A Detailed Exploration of Marketing Management Concepts and Practices

This report provides a comprehensive overview of marketing management, defining it as an organizational discipline that focuses on applying marketing methods and techniques within business organizations to manage marketing activities and resources effectively. The report delves into the definition of marketing management, its core concepts, and the distinction between marketing and management. It explores the elements of marketing management, including the production concept, product concept, selling concept, marketing concept, and societal marketing concept. The report highlights the seven basic principles of marketing, including product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence. Furthermore, it discusses the functions and importance of marketing management, such as setting marketing objectives, planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, staffing, controlling, and evaluation. Finally, the report examines the impact of marketing management on an organization's success in today's competitive business environment, emphasizing its role in customer satisfaction, market share growth, and overall organizational value. The report stresses the importance of understanding the market and customer behavior for effective marketing management practices.

BLOG: MARKETING MANAGEMENT

WHAT IS MARKETING MANAGEMENT?
18th July, 2019
Marketing management refers to an organisational discipline that focuses on applying
marketing orientation, methods and techniques practically inside business organisations and also
focuses on the way a firm manages its marketing activities and resources. Marketing
management also called the science and art of selecting target markets for products and services
and gathering, retaining, and growing consumer market through creating, communicating and
delivering superior customer value. Marketing is known as a process used for determining what
kinds of products and services might become able to grab customers’ attention and to gain their
interests. Furthermore, it is the strategies a business organisation needs to follow in practicing
sales, business development, and communication related activities to run its regular operations.
According to the definition provided by the American Association of Marketing, marketing
management is a process of planning and execution of the conception, distribution, and
promotion of thoughts, ideas related to goods and services for creating, exchanging and
satisfying individual as well as organisational objectives.
The concept of marketing management involves marketing and management. Management is a
set of processes related to planning, organizing, directing, motivating, coordinating, and
controlling a business organisation’s various activities. On the other side, marketing stands as the
procedure of satisfying customers’ wants and needs. Management of different types of marketing
activities of an organisation called Marketing Management. In support of the statement made by
Philip Kotler, marketing management includes planning, analysing, implementing and
controlling programs that are designed for bringing the desired exchanges with the target
audiences to gain personal as well as mutual gain. Marketing management heavily relies on the
adoption and coordination of product, price, place, and promotion for achieving the required
response from the target audience. It focuses on the physical and psychological factors of
Marketing. The physical marketing factors focus upon fulfilment of the demand and needs to buy
better products by accessing better distribution channel and other functions. On the other side,
psychological factors use to focus on discovering consumers’ wants and needs along with the
changing patterns of their buying behaviour, preferences, habits and more.

Elements of Marketing Management
Marketing management practices are very important for every business as it helps businesses to
understand and gauge the exact need and want of their target customers. It helps companies to
improve products and services for satisfying customers' needs optimally. Expand the technique
to reach potential customers. While practicing marketing management activities, a company
needs to focus on five different concepts such as production concept, product concept selling
concept, marketing concept, and societal marketing concept. The production concept is
oriented with the market domination of a business. This concept has emerged with the concept of
capitalism during the mid 1950's. During the 1950s as per production concept, companies were
primarily concerned with manufacturing, production, and issues related to production and
manufacturing efficiency. Companies that follow this concept believe that primarily customers
want products which are accessible and affordable. Product concept works on the basis of an
assumption made that customers use to prefer products with greater price and quality and the
availability of such products does not influence their buying decision.
Selling concept uses to focus on making actual sales of products and services. It focuses on
every possible way of selling a product, without considering the product quality or customers’
need for the product. The marketing concept is the concept of promoting a product into a
market and towards its prospective customers. A company which focuses on this concept uses to
place its consumers at its center and gears its all activities towards those consumers. A company
always aims to measure and understand its target customers’ wants and needs and in order to
understand it the company sets and executes marketing strategies according to the market
research starting from the product conception to sales. Relative to the other marketing concept,
the concept of societal marketing is new. It highlights the wants and needs of a company’s
target market along with the act of delivering better customer value compared to the competitors.
Moreover, it emphasizes the significance of customer and social well-being by consumer welfare
and societal welfare.

Figure 1: Concepts of Marketing Management
In today’s rapidly growing and changing market competition, customers’ choice, companies use
to consider all these concepts to set effective marketing strategies. The more the marketing
strategies are effective the great a company becomes able to achieve its marketing objectives
within less time and cost. All the five above mentioned market concepts are required to be
followed properly by every business organisation in order to perform its marketing management
practices in the most effective way. Besides these marketing management concepts, there are
seven basic principles that are required to be followed by every business organisation while
conducting marketing management practices. These seven marketing principles are product (or
service), price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence. All these elements of
marketing are tremendously significant for a company to plan, develop and market a product
successfully.
Functions and Importance of Marketing Management
Marketing management process is solely concerned with chalking out a definite program, after
analysing and forecasting the prevailing market carefully. It helps an organisation to execute its
plans in order to achieve its objectives. The concept of marketing management becomes very
important for business organisation intended to meet rapidly increasing market competition as
well as the requirement for more improved distribution methods for reducing cost and increasing
profits. In today's highly competitive business environment, marketing management becomes
one of the most vital functions in a business enterprise. It assists a business organisation to apply

