Whats The Major Tasks Of A Marketer

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Programme: MSc Marketing Communications

Module Title: Contemporary Issues in Strategic Marketing

Module Leader: Dr. Andrew Pressey

Part I Get the Evidence

"Marketer are just people who manipulate adverts to sell products as many as they can. Therefore, marketing is only about selling and advertising." For most people, they may think

marketer and marketing just like description in the prior statement. However, that's not the real marketer or marketing.

According to Kotler, Wong, Sauners, Armstrong (2005), real marketing is much more than knowing what to make than selling or advertising. Marketing is closely related to every chain of business. It is the guides of a entire company. Creating customer satisfaction profitably by building valued relationships with customers is the goal of marketing. The customer satisfaction is directly related to almost every chain of a firm. In other words, what's marketer doing is not only about the adverts. Their role is to apply effective marketing in order to achieve the goal of marketing.

Considering the real role and function of marketer and marketing, we can draw a conclusion that: marketer is kind of strategist. At the same time, marketing shares important strategic role. Therefore, it is quite necessary to offer a position in executive boarder for marketer. I will provide evidences and illustrate my opinions in the following parts. In the first part, I will approve that marketer is kind of strategist. In the second part, I will prove the strategic role of marketing. In the final part, it will discuss why we need a marketer on executive board.

Marketer vs. Strategist

Marketer and strategist share similarity in definition. Human resource management outlines the marketing specialist in literature as the marketer. Defined as being the person working inside a specialized department (office, division, direction) of a company, institution or non-profit organization or working independently to plan, program, organize and run marketing activities (Veghe ş, C., Florescu, C., Mâlcomete, P., &Pop, N. Al, 2003). Just like Sony North American CMO Mike Fasulo agreed: "We have to anticipate. We look at what will intrigue people in the future." (Pop,A.V.& Vladoi,A., 2006). Marketer should anticipate the market.

At the same time, what's Strategist? According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 4th edition, Strategist is the people who is good at planning things, especially military or political situations.

When we compare the two definitions, they share same role of "planning". The difference is the how much marketer is good at planning. When the two roles were put into the framework of business field, a good marketer could be a strategist. By analyzing the major tasks of the marketer, we can find out the strategic role of it. Besides the similarity in the definition, we can also find similarity in the major tasks of a marketer.

What's the major tasks of a marketer?

The general conception of a marketer is a professional whose job is to create and sustain the demands for a certain product. In fact, it's just a very limited view of a various of marketing challenges a marketer faces. Actually, these are only two of eight important and distinct marketing tasks. Each task calls for a special type of problem-solving behavior and a specific blend of marketing concepts (Kotler, 1973). In the following diagram, we can see the tasks of a marketer.

(Kotler, 1973)

A managerial approach, which consist of analysis, planning, implementation, organization and control, is required for the all those eight tasks. Furthermore, these tasks all use the two fundamental procedure of marketing strategy development: defining the target markets and formulating a marketing mix out of the elements of product, price, promotion, and place. All of the marketing management has a consistent, unity theory. Meanwhile, these eight tasks are not identical. Each of the tasks focus different variables, different psychological theories, different managerial aptitudes. The eight tasks can give way to specialization. Some marketers may become especially skillful at developmental marketing, others at remarketing, others at maintenance marketing and others at demarcating. Not all marketers are likely to be equally skilled at all tasks, which is one of the major points to be considered in assigning marketers to tasks(Kotler, 1973).

Among all these tasks, if a marketer is good at developmental marketing, quite similar to planning, he is almost a strategist. Therefore, if a marketer can successfully play the role of developmental marketing, he/she could be strategist in the business filed. Therefore, marketer could be strategist.

Despite that marketer could strategist, marketer is not people who just manipulates adverts to increase sales. According to Kotler, Wong&Armstrong (2005), if the marketer is good at identifying customer's needs, developing products that provide superior value, distributing and promoting them effectively, these products will see very easily. However, this does not mean that selling and advertising are unimportant. Rather, it means that they are part of a larger marketing mix—a set of marketing tools that work together to affect the marketplace.

The marketing mix is the set of controllable tactical marketing tools that the firm blends to produce the response it wants in the target market. The marketing mix consists of everything the firm can do to influence the demand for its product. The many possibilities gather into four groups of variable know as the "four Ps":product, price, place and promotion. Advertising is just one step of promotion parts (Kotler, Wong, Sauners, Armstrong, 2005) . What's more, marketer does not manipulate adverts. Actually, they manipulate the prospective of the products. By shaping the perspectives of the product, marketer can provide the planned information conveyed by the product to the customer correctly. Therefore, customers can received those information by watching the adverts(Pickton&Broderick,2005).

