Operations Management: Marketing Coordination and Quality

This essay examines the vital role of coordination between marketing and operations management functions within an organization, emphasizing how a lack of synergy can lead to quality conflicts. It discusses the responsibilities of the marketing department in developing marketing plans and the role of operations management in designing and implementing systems to meet organizational goals. The essay highlights the interdependence of these functions, using Adobe as an example of a company that improved performance by addressing coordination issues. It identifies common conflicts, such as cost/value trade-offs and pricing disagreements, and explores how these conflicts affect customer expectations and satisfaction. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for strategies to improve coordination, enabling organizations to optimize the balance between seller costs and buyer value, adapt to changing economic conditions, and better address customer needs. Desklib provides access to similar essays and study resources for students.

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Operations management
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An organisation has various business functions and it is important to have the
coordination between various business functions of an organisation to ensure success. It is due
to lack of coordination between two or more business function that most of the quality gaps
occur. The quality in many organisations is an impact of coordination between the marketing
function and the operations management functions. In this context, the essay aims to explain the
role of these functions in an organisation. The essay discusses the quality conflicts that arise as a
result of the lack of coordination between the two business functions. It will be explained in
terms of actual quality, customers’ expectation, customer satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction. The
essay highlights the importance of coordination between the two business functions.
The marketing department of any organisation is associated with researching and
developing the marketing plan and maintain the marketing function. The marketing plan details
the operations, threats and current situation with respect to external environment, customers and
competition. The marketing manger needs to ensure that the marketing plans are in conjunction
with the setting of the financial budgets. The marketing managers have several objectives such as
determining the market actions, sales budget, identifying the resource requirements for new as
well as existing products and also include forecasts of demand (Wright 2011).
The operation management deals with the activities of reviewing, designing, and using
the operation systems to meet the targets set by an organisation (Heizer 2016). The marketing
plan of the company cannot be successful without the role of operations management. Marketing
functions are dependent on the operations management function for the manufacture, delivery of
produces and services and the physical development. There are many pitfalls in the international
marketing. Therefore, it is imperative that the operations management functions ate carried
smoothly. The operations management must have sufficient capacity to deliver and required

2OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
information. The offers promoted by the marketing needs to be performed by the operations
management. Else it will not be delivered on time and to specification (Baker 2014). Therefore,
it can be concluded that there is a need of effective coordination between the marketing functions
and the operation management functions.
Operations management function and marketing functions are important as it has great
impact on the quality of the product and services. It is with the help of coordination between the
Marketing and Operations departments, that the organisation recognises the market needs and if
it can deliver its expectations. It is highly indispensible to make both departments function
seamlessly. Lack of coordination between both lead to quality conflict in the organisation.
Differences in the objectives and expertise make both the department stand at odds with one
another (Yu et al. 2014). There is a great deal of interdependence which indicates the importance
of coordination between the two business functions. Adobe has experienced the management
revamps. Its performance was improved after it overcame its coordination between the marketing
and operations management functions. It addressed the performance issues by developing strict
statistics and checking programs. It has now redefined the management functions (Rock et al,
2014).
The way in which both the functions are organised and evaluated determines the success
of the organisation. Operations are focused on cost reduction while marketing is rewarded for
sales growth. Although each objective is vital it is difficult to evaluate each of them separately
(Dixon et al. 2014). There is a constant push and pull in attaining the mutually exclusive goals.
There are different natures of quality conflicts due to lack of coordination between both
functions including cost/value tradeoffs, and pricing (Khanna 2015).

3OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
When the marketing always prefers to have items available, the operations prefer to
minimise the inventory cost. While the marketing overestimate other stock the operations
underestimate the demand. Talking about buying books from Amazon, it holds in its distribution
centres the most popular titles. Only these books can be shipped in 24 hours and those stocked by
wholesalers can be shipped within 48 hours. Some of the wholesalers can take even more days,
therefore, it promises to deliver book within five days. It may be possible for marketing to
popularise the brand by promising to deliver shortly but operations cannot meet such
propositions at least not cost. It will create customer dissatisfaction. Therefore, differentiated
service policies are used by such organisation to compromise between operation and marketing
(Pacheco et al. 2016).
Every customer expects that the quality of the product or service is made correctly. It
must be customised as per their needs and delivered on time. The product must be offered at
competitive price. It is the objective of the operation management functions that can be stated as
flexibility, quality, speed, and price of product. The importance of the operations management is
to serve the needs of the customers and achieve these functions. The major issue with the
customers is the delay in delivery even when the product is meeting specification with effort
(Wright 2011). Further conflicts arise when the marketing prefers the “variety and
customisability” and on contrary the operations oftentimes go for standardisation. The conflict in
such case arises due to customer satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction. Clients expect discounts and
the same is fulfilled by marketing for changing the buying behaviour. Further, conflicts may
arise due to interest in increasing sales. In this situation the, market may accept any order
irrespective of the operational capacity. Failure to fulfil the expectations may lead to customer
dissatisfaction (McDonald and Wilson 2016).

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It is evident from the discussion that there is a need of coordination between the
marketing and operation management functions. In addition to differentiated service policies,
there are many other strategies that can be applied to manage both the functions smoothly.
Coordination is important else it will be difficult to optimise the trade-off between the seller cost
and buyer value. It will be difficult to evolve policies to anticipate changes and accommodate
same. Without coordination it is difficult to build on detailed economic modelling and build the
range of options and complexity created by and for the customers. With the change in economics
there is a change in customer’s value perception. With the help of coordination between both
functions it is possible to create an industry-changing model and better address the customer
value (Slack 2015).
In conclusion, both the marketing and operation management function work on different
ideas. The conflicts between the both can be resolved by examining value as perceived by the
customer. Without the quality products the marketing cannot reap benefits and the operations
are meant to develop quality products. Attractive advertisements may increase the customer’s
expectation of the quality. Operations must collaborate with marketing to meet the propositions
made by them and attain client satisfaction.

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References
Baker, M.J., 2014. Marketing strategy and management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Dixon, M., V. Karniouchina, E., van der Rhee, B., Verma, R. and Victorino, L., 2014. The role
of coordinated marketing-operations strategy in services: implications for managerial decisions
and execution. Journal of Service Management, 25(2), pp.275-294.
Heizer, J., 2016. Operations Management, 11/e. Pearson Education India.
Khanna, R.B., 2015. Production and operations management. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..
McDonald, M. and Wilson, H., 2016. Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit from
them. John Wiley & Sons.
Pacheco, P., Mejía, E., Cano, W. and de Jong, W., 2016. Smallholder forestry in the Western
Amazon: Outcomes from forest reforms and emerging policy perspectives. Forests, 7(9), p.193.
Rock, D., Davis, J. and Jones, B., 2014. Kill your performance ratings. Strategy+ Business.
Slack, N., 2015. Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Wright, J.N., 2011. The Role of Marketing and the Role of Operations Management in
International Organizations. In Herausforderungen der internationalen marktorientierten
Unternehmensführung (pp. 385-403). Gabler.
Yu, W., Ramanathan, R. and Nath, P., 2014. The impacts of marketing and operations
capabilities on financial performance in the UK retail sector: A resource-based
perspective. Industrial Marketing Management, 43(1), pp.25-31.

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