Marketing as a Corporate Function

Marketing as a Corporate function

Marketing - The Basics

By Karl Moore & Niketh Pareek

MARKETING AS A CORPORATE FUNCTION

Marketing: can be defined as the social process involving individuals and organizations with an objective of obtaining what they need and want by creating and exchanging values with each other.

Marketing represents one of the core functions of a firm and plays an important role in the success of any organization. Effective marketing is part of the strategic plan of almost all companies. A strategic plan is simply a process concerned with the development and maintenance of an action plan in order to coordinate the all individual business unit activities aimed at ensuring the achievement of long-term goals of the company. In order to develop and implement successful strategies, it is necessary to analyze the current environment of the company to aid strategy formulation. For this purpose, Porter's 5 forces model is very useful in analyzing the external environment of the company. These 5 forces are

* Barriers to entry: The difficulty associated with entry into the market.

* Power of Suppliers: The ability of suppliers to influence the business.

* Power of Buyer: The ability of buyers to influence the business.

* Threat of substitutes: alternatives for customer to move to.

* Inherent level of Rivalry in Industry: The level of completion in the industry. This is determined by the results of the above mentioned factors.

The analysis of external environment of the company assists in development and implementing effective marketing strategies. The incorporation of the industry information increases the chances of success of the strategy as opposed to the marketing strategy developed without giving due consideration to the company's environment.

Business Unit Corporate Strategy: Strategic business units are semi-autonomous units of a large sized organization that develops their own separate strategies based on their resources and capabilities with the aim of fulfilling the overall corporate objectives. At the time of strategy formulation, it is of critical important to consider the core competences possessed by the firm that represents a skill or a resource allowing the company to develop and sustain competitive advantage. At the time of marketing, it is very important to focus on the core competencies possessed by the company such as its Brand, differential feature of its product as its leads to separate identification of the company's product as compared to those offered