Marketing Management and Communication in an Open Economy - Essay Example

Marketing Management and Communication in open economy Introduction: Marketing is a social and managerial process that is directed to identify, anticipate and satisfy customer needs and wants profitably through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with the customers. Marketing management is one of the main management discipline process for the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities by the practical application of marketing techniques. It is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, distribution, research of ideas, goods, services, organizations and events to create exchanges and to maintain long term relationships that exchanges which in turn satisfies individual and organizational goals. Marketing management is the main management process focusing on satisfying customer requirements by identifying needs and wants and developing products and services to meet them. Marketing managers are responsible for defining, writing and producing promotional materials to support the exchanges. Marketing managers also works with the accounting department to analyze the profits generated to the firm from various product lines and customer accounts. The processes in the marketing management are shown below. Analysis/Audit to identify the current status or progress of the marketing process Defining Objectives - the goals (customer satisfaction) to be achieved Identify Strategies - the best way of accomplishing the tasks Knowing Tactics - the way of getting to a particular solution Way of Implementation to achieve the objectives Control to ensure that the right track is followed with expected outcome Marketing management and communication in open system involves the planning, execution and controlling of marketing of the products internationally with value to the customers with no restrictions imposed on the import and export of the products and services within the countries. Open system in marketing management helps to analyze the needs and wants of the customers considering the whole population and because of which it does not requires any external maintenance. Its maintenance goes by itself with throughput of resources from the environment. 2. Justification of the study: The marketing management is necessary for a company for the following reasons. It results in systematic futuristic thinking by the management since it focuses mainly on customer wants and needs It finds the way to have better coordination of company efforts It develops better performance standards for control It helps in sharpening the objectives and the policies of the company It strengthens the company for being prepared better for the sudden new developments It involves managers who have a vivid sense of participation From the above reasons, it is evident that marketing management is necessary for an organization to successfully reach the customers with their high value products and services. When the customer's perception of value varies from year to year or time to time, it requires managing the marketing process of an organization with the changing perception of value of the customers. In general, the marketing environment foresees several threats and forces outside marketing that affects the organization's ability drastically in developing and maintaining long term relationships with its targeted customers. Marketing management helps to develop an overall strategy for long run survival in the market and growth. This study of marketing management is much essential for any organization before it establishes the marketing management in order to have long run survival in the market with the customers. 3. Limitation of the study: Marketing management for a company is an on-going process for a company since it focuses mainly on customer wants and needs which will never be stable. This study on marketing management is limited to few areas. The scope of the study is listed below. The study is based on the marketing management and communication in open system. To study the marketing research concepts To discuss on the previous studies and research made on the marketing management To study the different types of data employed by the marketing managers To study on the different methods of data collection To discuss on the various sampling techniques used on the data collected To discuss on the preliminary hypothesis and its benefits To study on the data analysis technique and its various forms 4. Broad research aims and detailed objectives: Marketing goals are framed to satisfy customer requirements. This paves the way for the marketing research to analyse the needs and wants in the society to attract customers by exchanging mutually beneficial value of products. Marketing managers need valuable ideas and information to bring products and services that would be valued by the customer. Since the customer's attitude and perception of value keep changing with respect to the time, the ideas and information that creates value in customer cannot be found out with the general knowledge. It must be an analysis with the data which was valued by the customer for the previous years which is termed as marketing research process. Marketing research provides facts about the perception of value of the customers and directs the marketing managers to take valuable decisions on their products or services. The objectives of the marketing research are listed below. To assist the management to choose their products or services to the customers by providing the customer's perception of value over a certain period of time. To direct the managers in making valuable decisions on the improvement of products and services to the customer. To decide on the resources needed for implementation of a product or service. To stimulate the thinking of the managers and makes them to use the resources efficiently. To make the management aware of the problems, opportunities and threats in the market place. Marketing research may not arrive at marketing decisions by which the company succeeds in marketing its products and services. It is not guarantee successful marketing. But when the research carried out in a systematic and analytical manner in the track of the defined objectives, the uncertainty in the decisions can be reduced, increasing the probability and magnitude of success. 