Marketing in a Complex Environment: Who Needs to Be in the Buying Center - Assignment Example

Such complex environments can be described to include a business-to-business marketing environment (Davenport, Mule & Lucker, 2011). In the scenario selected, such a complex environment can be said to have taken place. This is because the scenario involved a local school that needed to upgrade its computer systems for all its middle school classrooms. Apart from the fact that this was a B2B environment, the upgrading process meant that several things needed to be marketed and purchased. Some of these included hardware and software, making the environment involved even more complex.

It was also important that as part of the upgrading, there would be classroom configurations, desks, lighting, electrical service, as well as cable data support. In effect, the service and products to be provided were multi-complex in nature. During such marketing moments when marketing managers have to deal with a complex environment, Davenport, Mule & Lucker (2011) advocated identifying and knowing all stakeholders involved in the purchasing. There are several reasons why knowing the stakeholders can be said to be highly advantageous for the marketing manager.

In the first place, knowing the stakeholders helps the marketing manager to have a better understanding of the core needs of all people involved in the complex environs way, it is possible to provide the people, with products and services that meet each stakeholder’s unique needs. What is more, different stakeholders may have different influences on the buying process and so knowing them makes it possible to devise the right marketing strategy for each of them. For the local school, four major stakeholders can be identified, with each having a different influence.

The first is teachers, who will be using the system to deliver lessons. The second is students, who will be receiving tutorials from the sys. There is with also the school management, which will be managing the usage of the system. Finally, there is the parent, who may be bearing the cost of the upgraded system. 

Such a client-centered approach would involve going down to the school and undertaking a marketing survey to identify the exact needs of each stakeholder. For example, it will be impowhichwhichnt to know the level of competence of students to provide a system that matches this. It will also be important to know how much parents are willing to pay so that the cost of the products and services will be made around this cost. What is more, it will be important to identify the expectations of the school manager so that this will be factored into the products and services.

With all this said, using the focus strategic option will help in undertaking an effective marketing in this complex environment. This is because such strategic options would ensure that nothing more than what suits the complex environment is provided (Perreault Jr., Cannon & McCarthy, 2014). The merit of this marketing strategy notwithstanding, it can be noted to be very time-consuming.