Reflection on Marketing Module - Essay Example

Reflective portfolio BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Reflective Portfolio Reflexive practice is a method whereby a or future manager ensures continuous learning (Wolfensberger, Piniel, Canella and Kyburz-Graber 2010). It is through the process of reflection that a manager is able to examine the holistic factors that drive organisational success, ranging from the external market, to operational strategy and even human emotions, to determine the inter-dependencies of these factors necessary to come up with a workable and valuable operations strategy. This is one of the main lessons that I learned during the course of the curriculum: reflexive practice is critical to establishing a proper corporate strategy and aligning people, tools and measurement instruments to guarantee business success. I first learned that corporate strategy development must consider the external market, internal stakeholders and the conditions of the marketplace in order to be successful. Hence, there is a need to harmonize resources and people effectively in order to maintain a competent competitive position in the market and ensure operational efficiency. This means being able to develop a team environment in which workers are motivated, considering quality of outputs, determining an effective marketing strategy and further maximising efficiency of operations. I was highly intrigued to understand the inter-dependency of marketing to the achievement of strategic goals. According to theory, companies that are the first-to-market with a new innovation actually become the pioneers that define the product category and maintain strong advantages (Agarwal and Gort 2001). First-to-market innovators become a model through which consumers judge late entrants into a marketplace and are often viewed more favourably by the consumer market (Kalyanaram and Gurumurthy 2008). For a business that desires to be a first-to-market innovator as a competitive tool, it is critical that a company maintains a well-developed marketing strategy, part of brand management. According to marketing theory, building a strong brand provides economic and competitive benefits for a business, provides less vulnerability to the marketing activities of competition, and provides more extensive word-of-mouth from consumer markets (Gounaris and Stathakopoulos 2004). One example of how a first-to-market innovator managed to gain consumer preference is the Sony Corporation with the release of the pioneering Sony Walkman in the early 1980s which revolutionized mobile consumer recreation. By having an effective promotional strategy, this company built loyalty with many consumer segments that was sustained for well over a decade, making Sony the consumers’ first name in consumer electronics. This module taught me that operations management must add value to the firm and OM consists of finance, marketing and operational components of the firm. I further learned that the 4M’s of operations management that are able to contribute value include capacity, money, materials and people. This is why I went about exploring marketing concepts and its vitality to achieving competitive success. Having a viable operations strategy means being aware of brand building and how this can potentially impact an organisation’s success. Marketing, I discovered, is more than simply a moderate contributor to achieving corporate goals, it is one of the most fundamental aspects by which a contemporary firm creates value. When a business is able to achieve brand loyalty in its desired consumer markets, it can theoretically charge higher prices (as demand is high) and the volume of expenditures consumers pay out tend to increase over time (Chaudhuri and Holbrook 2001). This would be important, from my perspective, to a business that operates in highly saturated competitive marketplaces. With many different competitors having their own promotional strategies, often using integrated advertising, it would likely become quite difficult for the business to differentiate itself. Therefore, competency in marketing with a brand management strategy that is aligned with consumer behaviours and attitudes would seem to be one of the most important value creators for the firm. This module, of course, taught of different technical processes in operations management, such as just-in-time supply and manufacture, the functional approach to machine and activity, and establishment of a quality assurance and measurement system. These clearly add value as they reduce costs, ensure efficient utilisation of available resources and guaranteeing that output levels are produced according to expectations or schedules. However, after reading about the role of marketing in sustaining competitive advantage, I began to realise that marketing is genuinely one of the most valuable components of operations management and strategy development. There is a type of strategy in marketing known as psychographics, which is about appealing to the emotions and lifestyles of desired consumer segments (Boone and Kurtz 2007). Many companies seem to be using this in order to build the type of loyalty necessary to enhance revenue production and give a business a competitive identity in its established marketplace. Theory states that when a product brand gives consumers a perceived sense of personal self-expansion, they become attached to the brand and build favourable attitudes about the company or product (Zhang and Chan 2009). Certainly, as I learned, the many technical aspects of operations management ensure that the firm is efficient and productive and can reduce costs through these efficiencies. However, after exploring the vast literature available on the marketing function, I realised that long-run advantages and capability to build demand is underpinned by having an effective marketing strategy. The complexities of the