Marketing Mix: Strategic Planning and Competitive Positioning

This literature review delves into the core concepts of the marketing mix, emphasizing the paramount importance of customer relationships in achieving sustainable competitive advantages. It examines the critical role of marketing strategy, its effective implementation, and adaptation to the ever-changing market environment. The review highlights the necessity for businesses to proactively identify and respond to evolving customer needs and preferences, stressing the significance of market-led strategic planning and dynamic capabilities in navigating competitive markets. Furthermore, the review underscores the importance of identifying current and future competitive positions and creating sustainable advantages through quality products, services, and superior customer value. The conclusion emphasizes that organizational success hinges on building strong customer relationships, leveraging marketing research, and continuously innovating to maintain a leading position in the industry.

Running Head: Marketing Mix
Marketing Mix
Literature Review
System04104
8/27/2018

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1. Introduction
Customers are the soul of every business organisation. Therefore, maintaining a good
relationship with customer is the key requirement of every organisation, which is also helpful
in gaining competitive advantages. This report includes the basics of marketing concept with
the major focus on customer relationship, marketing strategy and its implementation,
changing marketing environments, and how well a business organisation create a sustainable
competitive advantage over its competitors by adopting new changes and customer
satisfaction.
2. The Importance of Customer Relationship
Customers are the heartbeat of every business organisation in the modern competitive
environment. Therefore, it is essential for every business organisation to establish a healthy
and long-lasting relationship with customer. Through a good and bad time for the business
organisation, maintaining a healthy relationship with the customer will always help the
business organisation in its sustainable performance. Developing a healthy relationship with
the customer always requires too many efforts and time. Hence, it is necessary to put the right
strategies and deliver quality product and services to the customer that will satisfy them and
retain them with the business organisation. Building a healthy relationship gives a
competitive advantage over the competitors and differentiates from others. Therefore, in
recent time every small and large organisation focuses on building a good relationship with
the customer for maintaining sustainable performance in the market (Buttle, 2009).
3. Management strategy implementation and Techniques
To develop and implement the strategy is a crucial and demanding process in every
business organisation. Marketing strategy is a tool that helps the organisation to survive in the
market for a long time and compete with its competitors. Implementing market strategy
requires a deep research and knowledge of the existing market, analysis of customer demands
and their future needs. In modern days, with rapid change in technology, the taste and
preference of the customer also change along with this technological advancement.
Therefore, it is necessary to analyse and predict the demand and requirements of the
customer. A proper market strategy requires well extensive research of the market and
strategies of the competitor, which helps in formulating and implementing counter-strategy to

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gain a competitive advantage over competitors. A well market strategy must be aligned with
the business objective and goals. Even a strong marketing strategy will be flop and
ineffective if it does not consider the organisational mission, vision, and goals (Chandler,
1990).
4. Markey led strategic marketing planning
A marketing strategy in which a business organisation seeks to determine what are the
needs and requirements of the customer and which type of product might they want and then
the company decides to produce those products that can satisfy the customer needs and
demands. This marketing strategy can be used contemporarily with an asset-led marketing
strategy. The role of marketing research is increased in the market led strategic marketing
because it is essential to make a proper plan and structure to implement market-led strategies.
A small mistake in the prediction of customer demand and their requirements lead to the huge
loss for the company and it might be a cause of abandonment and bankruptcy of the business
organisational services because of heavy loss. Every customer has their own demand and
requirements, thus before implementing the market-lead strategy, it is necessary to decide
which target markets the organisation wants to serve (Sakas, Vlachos, & Nasiopoulos, 2014).
5. The changing market environment
Marketing environment is so dynamic and unpredictable. Every factor (both internal
and external factors) of the marketing environment has a great effect on the business
operations of an organisation. Therefore, the importance of marketing plan and strategies are
so crucial to face these changes in future. A business must aware of these changes and
prepare a counter plan against these factors. Generally, the external factors are beyond
organisational control and organisation can only take precautionary measures against the
external factors such as political factors, economic factors, technological factors, or social
factors. While internal factors (men, money, material, machine etc.) are somehow
controllable and organisation can take several measures against the change and take
corrective action after the change in the internal environment of the organisation. A proper
planning and understanding of environmental factor help to gain a competitive advantage
over competitors and boost the organisational performance by predicting the change in
advance (Amine, 1996).

