Marketing Management - Research Paper Example

Hennes & Mauritz AB (operating as H&M) is a Swedish clothing company, known for their inexpensive and fashionable clothing offerings mainly for men and women 18 to 45, children's apparel, and its own brands of cosmetics. The company designs cheap but chic clothing It was established in Vsters, Sweden, in 1947 by Erling Persson, though at the time it only sold women's clothing and was called Hennes, Swedish for "hers." In 1968, Persson acquired the premises and inventory of a Stockholm hunting equipment store named Mauritz Widforss.

Included in the inventory was a supply of men's clothing, prompting Persson to expand into menswear. Accordingly, he renamed the store Hennes & Mauritz, later abbreviated to H&M. H&M has more than 1300 stores in 29 different countries with direct sales operations in selected areas and has more than 50,000 employees According the traditional views, marketing is the process by which goods are made available to the consumers by the manufacturers. Thus the traditional concept of marketing focuses merely on the physical process of distributing goods and services.

According to modern view, marketing consists of sensing, stimulating, servicing and satisfying the needs and wants of present and potential customers in more effective and efficient manner than its competitors. The modern concept of marketing holds that the key task of organization is to determine the needs, wants and values of the customers and to adopt the organization to delivering the desired satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than its competitors. There are two key elements in this concept.

Customer orientation andIntegrated marketing planning and control with those of other departments like manufacturing, finance, inventory control and so on.2.3 Elements of modern concept of marketingThe modern concept of marketing of marketing has the following two elements as under:Customer Orientation - identifying and determining the wants and requirements of customers through marketing surveys, forecasting and researches(a) Integrating the marking planning and control with those of other departments (like manufacturing, finance purchase, inventory control, personnel research and development) keeping in view the ultimate goal of customers' satisfaction.

It may be noted that the customers expect satisfaction not only in terms of genuine and wholesome products and services but also several other considerations such as prompt and regular supply of production/services reasonable price, availability of efficient after sales service and so on.3. Marketing ManagementMarketing management consists of planning, organizing, directing and controlling the activities related to the marketing of goods and services to satisfy the customer's wants.According to Philip Kotle, "Marketing manageme