5. Relevant theme and disciplined area: Marketing research process requires the management problem to be defined clearly at first. For example, the problem may be whether to launch a new product. For this, the marketing research problem is to assess whether the market would accept the new product or not. After stating the problem, it requires to determine the research design based on the research objectives. The design may be exploratory research (clarifying concepts by literature search, survey, case studies) or descriptive research (Sampling data and time analysis) or causal research (cause and effect analysis - fish bone diagram). Then follows the identification of source of data required for research after which the questionnaires are designed. Then determine the sampling method and sampling size. After completing the above steps, collection of data is carried out followed by the data analysis. Finally the research is completed with a research report. 6. Previous research journals/Earlier studies: The marketing journals and studies have devoted good attention to the nature and scope of marketing and in marketing related decision making processes i.e. marketing management. Overall, the purpose of this study is to improve the understanding of the value of heuristics to marketing theory and practice and to renew research interest into heuristics in a marketing context. MARKETING MANAGEMENT (MM) is a journal published by the American Marketing Association offering in-depth articles on functional areas of marketing, marketing management and marketing as a philosophy of business. It provides thoughtful, timely and useful information to senior marketing executives. The focus of MM is primarily on the business practitioners. The increasing efforts by marketing managers to target the customer needs and wants called for various researches which suggested that the marketers and customers differ often in their perception of marketing ethics, the way by which the product is introduced to the customer. The implications of those research and journals insisted on the requirement of preliminary analysis on the nature of the product, consumer characteristics and market place selection to analyze the complexities of the marketing exchanges which will ensure the long term relations with the customers and long run survival in the market place. Many of the researches implied that assessing customer interests with their perception of value and ethical marketing programs should be done by the marketing managers before the implementation of the product and service. 7. Types of data employed: There are two types of data employed Primary data and secondary data. Primary data: Primary data is known as the data collected for the first time through field survey. Such data are collected with specific set of objectives to assess the current status of any variable studied. This is needed in Research to study the effect or impact of any policy. Primary data includes demographic, socioeconomic, psychological, lifestyle characteristics, attitudes, awareness, knowledge, intentions, motivation, behavior and opinions. Secondary data: Secondary data refers to the information or facts already collected. Such data are collected and reported by some source is accessed and used for the present study. Normally in marketing research the scholars collect published data, analyze them to explain the relationship between variables, which may be explained in a new way. Secondary data saves time and reducing data gathering costs. Secondary data includes sales invoices, warranty cards, government census, etc. Sampling: Sampling is a statistical technique concerned with the observations made to yield statistical inference. There are two methods of sampling namely random and non-random sampling. Random sampling is the purest form of sampling. The different types of random sampling are simple random Sampling and restricted random sampling. The simple random sampling carries two types namely lottery method and table of random numbers. The restricted random sampling has three types which includes stratified random sampling, systematic random sampling and cluster sampling. The non-random sampling includes judgment sampling, convenience sampling and quota sampling. 8. Method of Data Collection: Data collection is the process of preparing and collecting data. The primary data required for the research was collected through questionnaire by means of field work. There are two types of Questionnaire which are as follows: 1. Open end questionnaire: Open end questionnaire means direct question, for which the answers should be given by the respondent. The respondent as reply to the questions must give a detailed description. 2. Closed end questionnaire: Closed end Questionnaire means, answers will be given in the questionnaire in the form of multiple choice, which must be chosen by the respondent. Few data collection process will introduce errors which are called non-sampling errors. Example, the interviewer may introduce the errors unintentionally in case of unclear understanding of the interview process. The respondents may also introduce few errors by responding simply to a question by guess without paying close attention. Such non-sampling errors should be taken care of and it can be reduced through quality control techniques. 