The Role of Marketing Manager in a Changing Marketing Environment (with diagram)

The Role of Marketing Manager in a Changing Marketing Environment (with diagram)!

Coping with exchange processes calls for a considerable amount of work and skill. Marketing manage­ment takes place when at least one party to a potential exchange gives thought to objectives and means of achieving responses from other parties.

The American Marketing Association defines marketing management as the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods, services, and ideas to create exchanges with target groups that satisfy customer and organizational objectives.

Figure 1.2 represents the main elements in a modem marketing system that influences the task and responsibilities of a marketing manager.

The popular image of a marketing manager is that of someone whose task is primarily to stimulate demand. However, this is too limited a view considering the changing marketing environment, as shown in Figure 1.2. The marketing manager has to understand both the micro- and macro-environments surrounding the company.

A marketing manager focuses on the following tasks for capturing the market place:

1. Developing the marketing strategies and plans:

A marketing manager has to identify consumer needs and wants, deliver them by adding value to the products and communicate superior value. Strategic planning is a managerial process of developing and maintaining balance between orga­nizations’ objectives, skills, resources, and its changing marketing opportunities. Strategic plan­ning takes place at four levels: corporate, division, business unit and product.

2. Marketing information system:

Marketing managers need a marketing information system (MIS) for market and product analysis, planning and its implementation, and for controlling responsibilities. MIS provides needed information and distributes it in a timely manner.

3. Monitoring marketing environment:

Managers must identify trends and convert them into opportunities. With the changing global scenario, marketers must monitor six major environmen­tal forces. They include demographic, economic, socio-cultural, natural, technological, political and legal forces.

4. Marketing research:

In addition to monitoring marketing environment, managers also need company-specific knowledge. Specific knowledge can be related to their product, company’s mar­ket, target consumer group and response to their communication efforts. Thus, modem marketing managers either hire professionals or undertake marketing research.

5. Creating customer value, satisfaction and loyalty:

Customers are value maximizers. They buy from the firms that they feel offer highest customer delivered value. Thus, utmost importance has to be given to quality management programmes. This will build customer loyalty.

Customer rela­tionship management is a process of managing detailed information about individual customers and using them to build customer loyalty. Digital technology has made it easy to conduct one-to-one marketing in place of mass marketing.

6. Market segmentation:

Modem markets are not homogeneous. A company cannot connect with all the customers in a large and diverse market. Consumers can be grouped according to one or more characteristics. A marketing manager identifies the market that can be served efficiently. Such decisions require a deep understanding of consumer behaviour.

7. Brand equity:

It is defined as added value given to products and services. It needs to be measured and monitored in ordered to be managed well. Thus, a marketing manager not only has the task of building brands but also of tracking brand equity. In addition, the manager must identify whether marketing programmes are having the desired effect on maximizing brand values.

8. Dealing with competition:

Competition has intensified and taken new dimensions. New com­petition is coming from global marketers, online marketers, private label marketers and brand extension of mega brands. Thus, a company’s marketing manager has to identify the competitor’s strategies, objectives, strengths, and weaknesses. But too much emphasis should not be given to competition alone. The modem managers must maintain a good balance of consumer and com­petitor monitoring.

9. Setting product strategy:

The modem marketing managers begin marketing planning with for­mulating an offer to meet the target consumers’ need or wants. Customers will judge the offering by three elements: product features and quality, services mix and quality, and price.

All these elements must be mixed into a competitively attractive offering. Marketing managers try to sell more than one product. Thus, they have to decide which product lines to grow, maintain, eliminate and modify. The marketing manager not only sets pricing policy but also formulates company’s response to competitive price change.

10. Effective management of channels:

Marketing channel decisions are critical for the mod­em marketing managers. This is because they help in reaching the vast and widely suffered market. Effective channel management calls for selecting intermediaries, and training and motivating them.

11. Logistic management:

Through this function, managers decide the best way to store and move products to market destinations. The logistic management addresses the need to co­ordinate activities of the suppliers, purchasing agents, manufacturers, channel members and customers.

12. Designing and managing integrated marketing communication:

Modem marketing calls for more than a good price, attractive product and timely availability of products for consumers. Companies must invest in effective communications. The communication mix consists of adver­tising, sales promotion, PR management, direct marketing and personal selling. Managers have to examine the advantages and costs of each of them. They have to regularly measure the effective­ness of the communication tools.