P.1: Explanation of the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function
Definition of marketing
ALEXANDRA (2019) Marketing refers to activities undertaken by a company to promote the buying or selling of a product or service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses. Some marketing is done by affiliates on behalf of a company.
Common examples of marketing at work include television commercials, billboards on the side of the road, and magazine advertisements. But not all businesses approach the need to market their goods and services the same way.
The nature of marketing
Some people often assume that marketing is about advertising and selling. Well, it is not the whole story. Both selling and advertising are two important functions within marketing. But marketing is a much broader concept, an important management discipline that aims to ensure that organisations understand the desires of customers and exceed them with appropriate products and services.
To understand the nature of marketing, let us investigate the definition of marketing by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK (2019) as stated above.
So, firstly, according to CIM, marketing is a management process. According to motivational theorist Henri Fayol, management consists of five functions i.e. planning, organising, staffing, directing, & controlling. Marketing as a management process indeed employs all these functions to ensure that the aims and objectives of organisations are achieved efficiently.
Marketing is responsible for identifying and anticipating customer requirements. It is about understanding short-time (identifying) and long-term (anticipating) needs and desires of customers. That understanding can be achieved by analysing market trends and carrying out marketing research. Anticipating customer requirements help companies become the first movers in the market and reap the benefits accordingly. For example, Sony dominated the portable music player market for many years after it had introduced Walkman in 1979.
Marketing is also responsible for satisfying customer requirements profitably. Organisations need to survive to cater for the needs and wants of customers. To do so, profit-making organisations need to make profits; hence the inclusion of profitability in the CIM definition of marketing. However, how about non-profit organisations? Some scholars argue that as long as these organisations are achieving their goals and objectives, they would be considered serving customers profitably. It is worth noting that organisations must produce those products and services that satisfy customers’ needs and wants and they are perceived as good value for customers’ money.
Marketing is an important function in an organisation regardless of its size. However, organisations have different functions and departments e.g. operations, finance, human resource management, and IT. Marketing is a business-wide function – it is not something that operates alone and has no connections other business functions. Therefore, its interrelationship with other business functions is necessary for the success of an organisation.
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