Marketing means business

-->

Marketing world over is a concept and or philosophy which most firms fail to understand, learn, implement & take advantage of. This results in marketing being confused with Selling &Advertising. Both selling & advertising are a tip of marketing iceberg. According to Albert W Emery Marketing is merely a civilized form of a warfare in which most of the battles are won with words, ideas & disciplined thinking. Chartered institute of marketing, defined, marketing as the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating & satisfying customer requirements profitably.

The long run survival of all organizations are dependent on the customers & or clients, this is the reason why most organizations exists. So this calls for market orientation to be adopted if an organization is serious about its going concern. This means that organizations must channel resources to client satisfaction, value creation to clients, organizational learning &market orientation. An Organization can tailor make its products according to customer specification& improved customer service. Market orientation holds that success will come to those organizations that best determine the, perceptions, needs & wants of target markets and satisfy them through the design, communication, pricing, and delivery of appropriate and competitively viable offerings.

A marketing oriented firm (also called the marketing concept, or consumer focus, or customer focus) is one that allows the wants and needs of customers and potential customers to drive all the firm's strategic decisions. The firm's corporate culture is systematically committed to creating customer value. The rationale is that the more a company understands and meets the real needs of its consumers, the more likely it is to have happy customers who come back for more, and tell their friends. This process can entail the fostering of long term relationships with customers. In order to determine customer wants, the company usually needs to conduct some form of marketing research. Overally, the marketer expects that becoming marketing oriented, if done correctly, will provide the company with a sustainable competitive advantage.

The concept of marketing orientation was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s at Harvard University and at a handful of forward thinking companies. It replaced the previous sales orientation that was prevalent between the mid 1950s and the early 1970s, and the production orientation that predominated prior to the mid 1950s. Since the concept was first introduced in the late 1960s, it has been modified, repackaged, and renamed as "customer focus", "the marketing philosophy", "market driven", "customer intimacy", "consumer focus", "customer driven", and "the marketing concept"

Customer focus can be seen as a process that involves three steps. First customer wants are researched, then the information is disseminated throughout the firm and products are developed, then finally customer satisfaction is monitored and adjustments made if necessary.

The process can be applied at the individual level (called personalized marketing), the group level (called market segmentation), and occassionally at the mass level (mass marketing). The larger the group size, the more difficult the concept is to apply.

Techniques that firms use to understand the customer include:

• Quantitative marketing research - such as; surveys and questionnaires
• Qualitative marketing research - such as; focus groups and advisory panels
• Market research and industry research - such as; Porter 5 forces analysis
• Face-to-face meetings with customers
• Face-to-face meetings with frontline staff - sales reps, clerks, and receptionists
• Customer complaints department
• Customer hotlines - Web and telephone
• Visits to customers' facilities
• Frequent user programs and databases
• User groups - Beta testing
• Conferences

Richard Heiens of the University of South Carolina Aiken published a detailed overview of the market orientation concept in the Academy of Marketing Science Review (2000). In this article, the author examines the choices between a competitor and customer focus.

A marketing oriented firm will typically show the following characteristics:

• Extensive use of various marketing research techniques
• Broad product lines
• Emphasis on a product's benefits to customers rather than on product attributes
• Use of product innovation techniques, such as; brainstorming, concept testing, and force field analysis.
• The offering of ancillary services like credit availability, delivery, installation, and warranty
• Customer satisfaction and complaint monitoring procedures, including; exit interviews, customer complaints database, and Web and telephone information hotlines.
• Organizational structure in which the marketing manager reports directly to the CEO.

A market orientation is an organization culture in which all employees are committed to the continuous creation of superior value for customers. Being the organization's culture, a market orientation is necessarily cross-functional and thus radically different from a marketing (single-function) orientation. A market orientation consists of three components ­ customer orientation, competitor orientation, and interfunctional coordination. It is measured as a continuous variable.

The greater a business's market orientation, the greater its ROI, sales growth, new-product success, and customer retention. The market orientation performance relationship is observed in dynamic as well as static analyses. There is no evidence that either market condition or industry type moderates the market orientation performance relationship.

