What is Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategy A strategy is a long-term plan to achieve certain objectives. A marketing[link] strategy is therefore a marketing plan designed to achieve marketing objectives. For example, marketing objective may relate to becoming the market leader by delighting customers. The strategic plan therefore is the detailed planning involving marketing research, and then developing a marketing mix to delight customers. Every organisation needs to have clear marketing objectives, and the major route to achieving organisational goals will depend on strategy.
It is important, therefore, to be clear about the difference between strategy and tactics. These terms originate from military use (military strategy before and during a military campaign is the general policy overview of how to defeat the enemy). Developing a strategy involves establishing clear aims and objectives around which the framework for a policy is created. Having established its strategy, an organisation can then work out its day-to-day tools and tactics to meet the objectives.
Marketing can thus be seen as the process of developing and implementing a strategy to plan and coordinate ways of identifying, anticipating and satisfying consumer demands, in such a way as to make profits. It is this strategic planning process that lies at the heart of marketing. In 1985, the Chartered Institute of Marketing adopted the dynamic slogan: ‘Marketing means Business’ Strategic discipline Marketing is now accepted as a strategic discipline or general management function and in this respect must care for the health of a business in the future – especially against competitive influences.
This is because it is increasingly realised that although making a profit is important, an organisation should also develop its market share and search for brand leadership as well. So the marketer must monitor the profitability of the business and attempt to anticipate the likely trends. At the same time rival companies should be monitored and examined for vulnerable points. Successful marketers must therefore be concerned with every aspect of their business, including future project and other areas of their industry.
Successful companies plan five or ten years and more in advance and often know as much about their competition as they know about themselves. Marketing is not just a series of business-related functions, but more wide-reaching than this. It is a business philosophy designed to develop an attitude of mind which should be shared by everyone in an organisation and is often enhanced by both frequent and open communication. Developing such an attitude of mind reduces the likelihood of crisis and contributes to the development of the overall future of an enterprise at both strategic and tactical levels.
At the heart of marketing lies the degree to which an organisation becomes marketing-orientated. The more committed a company is to its marketing activities, the more able it will be to pursue its corporate objectives and develop and retain customers. Every business in existence relies upon its customers for survival, and those who best meet customer needs will always survive a period of change. The marketing function is therefore an essential ingredient of corporate strategy, and this marketing focus should be communicated through marketing planning into all aspects of business activity.
In choosing a marketing strategy a frequent distinction that is made is between undifferentiated marketing and differentiated marketing. Undifferentiated marketing is where a single marketing mix is offered to the total market. In contrast differentiated market is the process of attacking the market by tailoring separate product and marketing strategies to different segments of the market, for example, the spectacles market can be broken down into fashion segments and functional segments, high price and low price segments, and segments for individuals with different types of vision problems. Objectives
The ends which an organisation focuses its plans and activities towards achieving. Strategies The means to achieve the ends. Usually long term plans. X__________________________________________________________________________________X Marketing Strategy The marketing concept of building an organization around the profitable satisfaction of customer needs has helped firms to achieve success in high-growth, moderately competitive markets. However, to be successful in markets in which economic growth has leveled and in which there exist many competitors who follow the marketing concept, a well-developed marketing strategy is required.
Such a strategy considers a portfolio of products and takes into account the anticipated moves of competitors in the market. Marketing Research for Strategic Decision Making The two most common uses of marketing research are for diagnostic analysis to understand the market and the firm’s current performance, and opportunity analysis to define any unexploited opportunities for growth. Marketing research studies include consumer studies, distribution studies, semantic scaling, multidimensional scaling, intelligence studies, projections, and conjoint analysis.
