Corporate Strategy for Marketing
At the corporate level, managers must coordinate the activities of multiple business units and, in the case of conglomerates, even separate legal business entities. Decisions about the organization's scope and resource deployments across its divisions or businesses are the primary focus of corporate strategy. The essential questions at this level include:
What business(es) are we in?
What business(es) should we be in?
What portion of our total resources should we devote to each of these businesses to achieve the organization's over all goals and objectives?
Thus, new CEO Gerstner and other top-level managers at IBM decided to pursue future growth primarily through the development of Web-based services and software rather than computer hardware. They shifted substantial corporate resources-including R&D expenditures, marketing and advertising budgets, and vast numbers of salespeople-into the corporation's service and software businesses to support the new strategic direction. Attempts to develop and maintain distinctive competencies at the corporate level focus on generating superior human, financial, and technological resources; designing effective organization structures and processes; and seeking synergy among the firm's various businesses. Synergy can provide a major competitive advantage for firms where related businesses share R&D investments, product or production technologies, distribution channels, a common salesforce, and/or promotional themes-as in the case of IBM.3 Business-Level Strategy
How a business unit competes within its industry is the critical focus of business-level strategy. A major issue in a business strategy is that of sustainable competitive advantage. What distinctive competencies can give the business unit a competitive advantage? And which of those competencies best match the needs and wants of the customers in the business's target segments? For example, a business with low-cost sources of supply and efficient, modem plants might adopt a low-cost competitive strategy. One with a strong marketing department and a competent sales force may compete by offering superior customer service.
Another important issue a business-level strategy must address is appropriate scope: how many and which market segments to compete in, and the overall breadth of product offerings and marketing programs to appeal to these segments. Finally, synergy should be sought across product-markets and across functional departments within the business.
Marketing Strategy
The primary focus of marketing strategy is to effectively allocate and coordinate marketing resources and activities to accomplish the firm's objectives within a specific productmarket. Therefore, the critical issue concerning the scope of a marketing strategy is specifying the target market(s) for a particular product or product line. Next, firms seek competitive advantage and synergy through a well-integrated program of marketing mix elements (primarily the 4 Ps of product, price, place, promotion) tailored to the needs and wants of potential customers in that target market.
WHAT Is MARKETING'S RULE IN FORMULATIG AND IMPLEMENTING STRATEGIES?
The essence of strategic planning at all levels is identifying threats to avoid and opportunities to pursue. The primary strategic responsibility of any manager is to look outward continuously to keep the firm or business in step with changes in the environment. Because they occupy positions at the boundary between the firm and its customers, distributors, and competitors, marketing managers are usually most familiar with conditions and trends in the market environment. Consequently, they not only are responsible for developing strategic plans for their own product-market entries, but also are often primary participants and contributors to the planning process at the business and corporate levels as well.
The wide-ranging influence of marketing managers on higher-level strategic decisions is clearly shown in a recent survey of managers in 280 U.S. and 234 German business units of firms in the electrical equipment, mechanical machinery, and consumer package goods industries The study examined perceptions of marketing managers' influence relative to managers from sales, R&D, operations, and finance on a variety of strategic and tactical decisions within their businesses. Exhibit 1.4 summarizes the results.The study found that, on average, marketing and sales executives exerted significantly more influence than managers from other functions on strategic decisions concerning traditional marketing activities, such as advertising messages, pricing, distribution, and customer.
Meet Amarendra Bhushan, A leading Strategic Human Resource Consultent, MBA from American university of athens, greece, also editing The European journal of NRI finance magazine TRIBUNE). As one of the leading article writer, and corporate hotel professional. Advisor to various organizations and hotels. He is an elected member of south Indian hotel and restaurant federation. Now staying at city of Athens Greece. Amarendra bhushan Dhiraj Athens, Greece PH-0030-6947667507 abdhiraj@mail.gr
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