Marketing Essentials: Roles, Interrelationships and Strategic Planning

This report provides a comprehensive overview of marketing essentials, focusing on the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function within an organization, using Unilever as a case study. It explores the importance of market research, finance, and product development within the marketing department. The report delves into the interrelationships between marketing and other functional units such as human resources, finance, and production, emphasizing the need for effective communication and coordination to achieve business objectives. Furthermore, the report discusses strategic marketing plans, including SWOT and PESTLE analysis, and Porter's model to evaluate competitive threats. The conclusion summarizes the key takeaways and compares marketing strategies of Zara and M&S, highlighting the importance of a productive marketing plan for success in the retail industry. The report includes references to various marketing management publications.

MARKETING
ESSENTIALS

TABLE OF CONTENT
 INTRODUCTION
 ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF MARKETING FUNCTIONS
 INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARKETING AND OTHER FUNCTIONAL
UNITS
 CONCLUSION
 REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION
 Marketing is the key function of any organization and it helps to increase the
opportunity of business to increase sales and profit margins effectively.
 Marketing helps to increase the communication of the organization with its
stakeholders and increase efficiency of products and services which helps improve
brand value and profitability in market to compete in market.
 Marketing helps business to understand consumer behaviours to attain better marketing
plan. Businesses use marketing strategy to compete in market and achieve competitive
advantage effectively.
 This presentation discusses practical tools and techniques used to identify internal and
external business environment factors which influence efficiency of marketing plan.
This helps to formulate effective strategic plan with available resources.

KEY ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE
MARKETING FUNCTION
 Marketing is the process of evaluating, analyzing and satisfying the needs
and wants of customers with resources available in business to generate
effective profit margins and improve the efficiency of customer relations.
 Unilever is consumer good business organization which operates globally
and also has needs to understand key roles and responsibilities of their
marketing function to reduce cost of operation and improve profit
margins effectively.
 Unilever uses marketing to analyze which product and services can
satisfy the needs and wants of customers effectively and improve
customer base of the company effectively. Consumer behavior analysis of
customer provides better opportunities Unilever in product designing and
production with effective innovations.

CONTINUE…
Market Research
 Marketing department uses this process for analysing the
opportunities and threats of business organization in the market
according the current resources and products. Market research help
Unilever to identify current and future needs and wants of
customers to formulate effective plan and increase sales of the
company. Marketing department of Unilever is using SWOT and
Pestle analysis for identifying internal and external factors.
Marketing department is also using Porter's model to evaluate the
competitive threat in market to interrelate all the opportunities and
gain better market share by making effective marketing plan.

CONTINUE…
Finance
 Marketing department has the responsibility to ensure the cost of
marketing activities and budget formulation. Unilever is using
marketing function to understand the cost and price strategy of
products and services to match needs and wants of customers to
increase their sales effectively. The role of marketing department of
Unilever is it provide effective understanding about financial
position of company by evaluating all the funding aspects and
calculating the expected sales according to resources to achieve
objectives of the company effectively.

CONTINUE…
Product Development
 Marketing department of Unilever is also responsible effectively
understand all the market research data and improve quality of
products and services. This is helping company to increase
customer base. Unilever is using Product diversification and
differentiation strategies which is helping them to retain
customers to the company and improving customer service
engagement effectively. It is very essential for the business to
understand the needs and wants of the customers so that they can
also improve the loyalty of and customers base Unilever
effectively and increase profitability.

INTERRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MARKETING AND
OTHER FUNCTIONAL UNITS
 Marketing functions is very essential in the factors which help to understand the quality of products and services.
There ere effective interrelationships between all the departments of business with marketing to improve its
productivity and gain effective market share. Unilever has to analyse their interrelationship between all the
departments to increase improve communication between all the employees to achieve objectives effectively.
 As marketing broader than selling and in consumer products industry it is very essential to increase customer trends.
Unilever has effective distribution channel to provide their products directly and indirectly to customers depending on
the market diversification.
Human Resource Department
 This department has the role to manage all the human resource of organization according to their skills and knowledge
to increase efficiency of businesses effectively. Human resource department ensure the performance of all the
employees and motivates them using different techniques and policies.

CONTINUE…
Finance Department
 Finance department is the fundamental unit of any business organization as it helps
to regulate and manage funds which is very important for business to operate in market
effectively. Unilever has effective finance department which analyses the potential threat and
opportunities by financial planning of the company effectively.
 This department helps to provide salary to all the employees and improve the efficiency of the
company effectively. Unilever is very effective in investing in new products and markets due
to potential of department to understand financial flow. Finance department is also responsible
to formulate true and fair financial reports which helps to satisfy stakeholder of Unilever
effectively.
 Marketing is also interrelated with finance as all the activities conducted by marketing
department needs financial resources. Marketing has to provide all the information to finance
department and receive funds and conduct marketing functions with low cost and high
profitability.

CONTINUE…
Production Department
 Production department are the group of people who are responsible to ensure the
manufacturing process of products to meet market demand and increase productivity of
business organization effectively. This department also helps business to improve the
quality of product and services by adopting techniques which helps to set standards of
products and consistency in products to attar more customers in the company.
 Production department also ensure low cost raw material from several distributors to
reduce cost of final products. Unilever has its own production units which help the
company to formulate its prices according to market demand and improve the product
specification according to needs and wants to customers to increase satisfaction.
 Marketing department is related with production as it provider information in designing
and improving products according to current needs and wants of market customers.

CONCLUSION
 It can be concluded that there are various responsibilities and key roles of marketing function has
discussed above, so these all roles and responsibilities are too helpful to a company. Unilever can gain
huge competitive advantage through marketing function. These roles are completely interrelating with
other functions of company. Currently company has the largest market share in consumer goods
industry because of its effective marketing techniques.
 There are Zara and M&S has compared on the basis of marketing mix. Both companies currently
following almost same marketing tactics. However, Zara is currently focuses on providing quality
products on low rates. On the other side, M&S is currently focuses on produce different and exclusive
range of products and services.
 A productive marketing plan has also mentioned above for Zara. If company employ this marketing plan
in their marketing campaigns, then it'll able to earn huge profit in retail industry.

REFERENCES
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Accounting and Finance Review. 2(1).
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Its culture; internal macro-and external micro-environmental issues. In Essentials of Marketing
Management (pp. 1-32). Routledge.
 Natakusumah, Y.R.M., Nursiana, A. and Suryono, C., 2017. The Impact of Marketing
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