external marketplace, most noticeably the consumers, seem to really put a strain on modern companies once the product has been launched into the market. I learned that consumers have many socio-psychological needs and values which translate into how a company goes about the marketing process to fulfil these needs. Before this module, I had never put much stake in the marketing function for a business until I learned about its inter-dependency with operations and finance. Upon reflecting on the plethora of available information on the critical importance of marketing from a competitive perspective, I have come to realise that the labour and capital expenditures on having an effective promotional strategy and brand identity would be absolutely fundamental for achieving competitive success. Having explored the potential benefits of marketing in operations, I would recommend that any business devote more emphasis on this aspect of OM since the many long-term benefits of a well-constructed marketing plan appears to be the most dynamic method by which to ensure corporate success. Team development is yet another area which I thought would be necessary to explore in order to strengthen my understanding of its critical role in achieving strategic goals. This module reinforced the proper alignment of people based on their inherent characteristics, strengths and weaknesses in order to maximise operational efficiency. When I began considering the role of people as contributors to achieving corporate goals, I explored vast literature on the subject and discovered some rather surprising information and data. Much literature emphasises the role of motivating workers to be productive and efficient which seems to start with leadership capacity and capability. Belbin (1981) described the team roles model which identified eight different team roles, such as the specialist, coordinator and resource investigator. Of course, assessment of individual contributor’s strengths will determine how to properly structure a team. I learned, through self-directed evaluation of literature, that team development is much more complex and requires much more consideration by operations managers. For example, I learned that the quality of communications exchanges between leader and team member are fundamental for reducing turnover rates and improving worker motivation (Wei, Liu, Wang and Hai 2010; Harris, Kacmar and Witt 2005). I thought this very important to evaluate since in the introduction to the module, it was reinforced that labour productivity and team work is absolutely critical for organisational efficiency and proper utilisation of resources. Though performance in operations management is often measured using a variety of tools, including balanced scorecards and financial analyses, through exploration on the concept of leadership as a vital factor in operations I discovered that performance can also be measured by leader capability. For example, when a manager reduces the presence of a centralised hierarchy of control and decision-making, workers are more productive. I explored the concept of laissez-faire leadership which is offering workers much more autonomy in order to motivate productivity (Langfred and Moye 2004). Outside of just the technical and structural approaches to operations management, the role of trust-building, providing worker accolades for achieving performance targets, and effective and unambiguous communications seem critical to productivity improvement. Having explored the inter-dependencies between leadership ability and appealing to the psycho-social aspects of the organisational environment, I found these to be value creators within a contemporary business in terms of productivity. For example, we learned about the concept of Total Quality Management with a fundamental goal of this system being continuous improvement and universal participation. Hence, there would seem to be a need, in order to build an effective team, for establishment of an organisational culture with a shared set of norms and values in order to stay focused and directed toward attaining strategic goals. This would go far beyond simply assessing the competencies and weaknesses of workers when determining a functional team-based strategy. It involves an operations manager making appeals to worker needs to create a legitimate type of organisational and job role commitment and loyalty. Again, the impact of leadership and cohesive culture development would seem to be a very important predictor of high productivity in the business. Providing proper training, working to build human capital development, and then using a more transformational style of leadership that inspires, encourages and role models trustworthy behaviours would seem to be fundamental to enhancing organisational efficiency and productivity. In addition, I also explored as a result of the module the concept of JIT. Upon examination, I realised that this improves cost controls such as having low inventory carrying costs, the ability to more rapidly improve quality, and potentially having fewer suppliers. Deeper examination into JIT made me realise that it can complicate supplier relationships, in terms of responsiveness to changing production needs and suppliers might even increase their prices as a result of having to respond to more frequent delivery schedules and needs. Hence, I thought about a situation in which a business maintains little buyer power in the supply network that desired to use JIT ideology as a means of improving financial health of the firm. It would seem to require establishing alliances and other partnerships along a supply network in order to ensure supplier capacity to meet JIT deadlines and be capable to respond to changing manufacturing designs, which is iterated by Copacino (1996) as a fundamental aspect of lean procurement. Hence, having a competent operations management strategy is, again, more