Importance of Marketing for Organization Success - Term Paper Example

A Role of Marketing In Business Semester Among different business areas such as production, operations, accounting and economics, marketing is a comparatively young discipline which appeared in the beginning of twentieth century. The prosperity and development of marketing was basically motivated by the demand to analyze the complex relationships between buyers and sellers (Nickels, 2008). The new emerging philosophy created by scholars working in several major universities suggested that the core of the success in marketing is to identify and understand what exactly the customer needs. A Role of Marketing In Business Nowadays marketing concept is implied in the idea, that marketing decisions must be made taking into account the needs of the customers in the first place and afterwards the process of developing and marketing services and products should be initiated by an organization (Nickels, 2008). The major aim of marketing efforts of any organization is to establish reliable relationships with clients that are to be beneficial both for the clients and the organization. And every effort is to prove the fact that marketing plays a crucial role for the business of any size and the society as well. Talking about marketing as a necessary business function it is vital at organizational level for non-for-profit and for-profit businesses engaged in all the industries (Nickels, 2008). As far as non-for-profit organizations are concerned marketing is to assist in process of attracting clients in order to maintain the mission of the organization which might be support or donations raise. For-profit organizations need marketing to deal with all the tasks meant to bring revenue and profits to organization. These two types of organizations will not be able to survive without a helping hand of marketing tool. The feature of marketing as the area of organizational business is implied in the interaction with the public and the opinion that is formed about the organization is the result of interaction with marketers. And thanks to advertising message a customer may believe that this or that company is creative and dynamic (Nickels, 2008). Taking into consideration broader level of marketing it would be essential to admit its benefits to society, which include: Marketing provides an opportunity to develop services and products to satisfy the needs of customers, especially those aimed at improvement of life quality Assistance in establishing an environment of competitiveness where product prices can be reduced. Product distribution systems development in order to provide access to products to many regions and vast number of customers. Creating demand for certain products that need businesses to extend their work force. Marketing provides techniques that are empowered to pass the messages that are to change positively behavior in society, such as anti-smoking advertising campaigns (Pride, 2008). The primary role of marketers is to establish specific relationships intended for holding value for both organization and customers, in this respect marketing professionals apply a diverse toolkit which is to serve as a spine of decision making process. The toolkit includes: - Target markets - the customers are identified as possessing needs and marketing efforts are intended to address them. - Products - this component consists of tangible and intangible solution to the needs of the market. - Promotion - this aspect serves as a tool for information communicating concerning products of market organization directly to the market - Distribution - a set of mechanisms intended to provide opportunity for the market to obtain products. - Pricing - a tool that is used by the marketer to establish the specific cost to be paid by the market in order to obtain products - Supporting services - a number of additional measures meant to improve the value of the product (Pride, 2008). Each element in the toolkit is in tight connection and interaction with each other and as a result decisions made in one area are influential for those decisions made in other areas. For example, the reduction of the price is to influence the area of distribution as there is a need of increased shipments of product to retailer. All the components within the marketing toolkit are under the influence of the factors beyond marketer’s control and they include: legal issues, economic environment, and development of technology, cultural and social movements and others. Due to the fact that these aspects are unpredictable and uncontrollable, the only way to deal with them is to fulfill constant supervision and monitoring as these factors can cause considerable damage to business. Additionally, neglecting external factors may result in missed chances within the industry provided the competitors are prepared to be the first to take this chance. Thus it is vital for the marketers to be constantly aware and attentive to external environment of the company (Pride, 2008). In order to emphasize the importance of marketing and crucial role it plays within any business it would be appropriate to outline the benefits of marketing (Pride, 2008). 1. Establish brand recognition. Brand recognition is the major and the most important role that marketing plays in the life of any business. Imprinting the brand in the consciousness of people can be fulfilled by means of marketing strategies. This function is to make sure that customers look for a specific product or service but not vice versa. 2. Marketing helps to gain and retain customers. After a brand managed to establish the ground and the customers, marketing gives opportunity to a brand to retain the customers. This aspect is of great importance as it is essential for a brand not lose ground to new product entering the market. 3. Marketing is a tool that helps to identify actual customers. Identifying actual and potential customers can be fulfilled by means of marketing strategies. Marketing is focused on targeting customers with the real need rather that wasting time and resources on forcing a product on unwilling customers. 