Despite the fact that marketer could be strategist, marketing itself own strategic role. In order to illustrate the strategic role of marketing, we start from the fundamental definition of marketing.

What's marketing?

Today, marketing must be understood not in the old sense of making a sale-"telling and selling"- but in new sense of satisfying customer needs. Selling occurs only after a product is produced. By contrast, marketing starts long before a company has a product. Marketing is the homework that managers undertake to assess needs, measure their extent and intensity and determine whether a profitable opportunity exists. Marketing continues throughout the product's life, trying to find new customers and keep current customers by improving product appeal and performance, learning from product sales results and managing repeat performance ( Kotler, 2005). Marketing as a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others (Kotler, 2005).

What's the strategic role of marketing?

When we talk about talk about marketing in the framework of its strategic role, it focuses much more on a business's intention in a market and the means and timing or realizing those intentions. Actually, the strategic role of marketing is quite different from marketing management, which deals with developing, implementing, and directing programs to achieve designated intentions (Jain, 2000).

Therefore, marketing itself contain strategic roles. Actually, the strategic role is part of marketing's function. As I mentioned before, a marketer could be a strategist. Therefore, if our professional can apply the strategic role or marketing in our company, included the internal and external side of our company, we can predict the future market and capture the opportunities. By offering a position for marketer in executive board, we can adjust our strategic planning through by marketer, who can provide professional advice from the marketing's view. More important, marketer may help us find the potential market, which could be a new area for our company to extend.

When we realize that marketer could be strategist, and marketer works on much more than manipulating adverts, we should think about Why we need a marketer in the board?

A good place to start is Stuart Redsun, Sony's svp-corporate marketing. Redsun, who joined the electronics giant in July after stints at Nike, Motorola and Gateway, summed up the marketing position this way: "Everyone else in the company has to think from the company's perspective. How will this work for the company? We have to think from the consumer's perspective." Pizza Hut CMO Bill Ogle echoed that sentiment. "Marketers are the soul of the company. Finance is always running numbers. Other departments [have other internal concerns] that they get all geeked up about. Marketers are the ones with the smiles on their faces. They get to be excited about creating something from nothing"(Hein,2006)

Just like Magrath, Allan J(1990) wrote in "I think I need a marketer": the question of whether it's time to add a marketing specialist to the executive team is one that gets asked at every company sooner or later. Without a good marketer in the executive board, it is much more difficult for the firm to face the challenges of competitors or the problems of unfocused growth, and how it be more marketing driven. Many small and medium-sized companies frequently wake up to a marketing identity crisis when they find themselves squandering marketing opportunities that they normally would have profited from.

If we have a marketer people in the executive board, it's easier for us to answer the following questions: Any firm that finds itself in a situation where its formula for growth is in doubt needs to address some key issues in order to determine how much of its falloff in market vitality is a function of insufficient marketing emphasis. Here are the 10 most important points to consider:

1, Do we really know where the market is headed, by major customer segment, region, and product preference?

2,Do we know our share of market?

3, Do we understand the thrust of our strategies?

4, Are our efforts in the market driven by a formal marketing plan?

5, Does our orientation involve growing volume with little or no regard for margins?

6, Do we miss market opportunities because we lack skills in market research?

7, Are there elements of the marketing mix that we don't really utilize or that we utilize ineffectively?

8, Do we have a stale product line that a trained marketer could help revitalize with new line offerings, line extensions, product customization, or augmentation?

9, Is our customer turnover high?

10, Do we make use of skilled outsiders( ad agencies, promotion houses, direct mail firms, etc.) who can boost our market success? (Magrath, Allan J,1990).

To be honest, I don't think we can answer all those prior questions properly because we do not have a professional marketer in executive broad. However, I think all those questions are closely related to our daily management, operation, even the future of our company. Therefore, we are desperately need a professional marketer in our executive broad.

In the past decades, marketer and marketing have been in an embarrassed situation. According to Marketing Trends by the Chartered Institute of Marketing UK( CIM, 2002), marketing, as a discipline, has become marginalized and less relevant for top management. Marketing as a business function is running the risk of becoming obsolete (Holbrook and Hulber,2002). However, marketer and marketing can reclaim the Grand strategy area by focusing on concrete parameter of daily customer interactions, which is the focal domain of marketing (Rust,R.,Zeithamal,V.& Lemon,K., 2002).

