Role of Marketing in Business | Marketing Essentials

This essay discusses the role of marketing in business, the structure of the marketing department of Unilever, the marketing process, and its influence on other departments. It also covers the role of the Chief Marketing Officer and Marketing Manager. The essay cites various references to support the discussion.

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Marketing essentials
Essay
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Role of marketing as a function of business
In the present world, for any organization marketing plays a very important role which cannot be
ignored. It is the power of this marketing which has brought smaller and big companies together
on the same platform of competition by offering them same market (Gronroos, 2011). It is
because of this marketing that present has recognized the value of even small organization and is
offer all the necessary help which support the sustainability of their development.
It is this marketing which establishes an association between the organization and the customers
by offering the same platform. Marketing helps in providing confidence to the organization to try
a new product or introduce a new product in the existing market or create a new market for their
product (Sharm et al., 2010). Also, marketing helps in creating a unique image of the
organization in the minds of the potential customers, it is not wrong to say that in present time
organization are able to achieve their name because of this marketing for both profit-making and
non-profit making organizations. For the profit-making organization, marketing help in
increasing the revenue and profitability along with helping in expanding customer base which is
one of the important aspects to generate sales (Sarkees, Hulland, and Prescott, 2010). It also
helps in cracking deals with the corporate customer and partners where more than one party is
involved.
Structure of the marketing department of
CMO
President
Marketing
manager
Vice
president
Analytic
manager
Public
relation
manager

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The marketing department structure of the Unilever is formulated in such a pattern that at the top
of the marketing pyramid, the position belongs to CMO which is known as Chief marketing
office. It is the responsibility of CMO to formulate the major marketing strategy of the Unilever
along with the necessary processes in the marketing department. It is the duty of the CMO to
report the possible outcome of all the marketing strategy to the board of directors. Then comes
the president of marketing department whose role is correct to implement the formulate strategy
in the Unilever and also helps the CMO in some business decisions (Rugman and Verbeke,
2008). Then, comes the vice president of marketing department whose responsibility is to work
with department managers to ensure the right implementation of the marketing strategy which
has been decided by top executives. Then comes all the three managers of the marketing
department who are marketing manager whose responsibility is to put light on the work of the
vice president and help them in implementing marketing strategy on groundwork in the form of
creating messages, selecting the modes of medium like websites, social media, and television
ads. Then analytics manager whose role is to conduct all the researches related to the formulate
marketing strategy for their product, market in which they are going to launch their product and
finally comes public relation managers whose role is to maintain the good reputation and
goodwill of the Unilever in the eyes of the potential business partners which includes customers,
suppliers, investors, and employees.
Role of Chief marketing officer
Currently Keith weed is serving as CMO for Unilever and according to him as a CMO of this
organization it is the responsibility is that this organization must work on long-term vision in
command to Unilever organizations structure, image in the market both in domestic as well as
international market, position of organization in terms of financial capital and its geographical
presence. It is the duty of the CMO to develop a group strategy which will be helpful for both
organizations as well as for their employees (Unilever, 2018). It is also the duty of the CMO to
analysis the amount of risk with the strategy with respect to geographical presence, customer
groups, supplier groups because as they all are related with the organization so this strategy will
also impact in the same proportion as it will on the Unilever organization. Hence, in case of any
change, it becomes CMO duty to involve these entire stakeholders in the new vision of the
Unilever. As the present business world is of volatile nature, so it becomes very important for the

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organization to keep on adopting necessary skills and technique which are helpful in meeting the
volatile demands of the present as well as future customers.
Role of marketing manager
In Unilever organization, the role of the marketing manager is to focus on the practical aspects of
formulated marketing strategy by higher executives of the organization. It becomes the duty of
the marketing manager to analyze the strength of the department and tries to find out related skill
to implement this strategy successfully on the ground (Gök and Hacioglu, 2010). For success of
this strategy the marketing manager also takes help of analytic manager to find out the success
ration on the real market in which Unilever is going to launch their product and share the
necessary outcome with feedback of both marketing manager as well analytic manager with the
vice president of the marketing department which further convey this message to higher
authorities. It is also roles of marketing manager to manage the employees of the department by
further assigning them duties and fix their target in order to bring out necessary competency in
them. It is also the duty of the marketing manager to conduct the necessary performance
evaluation of the employees of the department.
Overview of the marketing process and their importance in terms of marketing
environment to marketing functions
Every organization in this business world follows necessary steps which are essential in terms of
satisfying their customer and potential customer, such process is known as the marketing
process. Here, Unilever follows four-step marketing process:
Situational analysis:
In this stage Unilever tries to research for the current market chances which they can convert in
to opportunities by recognizing the needs of the customer, analyze environment of the market in
terms of external as well as internal and then try to relate their capability with the need of the
opportunity (Elbe, Hallén and Axelsson, 2009). They also involve the trend of past, present and
future that can impact the organization.

