Marketing Management - the Success and Failure - Essay Example

Marketing Management Introduction Every product has to reach the market and the success and failure of a product depends on the acceptance of the product in the market. The acid test for every product is the market. But then, the success and the failure of a product is not just in the product alone. It is not only dependent on its features, strengths and weaknesses that it might have. It is much more dependent on the perception of the market. How the market perceives the product is; whether the market views the product as something useful or not will decide whether the market is successful or not. This perception is not something that the product or the market is assuming by itself. It is created by the product marketers. Though marketing and marketing management has been defined variedly by different people at different points of time, marketing would still stand between the business and consumers or buyers and ensures that the needs of the buyers or customers are met by the company and its products. Marketing management is the one where marketing is managed to deliver the results thus said. Philip Kotler et al., (2006) defines marketing as follows: human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through the exchange process. Philip Kotler et al., also define marketing management as "the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value." It is the aim of the marketing manager to ensure that the market keeps growing with additional customers and with or without additional products. Determining an Opportunity Opportunity is the gate through which the products produced will bring in revenue to the company that produced it. Opportunity presents itself to the people who are interested in knowing it. When the opportunity knocks most often the people behind the doors either do not hear it or they are afraid of opening the door. Either way the opportunity is lost. Only a few open the gates for the opportunity to enter and bring in the desired revenue flows. An opportunity occurs out of the environment and its needs. The environment is made up of four elements; Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic and Political. These four elements impact the company to a great extent. All the opportunities also rise out of these four elements. Opportunities arise because of the socio-cultural changes or because of the technological innovations that produce a major source of business opportunity. Economic changes in the market could also throw up opportunities that could be tapped. New regulations and laws might also bring about major changes in the way businesses are done and this could lead to more opportunities. Every opportunity has to be checked out for what it is worth. This can be carried out by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the system and the opportunity. It is also important that the opportunity provided by the environment, is taken up by the company and has the right kind of skills to bring about appropriately satisfy the requirements of the market (Drucker P J, 1993). SWOT Analysis of an Opportunity Every opportunity should be evaluated based on its own environmental and internal factors. The company should do a SWOT analysis of the existing and new requirement. The company should identify the strengths that are with the management and the strengths of the people who make up the company. The company should be able to identify its own skill in which it is best at. The extent of financial resources that the company has; the kind of bargaining power they might have with their suppliers and their intermediaries, the nature of connections and alliances they have. All these would contribute to the strengths of the company. The weaknesses include the lack of financial resources, the specific skills that does not exist, how old are the IPs and their current state and what the company is really bad in. All these contribute to make the weaknesses of the company. Similarly, the opportunity that has come out of the environment and the nature of contribution that it provides to the company is to be analyzed. This includes identifying the new technology that might be available only to us. The company needs to identify the weaknesses of the competitors and try to capitalize on this weakness to ensure that the market share is brought into our forte. The nature of changes that has come about in the environment and the new market that is opening for the company as a show of new opportunities needs to be included in the analysis. Micro and Macro Environment The analysis should also take into consideration, the micro and macro environment and also take into account the changes that are happening in these environments which provide the opportunity. This analysis should be able let the company realize the impact of the opportunity in these spheres. The micro environment comprises of Competitors, Customers, Supplier, intermediaries and some public. This environment is close to the company and is a possible cause of the changes immediate to the company. More over, the actions taken by these elements of micro environment will immediately affect the company. On many occasions, the company can take suitable action to redeem itself from the situation created by the micro environment. It is much more easily manageable when compare to the macro environment (McKenna, Regis , Jan. 1991). The changes in the macro environment will also affect the company to a great extent and on many cases the company might have no say on the changes and what it might do may not affect the macro environmental factors. These typically are the exchange rate changes, interest changes, technology changes, cultural changes, climatic changes, foreign competition and changes caused by part of the public. This also includes the changes due to the government and its regulations. Most often the company or the individuals may not have any say in such matters and therefore they are normally classified under the macro environmental factors. The company may not have any impact but it gets drastically affected by these factors. Environmental Opportunity An environmental opportunity may be defined as the one that is produced out of the environmental factors. However, it might be noted that most of the opportunities in the business world comes out of the environment. These opportunities are the gifts for the marketing well being. Environmental opportunity is taken up and therefore, is worked upon to produce the needed result (Philip Kotler and Keller, 2007). As indicated, the environmental opportunity helps in identifying a new requirement in any of the environmental factors that would help for realizing a marketing advantage. If done appropriately, would result in profitable gain out of the opportunity. What we might do When an opportunity strikes it is important to work out all those options that are possible for the company to take. This would let us know what possible options are there that we might do, given the situation of the opportunity. Opportunities open up a set of possible combinations. All these opportunities need to be exhaustively defined to analyze the situation further. This provides the list of options of what we might do. What do we do best In order to appreciate the entire opportunity, the company needs to know what it might be able to do very well. This would stem out of what the company is good at doing 'with its eyes closed'. This will ensure that the company does not go into something that it can never