In current society, customers spend a lot of time online, such as Facebook and Twitter. They tend to listen to other customers' feedback of a certain product. When you log in your facebook page, you can see many brands' page. Sometimes, companies offer customers coupons on the condition they click "like" on the company's facebook page. Social media, especially new social media plays important roles on the product image. Meanwhile, it's one popular way to create and maintain interactions with customers. Scholars also wrote papers to discuss the new market trends. LaPointe(2012) points out that marketers understandably are obsessed by Face book these days with the metric in particular: the "value of a Fan". Marketers should execute various kinds of marketing programs to attract more fans.

It's not our job to focus on these social media as our communicating way with our customers. Actually, it's the marketer's work. The marketer on the executive board should work on the new way of interactions with customers. What's more, he/she should organize marketing department to use new social media to promote our company.

In conclusion, a marketer, who is good at planning, could be a strategist. Marketer does not manipulate adverts but the perspective of product. Adverts itself just one part of marketing promotion. Marketing contains specific strategic role. Marketers can apply the strategic role of marketing into our operation from the top management. For the prospect of our company, marketer can improve our strategy from the marketing's view. For the current situation, marketers can maintain effective and efficient daily customer interactions. Combined all those reasons, I strongly recommend you to hire a marketer on our executive board.

References

Beh, H.(1993) "Everyone is a Marketer". Asian Business,29(10):72.

CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing), (2002) Marketing Trends Survey, Summer. Available from: http:// www.cim.co.uk/mediastore/MEC_MTS_Summer2002.pdf

Hein, K. (2006)" Inside the Mind of the Marketer". Brandweek, 47(35): 16-21.

Holbrook, M.B.& Hulber,J.(2002) "Elegy on the Death of Marketing: Never Send to Know Why We Have Come to Bury Marketing But Ask You Can Do for your country Churchyard" European Journal of Marketing, 36(5/6):706-732.

Juin, S. С. (2000). Marketing Planning & Strategy. UK: South-Western College Publishing.

Kotler, P., Wong, V.,Sauners, J. & Armstrong, G. (2005) Principles of Marketing (6th edition). UK: Pearson Education.

Kotler, P. (1973) "The Major Tasks of Marketing Management". Journal of Marketing， 37(4):42-49.

LaPointe, P.(2012)"Measuring Facebook's Impact on Marketing". Journal of Advertising Research,32(3):286-287.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English(4th edition).China: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press

Magrath,A.J.(1990)"I Think I need a Marketer". Sales and Marketing Management,142(12):90-93.

Nohria,N.,Joyce,W.,&Roberson,B."What Really Works". Harvard Business Review,p.42-53.

Pickton,D&Broderick,A. Intergrated Marketing Communications. UK: Prentice Hall.

Pop,A.V.& Vladoi,A.(2006) "The Marketer-A Complex Specialist, a Man of Concept, Decision and Action". Amfiteatru Economic, 11(25):9-20.

Rosenspan, A.(1997) "Thinking like a Direct Marketer". Direct Marketing,60(5):16-18.

Rust,R.,Zeithamal,V.& Lemon,K.(2002)"Driving Customer Equity: How Customer Life Time Value is Reshaping Corporate Strategy". International Journal of Service Industry Management, 13(1):107-111.

Veghe ş, C., Marketer, in Florescu, C., Mâlcomete, P., Pop, N. Al., (coord.), 2003,Marketing. Dictinar explicativ, Editura Economica, Bucuresti, 2003.p. 377-378.

West,D.,Ford,J.&Ibrahim,E. (2010) Strategic Marketing: Creating Competitive Advantage. UK: Oxford University Press.

Yip, G.S.,Alan,M.R,&Alina,K. (2006)"International Success of British Compnanies". Long Range Planning, 39:241-64.

Part II: The Persuasive Paper

Change from Market driven to Market driving

In order to increase our company's sales and be more competitive among the industry, I strongly recommend you to adjust our market orientation strategy. In the past decades, our company has simply relied on market driven behavior. However, we should focus much more on market driving in the future development.

As a marketer, I suggest that we should change from market driven to market driving. In the following parts, I will show you why should we adjust our market orientation. By applying market driving, we have the chance to develop a long term, strong and sustainable competitive position, a market driving approach is often require.

