What do you Understand by Terms Marketing and Marketing Orientation - Essay Example

Topic:  What do you understand by terms marketing and marketing orientation? Marketing Marketing may be described as a bundle of management skills and resources, often referred to as marketing capabilities. These capabilities allow a business to understand, develop and maintain exchange relationships with individual, groups, organizations in order to reach the objective of the organization. Marketing helps a company in searching appropriate markets, in building and sustaining competitive advantage in those markets and, and in managing the relationship with all the important stakeholders belonging to those markets.

According to silk(2006,pg.23) “In general terms marketing refers to what an organization must do to create and exchange value with customers”.To be successful in marketing, a deep knowledge of customers, competitors and collaborators is necessary. The central role of marketing in the enterprise stem from the fact that marketing is the process via which a firm creates value for its chosen customers. Having created the value for its customers, the firm is then entitled to capture a portion of that value through pricing.

Marketing is both philosophy of business as well as business function, a state of mind concerning the optimum approach to business, and the activities whereby such ideas are translated into practice. As per Viardot ,(2004,pg 56)“Marketing means “putting on the market”. Therefore the purpose of marketing is to act in such a way that company places on the market products that correspond to demand and satisfy needs and wants of the customers at an acceptable return” For example in marketing for a hotel firm, the nature of tourist arriving to a particular city is analyzed first.

According to that a survey is conducted as to the purpose of their visit .A hotel firm will design their products and services according to the needs and wants of their potential customer. They also consider the products and services offered by their competitors in the locality to capture more market. In her website Sreenivasan(2005)writes that “Hotels show particular flexibility to change as the consumer lifestyles, purchasing power and preferences change. Most hotels prefer to customize their service products to satisfy the needs of customer”.

Marketing has different business orientation according to organizational priorities and one among them is the marketing orientation. Marketing orientation Market orientation is a set of organization – wide activities coordinated in such a way that derives customer satisfaction through superior performance of products while still being competitive in market place. The concept of market orientation is believed to be the corner stone of marketing management because of the prevailing wisdom that having a marketing orientation is critical to superior performance and long term success in today’s highly competitive business environment.

According to Singh (2004,pg 34)“Implementation of marketing concept is marketing orientation”.A Market orientation has helped companies such as the Royal Bank of Canada and South west Airlines outperform their competitors. These companies put customers at the centre of their business in ways most companies do poorly or not at all. Marketing orientation can be achieved by implementing customer orientation. For example the marketing vice President of a major airline wants to increase the airline traffic share.

His strategy is to build up customer satisfaction by providing better, good, clean cabins and better trained cabin crews, yet he has no authority in this matter. The catering department chooses a food with low food cost and maintenance department chooses cleaning services of low cost and personnel department choose friendly people inclined to serve people. These actions result in low cost and better service which increases the airline traffic share. As per Loudon(2005,pg.11)“Being market oriented begins at the top of an organization with senior management” .

Marketing managers must also understand the financial impact of different marketing decisions intended to put the social marketing orientation into practice. A marketing oriented firm is the one that allows the wants and needs of the customer and potential customers to drive all the strategic decisions of a firm. As per Foxall (1984,pg45)“The attitudes and behaviors which constitute marketing – oriented management are indispensable part of entrepreneurship but the two are not coterminous”.

If marketing – oriented management, which is the ultimate responsibility of top management, is absent then the improvement of marketing functions contribute less of effectiveness. In a market oriented company, planning and decision making centers on customer needs having due regard to competitors and distributors. In other words, a marketing orientation requires everyone in an organization to become customer oriented and not just people who work in the marketing. Developing marketing orientation is a long term process and needs to be thought of an s a form of investment that can change the organization’s culture, so common values relating to highlight service to customers and concern for quality in all activities shared throughout the organization.

References Foxall, G.R., 1984. Corporate innovation : marketing and strategy . 1st ed. New York: Taylor & Francis. Loudon, D.L., 2005. Marketing management : text and cases. David.L.Loudon. 1st ed. New York: Routledge Silk, A.J, 2006. What is marketing . 1st ed. Massachusetts: Harvard Business Press. .Sreenivasan, P. 2005. MARKET MAPPING TRENDS IN THE HOTEL INDUSTRY. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.indianmba.com/articles_on_management/aom9/aom9.html. [Accessed 29 October 11]. Singh, S, 2004.

Marketing orientation, corporate culture and business performance . 1st ed. Hants: Ashgate Publishing Viardot, E, 2004. Successful marketing strategy for hightech firms.. 1st ed. Norwood: Artech House