dream of doing and find itself doing something that is not within its scope of things. It is always a bad idea to do something that is not in the core business or core capability of the company. Therefore, it is wise to identify all that are strong points for the company and make an exhaustive list of the same. This list would provide the best of the company. What we must do Based on the possible alternatives that the company can do best and the best options that the list of opportunities have listed, it is possible to arrive at the possible list of all that the company might do (Porter, Michael, 1998). Based on the process of evaluation of the opportunities, it is essential that the company tries to produce the possible options to drive at the best available alternative that the company could carry out. This would be the method adopted to list the options that the company must do and subsequently put them into practice. Once the options are put to use, they should be implemented fully and the implementation should also be controlled appropriately so that they give the best possible results. This would form the best alternate that the company must do. Case Study The case under consideration is that of Marks and Spencer and their debacle in the year 1999. Until this time, for well over one hundred years, Marks and Spencer made profits continuously and had been showing steady growth in business. It developed into a multi national marketing / retailing chain. The company was manufacturing and retailing goods under the brand 'St. Michael'. All the material sold under Marks & Spencer until this period, was sold under the same brand name. The major issue with M&S was that there was little or no modernization and there was very little movement towards what was expected out of them by the people. This meant that the company was not preferred by the people and naturally there was a stalemate and the company started losing its clients. A complete analysis of the status had to be taken and the situation that the company is in has to be analyzed and the right option further on had to be taken. However it has to be noted that the retail business was booming under the then conditions. Secondly, there were other large retail chains making in roads into UK and the rest of the places where M&S was dominant once. The opportunity of making it richer and larger still was present. Analysis of the situation On analysis of the situation the following options are available against the opportunity that could be called the retailing business. 1. Not taking the opportunity is of course, the easiest way out and continue to call off the business. But that might not be the one that any of the share holders to the company might prefer, since this could lead to a great loss to the shareholders. 2. The company has to modernize itself and aim at attracting people who are spending. This might require further investment to enhance stock and to bring out new trendy clothing that would rope in people to buy clothing with Marks & Spencer. 3. The company could concentrate on specific business segments rather than on a multitude of segments and create a niche for itself. This is also applicable to the locations. M&S could sell in those locations and to people whose requirements it could meet and thereby decrease its liabilities and increase overall profitability of the company. 4. The company could work out a work-in-sync scheme with other companies that are trendy and modern and try to learn their business and also in the bargain enhance its own image and products. This would also boast the turnover, though this might not increase the profitability of the company in the short run. With these options in front of the company, the strengths of the company need to be listed out. 1. The company has a strong financial base. Though the profits are not growing to the management's liking, they had already been a successful one hundred years old retail chain. Therefore, they had a very strong financial base. 2. The company had a brand by itself. The name of the company, 'Marks and Spencer' itself was a well known brand and people attached the name to quality across the world and in all locations where M&S does business. 3. The company had committed staff to support launch of any new scheme and take it further to realize the benefits of the project. Based on the strengths of the company and the options provided by the opportunity, the following action could be recommended. 1. The company since it has a strong foot hold in UK, Europe and East Asia, could strengthen its brand image further if it could launch a new product range for every target audience. The St Michael brand is not as much sought after as Marks & Spencer brand is. Therefore, it is better to adopt M&S itself as a brand rather than build the St Michael brand. 2. New perception and thought stream for the company's progress is to be created. This can be done by injecting fresh blood into the company. 3. Ensure that adequate stock of all requisite material is kept and timely delivery is done. These are all part of the management practice in the company and this has to be done appropriately and promptly to ensure that the staff down the line work in unison with the management objectives. In line with these points, the company also did a similar work during the 1999 debacle. One, it replaced the chief executive of the company with a new person from one of the new retail chain stores. It also brought in a new person for designing from Warehouse. Secondly, it introduced a series of new brands for every age group it wanted to attract and designed clothes for them. Thirdly, it became trendy and accepted credit cards for payments. Fourth, it ensured that the stock is appropriately controlled by introducing IT and computerized systems to take care of the stock controls and also in ensuring that every client's need is recorded and addressed. This meant additional investment in IT. Conclusion Opportunities are present in the environment. All opportunities are thrown own by the environment for people and companies in the environment to pickup and make use of. These opportunities come out of the wants of the people. It is therefore, essential that the opportunities are fully understood and the needs of the people are met during the course of the work. This can be appropriately done by ascertaining the strengths of the company and matching it with the requirements of the opportunity. Only those companies that have a matching skill map to that of the opportunity become a success in that specific opportunity. The environment will be continuously throwing up requirements but all these cannot be satisfied by everyone of the companies or people. It gets met by the company or the individual who is closest in the skill level to the requirement and who is also have the required financial and economical strengths in addition to the other skills. The statement made by Kerin and Peterson in 2006 is held true. References 1. Drucker, Peter F., 1993 (reprint), Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-88730-615-2 2. McKenna, Regis , Jan. 1991, Marketing is Everything. Harvard Business Review 3. Philip Kotler and Kelvin Lane Keller, 2006, Marketing Management, Pearson Education. 4. Philip Kotler and Keller, 2007, Framework for Marketing Management, SafariX eTextbook, 3/E, Prentice Hall, On-line Supplement;384 pages, Instock, ISBN-10: 0132191423 ISBN-13: 9780132191425. 5. Porter, Michael, 1998, Competitive Strategy (revised ed.). The Free Press. ISBN 0-684-84148-7. Read More