Role of Strategic Marketing in an Organization

Marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. …

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_marketing

STRATEGIC    MARKETING  CONCEPT    IS    A   PHILOSOPHY, FOCUS,  ORIENTATION

WHICH  EMPHAISES   THE  PROPER  IDNETIFICATION  OF  MARKETING  OPPORTUNITIES

AS  THE  BASIS  FOR   MARKETING  PLANNING  AND  CORPORATE  GROWTH.

(http://en.allexperts.com/q/Marketing-1090/Strategic-marketing.htm)

Scope of strategic marketing

Marketing is a philosophy that leads to the process by which organizations,

groups and individuals obtain what they need and want by identifying value,

providing it, communicating it and delivering it to others. The core concepts

of marketing are customers’ needs, wants and values; products, exchange,

communications and relationships. Marketing is strategically concerned with

the direction and scope of the long-term activities performed by the organization

to obtain a competitive advantage. The organization applies its resources

within a changing environment to satisfy customer needs while meeting

stakeholder expectations.

Implied in this view of strategic marketing is the requirement to develop

a strategy to cope with competitors, identify market opportunities, develop

and commercialize new products and services, allocate resources among

marketing activities and design an appropriate organizational structure to

ensure the performance desired is achieved.

There is no unique strategy that succeeds for all organizations in all

situations. In thinking strategically about marketing many factors must be

considered:

-the extent of product diversity and geographic coverage in the

organization;

-the number of market segments served,

-marketing channelsused,

-the role of branding,

-the level of marketing effort,

-and the role of quality.

It is also necessary to consider the organization’s approach to new

product development, in particular, its position as a technology leader or

follower, the extent of innovation, the organization’s cost position and

pricing policy, and its relationship to customers, competitors, suppliers

and partners.

The challenge of strategic marketing is, therefore, to manage marketing

complexity, customer and stakeholder expectations and to reconcile the

influences of a changing environment in the context of a set of resource capabilities.

It is also necessary to create strategic opportunities and to manage

the concomitant changes required within the organization. In this world of

marketing, organizations seek to maximize returns to shareholders by creating

a competitive advantage in identifying, providing, communicating and

delivering value to customers, broadly defined, and in the process developing

long-term mutually satisfying relationships with those customers.

A strategic marketing approach attempts to determine ways of offering superior

value to the more profitable segments without damaging individual customer

relationships. A strategic  marketing approach reflects an integrated approach based on

research and feedback. Customer needs are first evaluated through market

research, an integrated marketing effort is developed to satisfy customers so

that the organization achieves its goals, especially those affecting shareholders.

This is a customer orientation and contrasts very bluntly with a narrow

competitor orientation based on sales in which the organization by capitalizing

on the weaknesses of vulnerable competitors or by removing its own

competitive weaknesses attempts to obtain high sales and long-run profits

Strategic marketing concept

Strategic  Marketing has been defined as the management function responsible for

identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.

Strategic Marketing is, therefore, both a philosophy and a set of techniques which

address such matters as research, product design and development, pricing,

packaging, sales and sales promotion, advertising, public relations, distribution

and after-sales service. These activities define the broad scope of

marketing and their balanced integration within a marketing plan is known

as the marketing mix. A modification of a definition of  strategic marketing

suggests that marketing is the management process that seeks to

maximize returns to shareholders by creating a competitive advantage in

providing, communicating and delivering value to customers thereby developing

a long-term relationship with them. This definition clearly defines the

objectives of marketing and how its performance should be evaluated. The

specific contribution of marketing in the organization lies in the formulation

of strategies to choose the right customer, build relationships of trust with

them and create a competitive advantage .

A marketing strategy consists of an internally integrated but externally focused set of

choices about how the organization addresses its customers in the context of

a competitive environment. A strategy has five elements: it deals with where

the organization plans to be active; how it will get there; how it will succeed

in the marketplace; what the speed and sequence of moves will be; and how

the organization will obtain profits .

Processes Involved in Making Strategic Marketing Plan. (L.O-1.2)

Links to Corporate Strategy (L.O-1.3)

Task – 2:

Value of Models used in Strategic Marketing Planning (L.O-2.1)

Links between Strategic Positioning of Disneyland resort and Marketing Tactics (L.O-2.2)

Merits of Relationship Marketing (L.O-2.3)