Marketing Management
Marketing managers are often responsible
for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand
in a manner that will achieve the company's objectives. Marketing management
is a business discipline focused on the practical application of marketing
techniques and the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities.
There is no universally
accepted definition of the term. In part, this is due to the fact that
the role of a marketing manager can vary significantly based on a business'
size, corporate culture, and industry context.
For example, in a large consumer products company, the marketing manager
may act as the overall general manager of his or her assigned product
category or brand with full profit & loss responsibility. In contrast,
a small law firm may have no marketing personnel at all, requiring the
firm's partners to make marketing management decisions on a largely
ad-hoc basis.
From this perspective,
the scope of marketing management is quite broad. The implication of
such a definition is that any activity or resource the firm uses to
acquire customers and manage the company's relationships with them is
within the purview of marketing management. Additionally, the Kotler
and Keller definition encompasses both the development of new products
and services and their delivery to customers.
Noted marketing expert
Regis McKenna expressed a similar viewpoint in his influential 1991
Harvard Business Review article "Marketing is Everything." McKenna argued
that because marketing management encompasses all factors that influence
a company's ability to deliver value to customers, it must be "all-pervasive,
part of everyone's job description, from the receptionists to the Board
of Directors."
This view is also consistent
with the perspective of management guru Peter Drucker, who wrote: "Because
the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise
has two--and only these two--basic functions: marketing and innovation.
Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing
is the distinguishing, unique function of the business."
The broader, more sophisticated
definitions of marketing management other scholars are therefore juxtaposed
against the narrower operating reality of many businesses. The source
of confusion here is often that inside any given firm, the term marketing
management may be interpreted to mean whatever the marketing department
happens to do, rather than a term that encompasses all marketing activities
-- even those marketing activities that are actually performed by other
departments, such as the sales, finance, or operations departments.
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