Analyzing the Importance of Marketing & Operation Management Role

This essay discusses the critical importance of coordination between marketing and operations management functions for the success and growth of a business organization. It highlights how marketing creates demand and operations management fulfills it, emphasizing that conflicts between these departments can lead to inefficiencies and losses. The essay explains that effective marketing plans require seamless execution by operations management, including physical development, manufacturing, and timely delivery. Coordination ensures that customer demands are met, quality is maintained, and competitive advantage is achieved. The paper concludes that firms with well-coordinated marketing and operations departments are better positioned to compete in the market by providing the necessary information and delivering the required goods and services.

Running Head: Importance of Marketing and Operation Management Function
ROLE OF MARKETING &
OPERATION MANAGEMENT

Importance of Marketing and Operation Management Function 1
Coordination between Marketing and Operation Management Function
For any business organisation to survive and grow, effective functioning of all the
organisational divisions and departments is indispensable. These departments performs
different functions to achieve their individual goals and thereby contributes to the
achievement of overall goals and objectives of the organisation. However, the goals and
objectives of the organisation are only achieved when there is proper coordination between
all those business functional divisions. If the individual divisions focuses on achieving their
respective goals and targets at the cost of hampering the functioning and overall progress of
the business or by ignoring the total organisational interests then this would lead to failure in
achieving the organisational success, as a whole. There are various key business functions
that are entrusted to the individual departments, so that each and every business function is
carried effectively and efficiently to contribute to the organisational efficiencies. Functions of
marketing and operation management are among those business functions that plays
important role in survival and growth of the business.
Marketing serves as the face of any business organisation and helps in promoting the
business of that organisation. It supports the business to reach to the potential customers by
creating a positive brand image of company’s products and services. Therefore, the marketing
function is important for the growth of business. It gathers and analyses the information from
the external environment to help the business managers in understanding the demands of its
existing as well as potential customers. The goods that are marketed by the marketing
department are produced and developed by the team of operations management. The main
function of operations management is to manage the activities that are associated with the
production of goods and services (Slack, 2015). It performs several activities to convert raw
material and labour into the good and services that are dealt by an organisation. It includes
several functions like supply chain management, inventory management etc. (Kozlenkova,

Importance of Marketing and Operation Management Function 2
2015). In nutshell, marketing creates demands for the company’s products and the function of
operation management fulfils the customer demand created by the marketing function
(Heizer, J., 2016).
When there are conflicts in between the marketing department and operations
management department, the demand and supply function of the goods and services produced
and provided by the manufacturing or service firms mismatches due to lack of coordination
between those functions. The internal conflicts between the organisational departments leads
to business inefficiencies causing its heavy losses and failures in operating smoothly. If
marketing function is not coordinated with the operation management function, it may lead to
improper flow of necessary information concerning the external demand of the market
causing the overproduction or underproduction of goods without emphasising on the actual
demand of those goods in the market (Nath, Nachiappan &Ramanathan, 2010). On the other
hand, if operation management team is not functioning as per the marketing plans, it may
result in non-fulfilment of customer’s demands on time or as per their requirements. If
appropriate market plan is not prepared then it may also create a gap between the desired
quality and actual quality of the produced goods and services leading to unsatisfied
customers. Further, the production department may slower down the production process so as
to develop quality products in order to reduce the customer complaints but the marketing
department wants to have the production at the maximum capacity, then it gets difficult for
the managers to determine whether the quality control measures will be worth the cost of
reduced production. Additionally, if the marketing department strives to have more products
to be marketed and operation management department screams for more time, then the
personnel may find it difficult to focus on their core jobs (Ho & Tang, 2004). The conflicts
between the two departments also occurs when marketing department can see the changes in

Importance of Marketing and Operation Management Function 3
the tastes and preferences of their customers but operation management team does not
understand the need of change in quality or pattern of production as per the market demands.
Marketing department is important for the business organisation for researching and
developing the market plans. This plan covers the details regarding the present situation of
the business in relation to its customer base, competition and the opportunities and threats
that are existing in the market (external environment) and also the strengths and weaknesses
that are internally available in the business environment of an organisation. Although the
marketing plan may be prepared on a long term horizon scale, it must be reviewed and
updated on a regular basis to set the financial budgets and sales. It sets out the objectives to
be achieved, marketing actions to be undertaken and also identifies the resource requirement
for the products and services an organisation is dealing in. To successfully implement and
carry out the prepared marketing plans requires the proper actions taken by the operation
management team (Wright, 2011). The functions of operation management includes physical
development, manufacturing and delivery of manufactured products and services. If the
operation management does not perform the offers that are prompted with the help of
marketing function then the demanded products will be not delivered within time and as per
the specifications (Hill & Hill, 2012). The operation management functional division has the
required information and the capacity to deliver the marketed products and services. Both the
marketing function and operation management function are intimately linked with each other
and hence adequate coordination between the two is must for organisational growth and
success (Alpay, Bodur Yilmaz & Büyükbalci, 2012). If these two functions are performed in
synch, the firm can achieve the competitive advantage in the market along with increased
profitability
Therefore, it can be concluded that both marketing and operations management functions
are backbone of the business. The firm which has coordinated functioning of marketing and

Importance of Marketing and Operation Management Function 4
operation management department, will have the strength of giving intense competitive in the
market than the firms that have conflicting marketing department and operation management
team. Both the departments of a firm must effectively coordinate with each other so that
marketing department can provide the necessary information to the operation management
department to fulfil the demands from customers through the supply of required goods and
services.

Importance of Marketing and Operation Management Function 5
References:
Alpay, G., Bodur, M., Yilmaz, C. and Büyükbalci, P., 2012. How does innovativeness yield
superior firm performance? The role of marketing effectiveness. Innovation, 14(1), pp.107-
128.
Heizer, J., 2016. Operations Management, 11/e. Pearson Education India.
Hill, A. and Hill, T., 2012. Operations management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Ho, T.H. and Tang, C.S., 2004. Introduction to the special issue on marketing and operations
management interfaces and coordination. Management Science, 50(4), pp.429-430.
Kozlenkova, I.V., Hult, G.T.M., Lund, D.J., Mena, J.A. and Kekec, P., 2015. The role of
marketing channels in supply chain management. Journal of Retailing, 91(4), pp.586-609.
Nath, P., Nachiappan, S. and Ramanathan, R., 2010. The impact of marketing capability,
operations capability and diversification strategy on performance: A resource-based
view. Industrial Marketing Management, 39(2), pp.317-329.
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.