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Marketing strategy:
Once the opportunity has become clear, then the organization goes for formulating the strategy
on the basis of conducted market research which helps the organization to process necessary
marketing segmentation and select their target (Murray, Gao and Kotabe, 2011).
Marketing Mix
Then Unilever tries to place their strategy in the market in terms of marketing mix according to
the targeted audience with the mode of the medium which they will use for the positioning their
strategy.
Implementation and regulation
According to Keith weed, the present business world is based on a dynamic platform which is
changing every second. So in order to compete with this uncertainty business environment,
Unilever is continuously monitoring their implemented marketing strategy in order to make them
ready for small changes which can be done by only just reshaping the message (Griffith et al.,
2014).
For any organization whether small and big, marketing environment plays a very important role
in deciding the exact time and strategy for the launch of any product or service. In any case it has
been seen that some organizations had overlooked the marketing environment and as a result of
this the organization had to face heavy losses because marketing function is directly
proportioned to the marketing environment (Morgan, Vorhies and Mason, 2009). In any business
decision Unilever always explores the marketing environment for functions because they believe
that any change or strategy which organization is going to implement comprises of huge
investment, time and effort and in this process if the organization will not consider marketing
environment then all the invested capital, time and effort will go totally waste.

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Marketing influence and interfaces with other departments
It is known to every organization that marketing is not an isolated function; it is motivators
which influence the whole organization to focus on the find out chances which can be converted
into opportunities. By elaborating the benefits and risk of the particular opportunity, marketing
act as a person who triggers a light of hope to achieve organization long-term vision. But at the
same time marketing cannot function alone, it always required the help of all other departments
in making the strategy successful like R&D, production/operation/logistics, human resource, IT
department support and many others (Daugherty et al., 2009). In the case of Unilever after
formulating marketing strategy the organization involves the other entire department in order to
ensure that strategy will go on the right track.
Research and development
It is that department of the Unilever that actually shapes the need and expectation of the
customer into reality and display the real face of the strategy in front of the board of directors
(Ernst, Hoyer and Rubsaamen, 2010). Here the R &D department connects the marketing
strategy with the physical and functional appearances of the product in order to generate a
satisfied feedback from the potential customer.
Operation/Production/Logistic
As operation function include various activities like inventory, wrapping and distribution which
connects the marketing activity of increasing sale, selling products and product services which is
being supported by this operation department. It also connects the logistics and distribution
channels of the product with the marketing activities.

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References
Daugherty, P.J., Chen, H., Mattioda, D.D. and Grawe, S.J. (2009) Marketing/logistics
relationships: influence on capabilities and performance. Journal of business logistics, 30(1),
pp.1-18.
Elbe, J., Hallén, L. and Axelsson, B. (2009) The destination‐management organisation and the
integrative destination‐marketing process. International journal of tourism research, 11(3),
pp.283-296.
Ernst, H., Hoyer, W.D. and Rübsaamen, C. (2010) Sales, marketing, and research-and-
development cooperation across new product development stages: implications for
success. Journal of Marketing, 74(5), pp.80-92.
Gök, O. and Hacioglu, G. (2010) The organizational roles of marketing and marketing
managers. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 28(3), pp.291-309.
Griffith, D., S. Lee, H., Seob Yeo, C. and Calantone, R. (2014) Marketing process adaptation:
Antecedent factors and new product performance implications in export markets. International
Marketing Review, 31(3), pp.308-334.
Gronroos, C. (2011) A service perspective on business relationships: The value creation,
interaction and marketing interface. Industrial marketing management, 40(2), pp.240-247.
Morgan, N.A., Vorhies, D.W. and Mason, C.H. (2009) Market orientation, marketing
capabilities, and firm performance. Strategic management journal, 30(8), pp.909-920.
Murray, J.Y., Gao, G.Y. and Kotabe, M. (2011) Market orientation and performance of export
ventures: the process through marketing capabilities and competitive advantages. Journal of the
Academy of Marketing Science, 39(2), pp.252-269.
Rugman, A.M. and Verbeke, A. (2008) A regional solution to the strategy and structure of
multinationals. European Management Journal, 26(5), pp.305-313.

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Sarkees, M., Hulland, J. and Prescott, J. (2010) Ambidextrous organizations and firm
performance: the role of marketing function implementation. Journal of Strategic
Marketing, 18(2), pp.165-184.
Sharma, A., Iyer, G.R., Mehrotra, A. and Krishnan, R. (2010) Sustainability and business-to-
business marketing: A framework and implications. Industrial Marketing Management, 39(2),
pp.330-341.
Unilever. (2018) chief marketing and communication officer [online]. Available from:
https://www.unilever.com/about/who-we-are/our-leadership/keith-weed.html [Accessed
25/11/18].

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