The fact is that a company's success starts with careful market research. By conducting the research, we should investigate the customers' needs, and develop differentiated products or services for a well-defined segment. In the past decades, lots of brilliant companies such as Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever have employed market driven to achieve success. However, many pioneering companies, such as Amazon.com, Apple and IKEA, Starbucks, have created new markets. Their innovation bring them great profits. Their way of creating markets are known as market driving.

Actually, both market driven and market driving are two different approach of market orientation. Therefore, we should look at market orientation at first.

Market Orientation

A significant of research of market orientation has been done since 1990s. Despite the difference of precise definition, market orientation generally means learning about market developments, sharing this information with appropriate personnel, and adapting offerings to a changing market (Jawroski, Kohli&Sahay,2000).

Almost four decades ago, Levitt(1960) expressed a view in line with the early conceptualization of the marketing concept (Drucker 1954; McCarthy 1960; McKitteric 1957). He insisted that firms' goal is to become customer-satisfying organism. This kind of organism should buy customers through doing the things that make people want to do business with them. His idea was later understood as "hearing the voice of the customer", which modified marketing concept to be regarded as the company's willingness to understand, recognize and adjust the marketing mix elements to satisfy customer's need(Hounston, 1986).The view can be characterized as a market driven strategy (Day 1999a, Day 1999b)

Nevertheless, it is just a partial interpretation of Levitt's thought. Actually, Levitt(1960) pointed out that company must rely on their customers' needs and desires and satisfy them. This implies that firms can either follow their customer's current needs or help shape them. Therefore, firms do not need to strictly follow their customers' voice. In other words, they can also lead their needs in a new directions by dramatically increasing the customer value proposition and improving business systems, strategy best described as market driving( Harris & Cai 2002; Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay 2000; Kumar, Scheer, and Kotler 2000).

It is clearly that company has struggled within the framework of customers' current needs. They can only see what's their customers' current needs and produce what's they currently want. Even though, this kind of company can keep considerable profits, they are relatively in the negative position of competing market. Because their ability of innovation has been depressed. In a long term, this kind of company will lose their sustainable competitive advantage. Our company should avoid such vicious circle. Clearly, our company's goal is not only about keeping the limited profits forever but also about expanding our business and increasing the market share.

Now let' see what's market driven and market driving?

Market driven refers to a business orientation that is based on understanding and reacting to the preferences and behaviors of players within a given market structure. Market driving (driving markets) on the other hand, implies influencing the structure of the market and/or the behavior(s) of market players in a direction that enhances the competitive position of the business (Jaworski, Kohli, Sahay, 2000).

What's the difference between them?

Let make a brief comparison between the two approaches.

(Jaworski, Kohli, Sahay, 2000)

From this graph, we can see that market driven focus on current facts, which are characters quite obviously, while market driving focus on latent characters. In other word, the market driven business will not step out of the frame of immediate voice of the customer and attempt to reshape customer preferences or modify the value web to suit its needs. On the contrary, market driving care about the future of our whole strategy.

The basic notion of market driving is to shape customer behavior proactively by identifying and exploiting opportunities beyond existing market preferences and structures (Johnson, Lee, Saini, & Grohmann, 2003). In this regard, the primary goal of market driving organizations aims to influence the evolution of their industry rather than passively respond to the conventional representation of customer needs ( Beverland et al., 2006 and Hills,2000).

Why should we apply market driving?

Successful companies of modern society share one thing in common. Like the famous sport brand, Nike, their success comes from a strong customer focus and commitment of marketing.

They motivate everyone in the organization to deliver high quality and superior value for their customers, leading to high levels of customer satisfaction. They know, if they can satisfy the needs of customer, profits will follow. As Jeff Boz, the founder of Amazon, explains, "If you focus on what customers want and build a relationship, they will allow you to make money." (Kotler, Wong, Sauners, Armstrong, 2005) .

According to Hamel & Prahalad (1994), generally speaking, customers are lacking in foresight. About two decades ago, how many of us wanted mobile phones, fax machines and copiers at home, cars with GPRS? As the late Akio Morita, Sony's visionary leader, once said:" Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kinds of products they want. The public does not know what is possible, but we do. So, instead of doing a lot of market research, we refine our thinking on a product and its use and try to create a market for it by educating and communicating with the public"

In the past decades, Apple has achieved great success. It has already been the world's most valuable company, with its stock market value topped the $500 (Goldman,2012).It's success supports the importance of market driving behaviors. Just like Grossman(2010) said that" one of the things that makes Apple unique is that it never holds focus groups. It doesn't ask people what they want; it tells them what they’re going to want next." By anticipating the latent needs of customers, Apple successfully promoted their iPod, iPad and iMac. They has changed the way of customers' way of looking of computer and other digital products.