A few of these are outlined below. •Semantic scaling: a very simple rating of how consumers perceive the physical attributes of a product, and what the ideal values of those attributes would be. Semantic scaling is not very accurate since the consumers are polled according to an ordinal ranking so mathematical averaging is not possible. For example, 8 is not necessarily twice as much as 4 in an ordinal ranking system. Furthermore, each person uses the scale differently. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) addresses the problems associated with semantic scaling by polling the consumer for pair-wise comparisons between products or between one product and the ideal. The assumption is that while people cannot report reliably which attributes drive their choices, they can report perceptions of similarities between brands. However, MDS analyses do not indicate the relative importance between attributes. •Conjoint analysis infers the relative importance of attributes by presenting consumers with a set of features of two hypothetical products and asking them which product they prefer.
This question is repeated over several sets of attribute values. The results allow one to predict which attributes are the more important, the combination of attribute values that is the most preferred. From this information, the expected market share of a given design can be estimated. Multi-Product Resource Allocation The most common resource allocation methods are: •Percentage of sales •Executive judgement •All-you-can-afford •Match competitors •Last year based Another method is called decision calculus. Managers are asked four questions: What would sales be with: 1. no sales force . half the current effort 3. 50% greater effort 4. a saturation level of effort. From these answers, one can determine the parameters of the S-curve response function and use linear programming techniques to determine resource allocations. Decision algorithms that result in extreme solutions, such as allocating most of the sales force to one product while neglecting another product often do not yield practical solutions. For mature products, sales increase very little as a function of advertising expenditures. For newer products however, there is a very positive correlation.
Portfolio models may be used to allocate resources among major product lines or business units. The BCG growth-share matrix is one such model. New Product Diffusion Curve As a new product diffuses into the market, some types of consumers such as innovators and early adopters buy the product before other consumers. The product adoption follows a trajectory that is shaped like a bell curve and is known as the product diffusion curve. The marketing strategy should take this adoption curve into account and address factors that influence the rate of adoption by the different types of consumers.
Dynamic Product Management Strategies Two fundamental issues of product management are whether to pioneer or follow, and how to manage the product over its life cycle. Order of market entry is very important. In fact, the forecasted market share relative to the pioneering brand is the pioneering brand’s share divided by the square root of the order of entry. For example, the brand that entered third is forecasted to have 1/v3 times the market share of the first entrant (Marketing Science, Vol. 14, No. 3, Part 2 of 2, 1995. ) This rule was determined empirically.
The pioneering advantage is obtained from both the supply and demand side. From the supply side, there are raw material advantages, better experience effects to provide a cost advantage, and channel preemption. On the demand side, there is the advantage of familiarity, the chance to set a standard, and the choice of perceptual position. Once a firm gains a pioneering advantage, it can maintain it by improving the product, creating a standard, advertise that it was the first, and introduce a new product in the market that may cannibalize the first but deter other firms from entering.
There also are disadvantages to being the pioneer. Being first allows a competitor to leapfrog the early technology. The incumbent develops inertia in its R&D and may not be a flexible as newcomers. Developing an industry has costs that the pioneer must bear alone, and the way the industry develops and its potential size are not deterministic. There are four classic price/selling effort strategies: Selling EffortPrice LowHigh LowNecessity Goods Classic Skim Strategy Vulnerable to new entrants High Classic Penetration Strategy Luxury Goods
In general, products are clustered in the low-low or high-high categories. If a product is in a mixed category, after introduction it will tend to move to the low-low or high-high one. Increasing the breadth of the product line as several advantages. A firm can better serve multiple segments, it can occupy more of the distributors’ shelf space, it offers customers a more complete selection, and it preempts competition. While a wider range of products will cause a firm to cannibalize some of its own sales, it is better to do so oneself rather than let the competition do so.
The drawbacks of broad product lines are reduced volume for each brand (cannibalization), greater manufacturing complexity, increased inventory, more management resources required, more advertising (or less per brand), clutter and confusion in advertising for both customers and distributors. To increase profits from existing brands, a firm can improve its production efficiency, increase the demand through more users, more uses, and more usage. A firm also can defend its existing base through line extensions (expand on a current brand), flanker brands (new brands in an existing product area), and brand extensions.
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