Page 45 - Marketing Management

22 PART 1 UNDERSTANDING MARKETING MANAGEMENT

brand to represent to visitors, the resort’s marketers started inside. They incorporated the new brand
promise in a 40-page brand book that contained the history of the resort and a list of seven attitude
words that characterized how employees should interact with guests. On-mountain messaging
and signs also reminded employees to deliver on the brand promise. All new hires received a brand
presentation from the director of marketing to help them better understand the brand and become
effective advocates. 48

Marketing is no longer the responsibility of a single department—it is a company-wide un-
dertaking that drives the company’s vision, mission, and strategic planning. 49 It succeeds only
when all departments work together to achieve customer goals (see Table 1.1): when engi-
neering designs the right products, finance furnishes the right amount of funding, purchasing
buys the right materials, production makes the right products in the right time horizon, and ac-
counting measures profitability in the right ways. Such interdepartmental harmony can only
truly coalesce, however, when management clearly communicates a vision of how the company’s
marketing orientation and philosophy serve customers. The following example highlights some
of the potential challenge in integrating marketing:
The marketing vice president of a major European airline wants to increase the airline’s
traffic share. His strategy is to build up customer satisfaction by providing better food,
cleaner cabins, better-trained cabin crews, and lower fares, yet he has no authority in
these matters. The catering department chooses food that keeps food costs down; the
maintenance department uses inexpensive cleaning services; the human resources de-
partment hires people without regard to whether they are naturally friendly; the finance
department sets the fares. Because these departments generally take a cost or production
point of view, the vice president of marketing is stymied in his efforts to create an inte-
grated marketing program.
Internal marketing requires vertical alignment with senior management and horizontal
alignment with other departments, so everyone understands, appreciates, and supports the mar-
keting effort.

Performance Marketing
Performance marketing requires understanding the financial and nonfinancial returns to busi-
ness and society from marketing activities and programs. Top marketers are increasingly going
beyond sales revenue to examine the marketing scorecard and interpret what is happening to
market share, customer loss rate, customer satisfaction, product quality, and other measures. They
are also considering the legal, ethical, social, and environmental effects of marketing activities and
programs.

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY Marketers are increasingly asked to justify their
investments in financial and profitability terms, as well as in terms of building the brand and
50
growing the customer base. They’re employing a broader variety of financial measures to assess
the direct and indirect value their marketing efforts create and recognizing that much of their
firms’ market value comes from intangible assets, particularly brands, customer base, employees,
distributor and supplier relations, and intellectual capital. Marketing metrics can help firms
quantify and compare their marketing performance along a broad set of dimensions. Marketing
research and statistical analysis assess the financial efficiency and effectiveness of different
marketing activities. Finally, firms can employ processes and systems to make sure they maximize
the value from analyzing these different metrics.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY MARKETING Because the effects of marketing extend beyond
the company and the customer to society as a whole, marketers must consider the ethical,
environmental, legal, and social context of their role and activities. 51
The organization’s task is thus to determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets and
satisfy them more effectively and efficiently than competitors while preserving or enhancing con-
sumers’ and society’s long-term well-being. LG Electronics, Toshiba, and NEC Display Solutions