marketing techniques inside and outside of the organisation, and to manage resources of the
organisation that are held for conducting marketing activities. The reasons for which marketing
management become very important include its ability to satisfy customers' needs, increase a
company's market share, production of new and existing products, launch new and improved
products, and reduce the cost of distribution and sales. It also important because it provides
employment opportunities and hence fulfils social obligations, and raises a country's per capita
income. By creating and increasing demand for products and services it accelerates market
growth, competition, and new product development.
In terms of creating a highly effective strategy of marketing management, every business
organisation is required to have a clear and strong understanding of its own business operations,
market from where it operates, and the customers for whom it operates. In order to assist a
company to understand the market and the bahaviour of customers located in the market,
marketing management takes a vital role by performing different types of functions. The key
functions of marketing management are discussed below:
 Setting marketing objectives: Every business organisation has its own objectives and
goals. Marketing objectives of an organisation include the targets it wishes to reach or
achieve through marketing. These marketing objectives need to be in coherence with the
organisation’s overall objectives which can be short-term or long-term depending upon
the marketing type. By managing marketing related activities, a company becomes able
to achieve its marketing objectives easily.
 Planning: The root of every business is planning. It requires that a company's marketing
managers need to aware of every factor influences the external and internal business
environment that might impact the company and its business operations. The managers
must be able to forecast their company's future condition by considering the
environmental conditions. Once a company sets its marketing objectives, it starts to
formulate a roadmap to follow for achieving these objectives. The company plans the
way and formulates strategies, devices procedures and policies to achieve the goals it has
set previously.
 Organising: Organising is a process of implementing the plan. Organising includes
identification and grouping those activities which could contribute to achieving the

marketing goals of an organisation. In the field of marketing management, organising is a
way by following which a company’s management functions are organised to make each
function contributes its best in the achievement of the marketing objectives. Organising
includes every obligations, responsibilities, and supremacy of the people working as a
member of a company’s marketing team.
 Directing: For the managers of a company, it is their obligation to supervise whether the
employees are working effectively and efficiently in order to support the organisation to
meet its goals. The managers of a company provide directions to the employees on how
to work and what to achieve. Hence, the direction of a company’s management personnel
motivates employees to give their best for the organisation they work. Proper direction of
managers or management personnel not only motivates employees but also inspires them,
guides them and build a good relationship with them by exercising effective leadership
practices within an organisation. It ensures smooth and conflict free working environment
that ultimately assists a company to meet its marketing objectives and goals.
 Coordinating: It refers to the harmonious adjustments of marketing activities by an
organisation. It involves the task of creating coordination among different activities of a
business organisation such as product planning, development of a product, forecasting of
sales, transportation, warehousing and more.
 Staffing: It is the procedure of hiring required number of skilled personnel and
employees for several positions in an organisation. In order to manage the existing
market, skilled employees are selected through an interview and after then they placed in
different positions that suit them the best. The human resource manager along with
the marketing manager selects personnel and employees and then trained them to make
them fully capable of providing their best for the organisation. By appropriate staffing,
managers ensure the organisation about gaining the maximum benefit from the
employees recruited by them. Employment of the right and highly efficient employees is
a crucial task in ensuring the success of the market plan.
 Controlling: The procedure of comparing the planned marketing activities with results
and after that, rectifying errors, if any, is called controlling. Hence, in order to practice
controlling activities, an organisation must set some standards and its actual marketing
performance needs to be compared with those standards for finding out flaws or defects.

Then, corrective actions need to be taken for enhancing marketing activities. Controlling
ensures a company that its performance does not deviate from its standards. While
performing controlling activities, the performance standards established by the marketing
managers of a company are often represented in terms of products (in units) produced,
number of damaged or defective products, customer service level, costs, revenue, profits
and more.
 Evaluation: The functions of marketing management also involve analysis and
evaluation of the productivity of a company’s marketing campaigns, programs as well as
evaluation of its employees’ performance. This particular function of marketing
management helps an organisation to detect the loopholes of its marketing activities and
to reset or reshape its marketing activities to achieve its marketing objectives
successfully.
Figure 2: Functions of Marketing Management
Impact of Marketing Management on an Organisation’s Success
MarketingManagementSettingmarketingobjectivesPlanningOrganisingDirectingCoordinatingStaffingControllingEvaluation

In today’s highly competitive business world, marketing acts as the interface between an
organisation and its external environment i.e. its surroundings, more specifically with customers.
It becomes one of the most crucial and significant activities of modern corporate companies and
their management. The rapidly increasing competitive pressure, ever-changing markets, shorter
product life-cycles in the globalised world becoming increasingly important to consider because
these allow a company to create real-time corporate value. In accordance with the growing
demand for conducting marketing practices, the management of marketing activities also
increased. Marketing management practices of a company help it to focus on its customers’
demands in a consistent manner and make it more capable of capitalising its potential customers.
It assists a company to make need-oriented focus to transform potential customers into actual
customers, to create brand image and value and to build a profound insight into the customers
and the industry from where it operates.
Marketing management practices helps a company to reduce barriers to its growth. In terms of
promoting and making a company and its products familiar to the target audience, marketing
plays the most important role. The process of managing the here major marketing activities like
segmenting, targeting and positioning ensures a product’s success and failure Appropriate
strategies of marketing management practices helps a company to identify the most profitable
customer segment i.e. the target market, and to develop marketing events and campaigns for
optimising the consumers belongs to the target market. The more a company successfully selects
a target market, the greater it will be able to make its product successful by injecting the ability
of generating revenue into such product.
Furthermore, marketing is increasingly becoming a question of relationship management,
customer value, communication as well as how to create, develop, strengthen, and leverage
customers value. Marketing stands as a highly significant reason for an organisation's success.
Identifying the trends or changes and knowing the best way to respond to such changes or trends
helps a company to keep its customers satisfied and happy. The more marketing become
important for business organisation, the great its management becomes also important. Managing
all the marketing related activities effectively ensures a company’s success and growth. This is
because it helps the company to promote its products in a competitive market, to gain
competitive advantages by modifying its existing products or launching new ones, and to build a

long-lasting healthy relationship with customers, the only elements that derive money for the
company. Thus, marketing management practices ensures a company's both short-term and long-
term success.