Why is marketing important in organizational success? This research report answers the question by analyzing the importance of marketing in an organisation. It looks at the outcomes for large and small business owners, consumers, and society as a whole.
Introduction
Marketing has many definitions. Definitions that focus on customer needs and that are customer-oriented can be used to explain the success of an organization much more clearly. Marketing can be defined as the process through which potential clients and customers who are willing and able to buy are enticed to buy your products or services.
According to American Marketing Association, marketing is defined as “the process, the activity, and set of institutions for communicating, creating, exchanging and delivering offerings that have value for clients, customers, partners, and society at large.” (Armstrong & Kotler, 2011).
According to the Chartered Institute of Marketing, marketing is defined as “The process of management used to identify, anticipate and satisfy customer requirements with the aim of making profits.” (Kotler & Keller, 2012). This article will discuss the importance of marketing in organizational success based on the foregoing definitions.
Importance of Marketing in an Organisation
An organization can only succeed when proper marketing strategies are put in place. Marketing determines the nature of an organization’s production and distribution channels for its products. Marketing deals with boosting sales, advertisements, public relations, and promotions.
The most fundamental importance of marketing to an organization is that it helps build a reputation. Marketers find it easier to subdue the entire market by creating a brand name through which customers can recognize their organization.
This technique which is also called brand recall, helps consumers easily distinguish the organization’s products from those of competitors. The aim of this technique is to increase brand loyalty by creating a brand name that is easily identifiable through logos, images, or captions that are advertised through media (Armstrong & Kotler, 2011).
Through marketing, an organization is able to create awareness for its products. The primary goal of marketing is to get the product or service recognized by prospective customers. It would be unrealistic to assume that customers can find out about an organization all by themselves, especially if it has no reputation in the industry.
Thus, it would be proper for an upcoming organization to make your company known through consistent promotions and advertisements. This is an expensive exercise that eventually pays off when prospective buyers are duly informed of the benefits of utilizing a company’s products or services.
Marketing helps an organization boost its product sales and increases the growth of revenues. Any form of marketing, be it online or offline, radio, newspaper, TV, and so on, is sure to generate sales once the public learns about an organization’s products.
An organization seeking to increase its production capacity and drive sales must consider allocating enough funds to the marketing department, which in turn should develop strategic and effective marketing plans to achieve this objective.
The roles just discussed are based on the definition of marketing as a process that is customer oriented. Since customers have their preferences, product quality would not be enough to ensure sustained sales. Thus, an efficient marketing strategy would be that which targets the customer’s needs.
An organization that disregards consumer preferences will eventually lose out to its competitors. Getting back a customer who has defected to a competitor is extremely difficult and not financially feasible in most cases (Kotler & Keller, 2012).
Marketing helps create healthy competition by regulating service and product prices. Through marketing, consumers and competing companies get to learn about the pricing of various services and products. A business, through marketing, is able to compete for customers by providing fair pricing before competitors do, unlike in a monopoly where prohibitive prices are set.
Competition helps less-known companies succeed through appropriate marketing strategies. In other words, marketing helps an organization to stand out so that consumers will prefer its products rather than those being offered by the competitor.
Marketing helps organizations in strategic decision-making. Through marketing, everyone in the organization learns about the nature of the customers and the market they are dealing with.
This is often made possible through the feedback given by marketers to the organization. The feedback given enables the organization to develop a marketing philosophy to aid in the development of the strategic planning process.
The organization uses information and analysis obtained through marketing as input for strategic marketing plans and decision-making (Perreault, Cannon & McCarthy, 2011). Marketers make this possible by identifying consumer trends as well as examining their potential impact. In addition, they assess the current situation to gain a better understanding of the market.
The foregoing shows that marketing does help an organization make broad strategic decisions through strategic marketing. On the other hand, marketing helps an organization make specific strategic decisions for day-to-day activities and for individual products.
This normally takes place at the operating level, where the four Ps of the marketing mix are taken into consideration by the marketing managers. These include price, product, promotion, and place.
Marketing is a field that is evolving fast, and its importance in the growth and sustainability of businesses cannot be overemphasized. To some extent, marketing has altered the nature of the chain of distribution. This is the case with Nike, which many perceive to be a manufacturer of products such as sports gear.
The truth is that Nike manufactures very little of these products, if any. The actual manufacturing is done by the supplier, while Nike exclusively deals with the marketing of these products. The implication of this trend is that through such companies, strategic alliances among the marketing firm, distributors, and suppliers can be formed through a common business network (Perreault et al., 2011).
Thus, an organization that does not want to spend too much putting up a marketing department can readily obtain marketing services for its products through well-known marketing companies like Nike or Adidas by joining a business network. This approach can be proven beneficial for an upcoming company or a company that has just launched a new product.
Conclusion
Marketing as a separate entity within an organization does contribute to its success in terms of performance for a new product, financial performance, and performance of customer relationship as opposed to the general market approach like in the Nike case just discussed.
An organization’s success is pegged on its ability to attract and retain customers. This can be achieved by establishing an effective internal marketing department or joining a business network. Marketing being a process, should focus on creating a brand name through which the organization can identify itself to the public, and this can be achieved best through identifying and satisfying consumer needs.
References
Armstrong, G. & Kotler, P. (2011). Marketing: An introduction (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kotler, P. & Keller, K. L. (2012). Marketing management (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Perreault, W. D. Jr., Cannon, J. P., & McCarthy, E. J. (2011). Basic marketing: A Marketing strategy planning approach (18th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.