A market orientation can best be created by results-driven processes rather than by programmatic change efforts. Top management plays a vital role in creating and maintaining a market orientation. However, a market orientation also requires that the organization's market units, not the top management, have the ongoing authority for managing customer satisfaction.

A business's only sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to learn faster than its competitors. A market orientation implies organizational learning. Thus, for maximum effectiveness in a dynamic world an organization must develop a culture that is a market-oriented learning organization

Culture in organizations usually referred to as "Corporate Culture." Is defined in the dictionary as "the act of developing intellectual and moral faculties, especially through education." This writing will use a slightly different definition of culture: "the moral, social, and behavioral norms of an organization based on the beliefs, attitudes, and priorities of its members." Thus organizations have to incorporate marketing as one of their corporate culture.
Every organization has its own unique culture or value set. Most organizations don't consciously try to create a certain culture. The culture of the organization is typically created unconsciously, based on the values of the top management or the founders of an organization.

Hewlett-Packard is a company that has, for a long time, been conscious of its culture (The HP Way) and has worked hard to maintain it over the years. Hewlett-Packard's corporate culture is based on 1) respect for others, 2) a sense of community, and 3) plain hard work (Fortune Magazine, May 15, 1995). It has been developed and maintained through extensive training of managers and employees. HP's growth and success over the years has been due in large part to its culture.

The culture of an organization is an amalgamation of the values and beliefs of the people in an organization. It can be felt in the implicit rules and expectations of behaviour in an organisation where, even though the rules are not formally written down employees know what is expected of them. It is usually set by management whose decisions on policy usually set up the culture of the organisation. The organisational culture usually has values and beliefs that support the organisational goals.

Marketing as a culture means that organizations must adopt marketing as a way of life/living just like a religion. Marketing in an organization must be everyone’s concern it must not only be restricted to the marketing department only. This means that from the cleaner through to the Chief executive officer everyone must have proper orientation of marketing. Marketing is a life blood of an organisation; just imagine a scenario where blood fails to reach all parts of the body of an individual, what does it mean? Paralysis! The same concept applies to organizations that do not adopt & use marketing as their corporate culture. This orientation entails that clients should receive good value for their money; this is done by a number of activities among them, the ways phones are answered, the turn around time, communication both internally & externally, handling & resolving of client queries.

Marketing is supposed to be an experience that clients/customer receives. In a banking set up for example, There should be marketing personnel manning the banking halls ready & prepared to serve clients. Rather in Zimbabwean Financial services sector we have very few banks who are giving real value to their clients through the service they give. Though many purports to be giving real value to their clients. Instead clients are regarded as not important; Banks are characterized by very long queues either at the Atms or in the banking halls. There seems to have shortage of staff within most banks in Zimbabwe. Good customer service is as important a concept as corporate branding. This is one of the cheapest ways a bank can create a strong brand. This does not only apply to the banking industry alone but to all sectors of the economy.

A happy & satisfied customer can always say good about the organization, this works out like magic because marketing testimonials are more powerful than advertising where an organization will be blowing its own trumpet. In this scenario a client will be telling a story of how good the service is. The opposite is true for unsatisfied clients who will go about telling how bad his/her experience is with an organization. Most organizations tend to rely more on Advertising instead of marketing. This concept means that the organization sells what it makes instead of making what it sells, for example a company creates a product & sells it to the market instead of consulting to the market first then make the product according to the market’s specification. There might not be any need to advertise if an organization is market oriented.

Most organizations carry out corporate induction on a new employee, this is also the time to in still marketing orientation to the new employee so that it becomes part of the culture of the employee. Then marketing departments then, makes constant follow ups in branches to see & observe the service levels in branches. Personnel in this department should not just sit in their offices and expect miracles to happen.

Most organisation haven’t yet appreciated the real value Marketing can bring to the long run survival of the organisation, top management should take broad steps to acculturate all staff to a market oriented culture. As has been explained earlier on culture comes from top management going down to the lowest member of staff. This is what differentiates successful organizations & those that fail,