Elements of Marketing and Marketing Support

LP 1.2 Marketing Discussion – Elements of Marketing and Marketing Support.

The AMA define Marketing as “an organizational function as a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders (American Marketing Association’s definition of Marketing as Reported by Keefe, 2004).

Investopedia defines market research as the process of assessing the viability of a new good or service through research conducted directly with the consumer which allows a company to discover the target market and record opinions and other input from consumers regarding interest in their product, and can be conducted by the company itself or by a third party company that specializes in the market research field (Investopedia, n.d.).

Advertising is a promotional tool and is a paid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor in a media mix.

Sales are transactions between an organization and a customer, where the buyer (customer) receives goods (tangible or intangible), services and/or assets in exchange for money. (Investopedia, n.d.).

All four are components of an organization and complement each other. Marketing research provides the marketing team with crucial information necessary to produce a marketing plan to communicate its services to the customers, and drives the advertising campaign, which drives the improvement of sales of a company.

The Marketing team of an organization focuses on reviewing market research, identifying the target audience, and deciding on a marketing plan. The advertising team review the marketing plan and communicate to their target audience using paid media (TV ads, radio ads, billboards, internet targeted ads, etc), and are chosen based on market research conducted. The sales team then create platforms for making the advertised these goods and services available to the customer (whether through a brick and mortar store, or online through various marketplaces).

I believe that there are issues with these departments getting along. Personally, while employed at Barnes & Noble, I witnessed many conflicting opinions and viewpoints from members of all three teams. A perfect example is the Black Friday campaign. The marketing team had performed market research and realized that the Signed Editions program was what was driving more traffic during Black Friday into stores (as we could not be competitive in pricing with other stores such as toys r us), and therefore, the marketing team recommended we advertise the signed editions program front and center in our ad campaigns, however, the Sales team had performed their own internal sales research and realized that some signed books had taken almost 6 months to sell through its available stock in the past year, and were recommending the program be reduced or cancelled. Eventually, both teams agreed to run the Signed Editions program with more popular authors and reduced print quantity, however the lengthy debate took time and effort away from successful execution.

The departments also sometimes have conflicting goals from one another, requiring different strategies. For example, the Marketing department may be concerned with the brand recognition of a company, and may want to advertise its brand, versus the sales team, whose goal may be to increase sales for a particular segment of its business, and therefore want the advertising to be focused in a particular area, leading to confusion in successfully executing advertising strategies, or internal disagreements on use of available advertising resources.

I believe that all 3 departments are equally important to any business, and all three should work together to accomplish an organization’s vision, mission, and strategic goals.

Reference: (NEED MIN 3 Scolarly Articles)

Keefe, L. (2004), “What is the meaning of ‘marketing‘?” Marketing News, September 15, American MarketingAssociation, Chicago, 17-18. Retrieved From http://www.johnstockmyer.com/enmu/mktg1.htm

Iacobucci, D. (2013) Marketing Management (MM) 4 Student Edition. Mason, OH Cengage Learning.

Market Research. (n.d.). In Investopedia Online. Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-research.asp

Sales (n.d.). In Investopedia Online. Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sale.asp

Chunawalla, S. (2007). Advertising, Sales and Promotion Management. : Global Media. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com