than simply manufacturing design and other technical production tools, it relies on management that is adept in building strong business-to-business relationships and being able to extend training outside of the organisation and into the supplier environment. It would seem to be necessary for firms that are rapidly changing product models and designs to launch new innovations, based on examination of the concept of JIT, to maintain close cross-functional relationships along the supply network if JIT is to be successful. I essentially learned that even though just-in-time philosophy is a value creator in terms of cost controls, the complexity of development of supportive systems requires substantial managerial competency and dedication. Finally, I thought it important to reflect on quality systems learned in the module, especially the impact of ISO 9000, developed by the International Organization for Standardisation which define quality assurance and ensure compliance to these standards. ISO 9000 is heralded for being a risk management tool and avoiding potential litigations that stem from inferior quality systems. However, literature on ISO 9000 indicates that compliance to these quality standards produce excessive volumes of paperwork requiring management documentation and signature (Clifford 2014). Moreover, companies operating in an ISO 9000 environment must comply with auditors who report on adherence to the quality standards. Bamford and Deibler (2003) iterate that ISO 9000 is often seen by managers as a type of foreign language and they often are unable to understand the specific terminology that shows non-compliance by auditors and therefore have problems creating relevant quality improvement initiatives. The module taught that ISO 9000 is an excellent tool for building confidence between the company and its customers. However, concurrently, the quality standards can inject many costs into the organisational model and can be too rigid. Hence, I considered a dynamic and ever-changing organisation that consistently redesigns production systems in order to respond to changing market conditions. To adopt this accreditation as a means of improving marketing image and identity might be fundamental, but the problems and challenges of compliance and setting up approved quality systems might not be advantageous to all types of organisations. In the role of a future operations manager, before attaining ISO 9000 certification, I would likely conduct qualitative research with a variety of relevant suppliers and other players in the similar industry to determine what types of costs it has introduced, the complexities of documentation and auditing systems, and then perform a cost/benefit analysis to determine whether the long-term marketing advantages outweigh the potential burden of such certification. This reflective account of the module was based on theoretical modelling of operations management as well as tangible research highlighting support or lack thereof for the concepts learned throughout the weeks. It was my intention to take these models and attempt to apply them to real-world environments as a means of illustrating knowledge on what was learned whilst also iterating the inter-dependencies of various non-technical systems. In all, through the course and through self-directed learning, I came to realise that operations management is a multi-faceted and dynamic process that requires management, leadership, team development, business-to-business relationship competency, and careful assessment of internal and external market factors in order to successfully achieve strategic goals. References Agarwal, R. and Gort, M. (2001). First mover advantage and the speed of competitive entry, Journal of Law and Economics, 44, pp.161-177. Belbin, M. (1981). Management teams. London: Heinemann. Boone, L. and Kurtz, D. (2007). Contemporary marketing, 12th edn. UK: Thompson South-Western. Chaudhuri, A. and Holbrook, M. (2001). The chain of effects from brand trust and brand effect to brand performance: the role of brand loyalty, Journal of Marketing, 65(2), pp.81-93. Clifford, S. (2014). So many standards to follow, so little payoff, Inc. Magazine. [online] Available at: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050501/management.html (accessed 10 April 2014). Copacino, W.C. (1996). “Seven supply chain principles”, Traffic Management, 35(1), p.60. Gounaris, S. and Stathakopoulos, V. (2004). Antecedents and consequences of brand loyalty: an empirical study, Journal of Brand Management, 11(4), pp.283-306. Harris, J.K., Kacmar, K.M. and Witt, A.L. (2005). An examination of the curvilinear relationship between leader-member exchange and intent to turnover, Journal of Organisational Behavior, 26, pp.363-378. Kalyanaram, G. and Gurumurthy, R. (2008). Market entry strategies: pioneers versus late arrivals, Wright University. [online] Available at: http://www.wright.edu/~tdung/entry.pdf (accessed 10 April 2014). Langfred, C.W. and Moye, N.A. (2004). Effects of task autonomy on performance: an extended model considering motivational, informational and structural mechanisms, Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(6), pp.934-944. Wei, X., Liu, H., Wang, N. and Hai, L. (2010). Chinese employee’s turnover intentions in relationship to organisational identification, work values in modern service sector, 6th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management, pp.1-5. Wolfensberger, B., Piniel, J., Canella, C. and Kyburz-Graber, R. (2010). The challenge of involvement in reflective teaching: three case studies from a teacher education project on conducting classroom discussions on socio-scientific issues, Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(3), pp.714-721. Zhang, H. and Chan, D. (2009). Self-esteem as a source of evaluative conditioning, European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, pp.1065-1074. Read More