4. Marketing assists in providing information. The best way to provide information is to apply efficient marketing efforts which are to disclose main features of the services and products and this information is also used in order to attract people. Becoming familiar with the brand is to make sure that customers trust it. 5. Marketing helps to save tome resources. Break-even period of any business can be considerably reduced by means of efficient marketing, which is meant to promote service or product. This enables any business to reach targeted segments as well as promote the sales as fast as possible (Pride, 2008). 6. Marketing provides assistance in establishing trust. In order to establish a solid position of a pro duct in the minds of targeted customers, efficient marketing has to be repeatedly executed. This measure helps to encourage people to choose this specific product or service out of other competitors. It requires quite a long period of time and sufficient marketing to create trust to a brand. 7. Marketing is empowered to encourage referrals. Marketing is a tool which helps new audience to look for the information about a certain brand. Word-of-mouth referrals can be raised by means of making services or products constantly heard and seen. The opportunity to offer constantly seen brand increases in comparison to the product people are unaware of (Pride, 2008). 8. Marketing is the best way to address issues. There are numerous ways of product marketing and they can be used as means of eliminating certain miscomprehensions concerning origin and quality of the product which are likely to appear. Usually it is responsibility of marketing to be the measure to clarify any misunderstanding a brand might face (Pride, 2008). In order to reach better understanding of marketing as a discipline and analyze the role it plays within a life of any business it would be appropriate to use the experience of giants such as Apple Corporation. Using this sample will make it possible to trace the way marketing is connected with the company’s success. Apple is viewed as one of the most valuable companies in the world and it was voted the overall winner of the 2012 CMO Survey Award for Marketing Excellence. Thus it would be essential to answer the question: what exactly makes Apple a world’s great marketer? Apple company was founded in early 1977 and Mike Markkula who was advisor and investor outlined three-point marketing guideline which was later transformed into philosophy which has been the spine of the company for more than 35 years (McClure, 2012). This philosophy has assisted Apple in creating, developing and gaining profit from customers’ loyalty. The initial three points of Apple were; 1. Empathy - Apple has to be able to determine and understand needs of customers better than any other company. 2. Focus - Apple must be able to eliminate all unnecessary functions and opportunities in order to be concentrated on doing a good job of the chosen products. 3. Impute - The experience shows that human nature is something that makes people judge a book by its cover. Company can produce the best, the most useful, highest quality product, but if it is presented in careless manner - the product will be viewed as careless as well. Thus a product must be presented on the edge of creativity and professionalism and this is to impute the desired qualities (McClure, 2012). Using these three guidelines has led Apple to be the world’s most valuable brand, taking into account the capitalization of the market. In this respect it would be appropriate to analyze the marketing strategies which have led Apple to where they are now and why this company is considered the world’s best marketer (McClure, 2012). 1. Hiring empathetic and customer-obsessed workers. It is not a secret that Steve Jobs was a very interesting and unique personality and he had his own perception of life and vision of the way people interact with technology. Jobs stated that people are more likely to be limited to think of the things they know well rather than thinking about possibilities and opportunities. Steve Jobs and his team were engaged into customer experience to a great extent, even more than average customer should. Due to the fact that Apple’s employees are obsessed about customer’s experience, a company manages to make products that correspond to people’s needs and demands (McClure, 2012). 2. Permanent involvement of customers into development process. In fact, this measure reduced the importance of market research. Nevertheless, it is common knowledge that huge time resources an d technologies are spent by Apple in order to observe customers permanently. Customers are constantly engaged into production and development process, Apple uses the term «participatory design». This measure is applied in order to determine opportunities and «pain points». Actually, sometimes Steve Jobs was the most important customer, but this fact didn’t ever affect the customers participation. 3. Protect from feature bloat and scope creep. There are stereotypes that engineers are mostly interested in projects that are cool, innovative and intellectually challenging. At the same time business people are interested in the projects that bring profit. People engaged in technological environment tend to think that there is likely to be a confrontation between these two types. The compromise in this respect usually results in feature bloat, scope creep and confusing products. The Apple’s approach is implied in distillation of their products down to their primary purpose (Jobs, 2011). 4. Creating compatible experiences. Technical evolution makes people to wish for intuitive manner where devices cooperate in a certain system. Apple was successful in catching this idea and it was transformed into «digital hub» and later in «entertainment hub» and software and hardware were specially designed to be compatible with the system. The opportunity of connection of iPad, iPod, iPhone, Mac and iTunes became very valuable for customers (Jobs, 2011). 