We can make a comparison between Apple and Microsoft. Apple company applies market driving behavior, which anticipates trends and take risk to consistently give surprise to customers with delivered value. While Microsoft is a market driven company missing trends and failing to take risk. However, the risk force Microsoft to react after dramatic market shifts which have already occurred. Inevitable, Apple gains great success by iTunes and iPhone. On the contrary, Microsoft's Zune and Windows mobile have almost failed (Stein,2012).

Another successful market driving example comes from IKEA. It is considered as the one of the leading market driving firms. IKEA has been very successful in conveying and convincing its suppliers to follow it values and visions and business ideas.

It's activities in establishing supplier networks in Russia and Poland show how does restructure the market and successfully develop an efficient supplier network as a part of its market driving strategy. IKEA with its global supply based of 1,300 supplier in more than 50 countries represents a critical case of a market driving company with a long history value chain innovations and pro-active supplier relationships(Yin,2003). The relationships with suppliers were built on a very personal level, with IKEA representatives becoming actively involved in different issues of factories' production, supply and sometimes even human resource management. The respondents stressed the importance of building long-term and trustworthy relationships and explained that a major factor was "keeping promises" given by IKEA to suppliers. It also provide financial supports; loans etc, and training needed to comply with IKEA'S code of conduct and standards. By increasing a managerial understanding of supplier's conditions via more thorough market learning, a retailer can make a better use of its own resources invested in the supplier relationships as well as activate and utilize the supplier's resources for the mutual benefit of the parties (Tarnovskaya, Ghauri,.& Elg, 2007).

From IKEA's success, we learn that in global market, companies can be market driving. In this way , we can make the markets adapt to their products and strategies.

Focusing on market driven can temporarily bring benefits to company. However, in a long term, market driven may depress the innovation ability of a company. What's worse, the company could be very passive when face a new market trend.

Kodak is famous for photographic film products. Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film during most of the 20th century. In 1976, it even had a 90% market share of photographic film sales in the United States (Rees,2012). However, Kodak began to struggle in its finance in the late-1990s. It was due to the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in transitioning to digital photography, despite having invented the core technology used in current digital cameras(Hiltzik,2011).In August 2012, Kodak announced it is planning to sell its film, commercial scanners and kiosk divisions (Lowe,2012).

According to Cravens, Piercy, &Prentice(2000), Kodak's biggest challenge is to form an accurate vision about the market. It has to compete in the traditional photography industry while also deciding how to compete with electronic imaging products. Kodak's major profits come from its traditional film business. Meanwhile, it must aggressively compete against Fuji in global markets. Even though the managers realize the escalating threat of electronic imaging, they should determine the nature, scope and speed of the adoption of electronic imaging. These challenges confronting executives include identifying potential threats of competitive product concepts. New products may be offered using alternative technologies (e.g. Internet phone services). Initially, such offerings may be considered unimportant, but these disruptive technologies may pose future threats (Christensen, 1998).

Being market driven, Kodak failed to pay enough attention to predicate the new trends in the market. Finally, it failed in digital era.

We don't want to repeat Kodak's fate. We want to be successful as Apple and IKEA in our industry. So How can our company become market driving?

Generally speaking, it's easier to sustain a market driving company than to transform into one. In other words, it's not easy to become a market driving company. However, if one company is a reactive market driven company, which want to fall further and further behind, as the rest of the world is increasing market driving. The risk of the company is to create a future that it will be chasing.

In order to change from market driven to market driving, we must first decide an commit to making the changes necessary. To some extent, this transformation will require a shift in culture. Market driving companies are led by marketing and the CMO's leadership and backed up by forward-looking predictive data and prescriptive analytics. Being market driving requires the right people, the right leadership, and the will to make the difficult changes. The vision for being a market driving company must come from the top. The CEO must create and communicate a clear picture of what your company looks like a market driving company. It requires a pervasive strategy and continuous mentoring of management and staff throughout the organization(Stein, 2012).

In conclusion, in order to build a sustainable, strong, long-term development of our company, we should change from market driven to market driving. In this way, we can analyze the latent needs of customer. By market driving, we have a chance to anticipate the future customer's needs and future trends. Once we successfully anticipate that, we can get the chance to gain great advantage and be leader in our industry. However, I do not mean to thoroughly throw market driven, which focus on current customer's needs. It can still bring us relatively stable profits. We should apply market driving step by step.