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6. Dynamic Competitive Markets
The rapid change in technology and business environment forces every organisation
to adopt the latest change and update their technology and business process that fulfil the
customer requirements and demands. Uncertain and unpredictable market environment
requires the organisation analyse the market demand and bring adopt changes on regular
basis. The latest proposal of creating dynamic capabilities to fight with such changes is more
popular in recent days. The active marketing competencies focus is an extension of the
resource-based theory. The rapid and dynamic changes in the business environment need
proper knowledge of the market, well analysis of customer demand and needs, and strength
of facing future challenges of the external environment. A good market research helps the
business organisation to face the challenges created by the dynamic competitive market
(Kachouie, Mavondo, & Sands, 2018).
7. Identifying current & future competitive positions
Identifying the competitive position in the market helps the organisation to identify
where it stands in the market among the competitors. How well a business organisation
differentiates its product and services to its customer in comparison with others, determines
the competition level in the market. Thus, it is essential to analyse and evaluate the
competitive position in the market. It should also be considered that before implementing the
marketing strategies company must aware about the quality of products they serve to the
target customer because it must meet the requirements of the customer. If the company meet
the requirement of the customer, it definitely leads to a better competitive position in the
market in future. Therefore, it is necessary for every business organisation to identify the
current and future competitive position in the market and change accordingly in their strategy
and planning to improve their position in future (Murray, Syed, & Roberts, 2009).
8. Creating sustainable competitive advantage
Every organisation wants to stand out from the crowd in the rush of a large number of
competitors. The major challenge is to battle with another "me too" business organisation.
Retail online shopping is a great example of this. Here, sustainable competitive advantage
plays a key role in the success of the business organisation. Competitive sustainability is a
force that enables a business organisation to have a concentrated focus on large volume sales,
better profit margins that differentiate from the competitors, and higher employee and

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customer retention than its competitors. Therefore, it is necessary for every business
organisation to create sustainable competitive advantages by offering quality product and
service, adequate profit margins and creating more and more value for the customer on
regular basis. The care of customer needs and demands always help in creating a sustainable
competitive advantage (Tollin, & Jones, 2009).
9. Conclusion
In the end, it can be concluded that the success of an organisation depends on the
quality services and product it offers to its customer and building relationship by offering
more values for them. Marketing research and analysis of customer demand always help in
gaining the competitive advantage over the competitors. A proper marketing plan and
strategy helps the organisation to establish itself as leader of the industry. Therefore, to
persist and survive in the highly competitive market where the environmental factors are
shifting suddenly in favourable or unfavourable mode, it is necessary for every organisation
to adopt and renew their technology and resources on regular basis, which is also helpful in
creating a sustainable competitive advantage over competitors.

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References
Amine, L. S. (1996). The need for moral champions in global marketing. European Journal
of Marketing, 30(5), 81-94.
Buttle, F. (2009). Customer relationship management. 2nded. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 4-11.
Chandler, Jr. A.D. (1990) Strategy and Structure. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.
Kachouie, R., Mavondo, F., & Sands, S. (2018). Dynamic marketing capabilities view on
creating market change. European Journal of Marketing, 52(5/6), 1007-1036.
Murray, P. A., Syed, J., & Roberts, Z. (2009). Structures of learning for dynamic
markets. Management Decision, 47(2), 271-288.
Sakas, D., Vlachos, D., & Nasiopoulos, D. (2014). Modelling strategic management for the
development of competitive advantage, based on technology. Journal of Systems and
Information Technology, 16(3), 187-209.
Tollin, K. & Jones, R. (2009). Marketing logics for competitive advantage? European
Journal of Marketing, 43(3/4), 523-550.