5. Provide customer with an opportunity of differentiation and discovery by means of Apple Stores. When customer comes to Apple stores they expect to see the ease and aesthetics of products. Also they expect to find a better solution presented by a variety of interconnected products. Well-trained employees are always ready to take an interesting customer on a tour and discuss the simplicity and usefulness of the product. More than that Apple Store is a place where technical support is provided which generates a touch point to please the customer. This results in constant growth in retail sales. 6. Creating a moat. Talking about this aspect, Apple has gone three ways. Firstly, novel and provocative advertisement is used to communicate products to customers. A perfect example of this is when in 1984 Super Bowl ad introduced Macintosh. The famous «Think different» ad capmaign of 1997 provoked an idea that crazy people and rebels generate inventions and brilliant ideas (Jobs, 2011). The target market was more design-oriented and artistic rather than big business. Steve Jobs with his non-conformist nature contributed to the overall image of the company. Second, despite of the fact that other brands are involved into production process of Apple products, customers must keep on being focused on Apple component. In the beginning of twenty-first century Apple began to cooperate with giants such as Microsoft, Intel and ATI in order to provide software and hardware solutions. Third but no less important, Apple made decision to cast out other brands from the shelves of Apple Stores and this step played a significant role in brand moat. 7. Develop a business scheme in order to generate ongoing customer value. A certain business model is built in pursuit of repeated value creation. Customer-obsessed employees and Apple stores are contributive to value creation. Also iTunes is viewed as a big part of business model, nevertheless iTunes solely is not a big business for Apple, but the desktop software along with Music Store are of a great value. From the point of view of the customers this diversity of content and devises create huge value which provokes cross-category spending and clients loyalty (McClure, 2012). 8. Apple is ready to cannibalize if need be. A decision to be ready to cannibalize the offerings is a major part of efficient marketing, provided a company has a special option to be brought to a market. Apple has faced this particular situation several times. First one was when Apple introduced the Nano after dropping the superstars such as the Mini and iPod. Second time was when Apple realized iPhone presents a threat to independent iPod due to the fact that both devices do play music. It is worth mentioning that not many companies would have undertaken such risks. And Apple understood they were the one to do it (McClure, 2012). 9. Leave the idea of being everything to every customer. It is important for a company to be able to make hard decisions concerning targeted segments and products to be offered. Apple managed to make tough decision through applying a certain strategy of being concentrated on a limited line of products. This manner was brought by Steve Jobs in early 1997 when he reduced fifteen product lines to four to be focused on. This strategy is still perfectly working today. Three years ago the company’s philosophy was described as «One traditional management philosophy that’s taught in many business schools is diversification. Well, that’s not us» (Cook, 2012). Apple’s laser-like concentration empowers the company to make several huge bets in order to stand out in the crowd and deliver customer value. Consequently, usually Apple’s customers know what to expect from the brand and they are sure to get it (McClure, 2012). 10. Generation certain ecosystem to make offerings valuable. iPhone introduction was simultaneous with the introduction of App Store. Nevertheless, App Store works only in case there are companies that wish to integrate iOS applications into their strategies and develop for the platform. This measure is of a great help in terms of speeding up development of applications as well as engagement of a customer, these factors are beneficial for customers, developers and Apple. Nowadays there are more than 500,000 applications ready to use, they have helped to raise switching costs for iPad and iPhone consumers and also became a profitable stream of revenue (McClure, 2012). The analysis revealed the findings that after five CMO Survey Awards for Marketing Excellence, Apple proved to the world that it is not only the greatest and outstanding technological corporation, but also a brilliant marketer. Summing up Apple’s marketing strategy, it can be described as an exquisite mixture of both conventional and nontraditional ingredients. Nevertheless, the major step Apple made was to outline the manner to attract and retain audience, make people admire and trust the brand, make people wish to talk about brand appeal. Apple managed to create a certain business model, efficient structure and moat as well; these components were put together and played a significant role in providing powerful competitive advantage. Apple’s marketing strategies should be used as an example of successful business (McClure, 2012). References Jobs, S., & Beahm, G. (2011). I, Steve Steve Jobs, in his own words. Chicago, Ill.: B2 Books. Jobs, S., & Thomas, A. (2011). The business wisdom of Steve Jobs 250 quotes from the innovator who changed the world. New York: Skyhorse Pub. Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (1991). Principles of marketing (5th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Lamb, C., & Hair, J. (2002). Marketing (6th ed.). Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western. McClure, N. (2012). Apple. New York: Abrams Appleseed. Nickels, W., & McHugh, J. (2008). Understanding business (8th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Pride, W., & Ferrell, O. (2008). Marketing (14th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Read More