9. Preliminary hypothesis: Hypothesis is a method of making statistical decisions using the collected data. It is the statement of universe. It analyses data for formulating hypotheses worth testing. Hypothesis testing is a systematic method to evaluate data and aid the decision-making process. A hypothesis may be rejected but it can never be unconditionally accepted without having all possible evidences. With sampled data, some information has been lost and there is no complete information. If the test with such sampled data does not reject a hypothesis, then it is not necessary to accept the hypothesis. Null hypothesis (H0) is the hypothesis where the independent variable has no effect on the dependent variables (Attributes are independent). Null hypothesis is sufficient to explain the data unless statistical evidence is not available. Alternative hypothesis (H1) is the hypothesis where the independent variable have an effect on the dependent variable (Attributes are dependent). This states that the relation between two variables cannot be explained by chance alone. In alternative hypothesis, an observed effect is genuine and in null hypothesis, the effect has resulted from chance. There are two types of errors in evaluating a hypothesis namely Type I and Type II. During hypothesis testing, the probability that the observed effect will occur if the null hypothesis is true is calculated. If this value is small, then null hypothesis is rejected in favor of the alternative hypothesis. If not, then the null hypothesis is not rejected. Type I error occurs with the acceptance of alternative hypothesis and rejection of null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is true. Type II error occurs with the acceptance of null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is false. 10. Data Analysis: Data analysis is a process of gathering, modeling and transforming data with the aid to support decision making. Successful marketing data analysis depends critically on the quality of the data collected for analytical work. Data analysis can be done in two ways. Qualitative Analysis: Qualitative analysis yields information based on people views, opinions and perceptions. Qualitative analysis defines the research problem and generates hypotheses. It involves gathering data from few respondents. Hence, qualitative analysis cannot generalize a decision to the entire community. The qualitative analysis methods include Depth Interviews (One-on-One interview, laddering, hidden issue questioning), Focus Groups (Group discussion) and Projective Techniques (Sentence completion, cartoon tests, story competion, role playing). Quantitative Analysis: Quantitative analysis measures a project appraisal or investment using statistical, econometrical and mathematical techniques. The quantitative analysis focuses mainly in developing mathematical models, theories and hypotheses. The measurement process is essential for quantitative analysis because it relates observation and mathematical expression of quantitative relationships. The collected raw data must be transferred to the right format and edited to correct or omit errors before starting the data analysis. Then the edited data is converted into numbers and symbols by the procedure named coding and the process of coding is documented in a code book after which the data is tabulated to count the number of samples under various categories. Simple tabulation count the occurrences of each variable independently of other variables whereas cross tabulation also known as contigency table count the occurences of two or more variables at the same time. The degree of freedom is an estimate of the number of independent categories in a particular statistical test or experiment. The Chi square 2 test which helps the researcher to analyze qualitative data is used to test the contingency table degree of freedom. Degree of freedom for simple tabulation is df = n - 1 where n is the number of rows whereas the degree of freedom for cross tabulation is df = (c-1) (r-1) where c is the number of columns in the table and r is the number of rows in the table. 11. Direction for further studies: Researchers in marketing management continue to use the concepts and theories from the management literature in order to enhance the marketing performance. The focal area of the marketing management is the market segmentation, marketing mix, encompassing production/price/promotion and distribution. The above study is made on the overview of the marketing management and its process. The various processes which establishes marketing management has been changed in the recent years with the developments in the field of quality management. A detailed study on the marketing research process will enhance the management process to continue its survival for a long run with the customers. There are several methods of efficient data collection from the marketing databases and various effective statistical techniques to analyze the data with high accuracy. The study on such methods and techniques enhances the marketing management process. The study of the different methods of sampling and the comparison between them will be useful for the betterment of the marketing management process in any organization. The study can also be made on consumer research which will help quite a lot in marketing management. With few of the surveyed international marketing management literature in the past, it will be helpful for the current improvements if the research deficiencies are addressed. To improvise the marketing management process still more, analysis on the previous case studies can be made. Reference: 1. Edward F. McQuarrie, Marketing, Marketing Research. http://www.quickmba.com/ 2007. Page 1. Read More