction of the resultant of the forces of competition. As discussed above, Pricing Policy mainly depends on product cost, demand for the product and competition.
When data about these factors are collected, before fixing up the product price by adopting an appropriate pricing method, the existing pricing policy must be reviewed and updated taking into consideration, the changed business environment, if any. The existing pricing policy is to be periodically reviewed and updated in relation to other policies like selling methods, advertising policy and reduction policy and program. For example, it may be necessary to reduce the product price to enable fuller utilization of plant capacity, more quickly. One of the reasons for not utilizing the installed capacity fully may be the existing imbalance in the installed production facilities. Such an imbalance may be due to the reason that the capacity of different equipment of a plant does not match.
In such cases, the following alternatives are available to the manufacturing organization to rectify the imbalance in the existing production facilities: To sub-contract part production that is extracting the production. To install balancing equipments with higher output potential. To introduce shift working. If there is consistent imbalance in the production facilities, entire plant can be replaced by installing new automatic plant. Idle equipment may be sold so that entire attention can be diverted to fully utilized equipment. In all such cases, production will increase and the increased volume of production may be sold by a suitable reduction in product price.