Marketing Managers
Marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand. The role of a marketing manager can vary significantly based on a company's size, corporate culture, and industry context. For example, in a large consumer products company, the marketing manager may act as the overall general manager of his or her assigned product. To create an effective, cost-efficient marketing management strategy, firms must possess a detailed, objective understanding of their own business and the market in which they operate. In analyzing these issues, the discipline of marketing management often overlaps with the related discipline of strategic planning.
Specific marketing functions
Marketing functions can include some or all of the following:
Market Research: Marketing research is the systematic investigation of the facts relevant to various aspects in marketing. It helps in identifying the needs of the customers. It involves study of the markets and customers, their tastes and preferences, and what they are willing to buy, when they are likely to buy, etc.
Marketing planning: Marketing plans are prepared to achieve marketing objectives of an organization.
Product Planning and Development: PPD is concerned with identifying customers needs, developing new products and improving existing products in order to meet desires of customers.
Buying and Assembling: Buying is the purchase of raw materials for use in manufacture of finished goods for resale. Assembling is the collection of specific type of products from different buyers under a common roof.
Standardization and Grading: Standardization refers to the process of setting certain norms or standards for a product with regard to shape, size, color, quantity, quality, weight, etc. It helps in ensuring that products confirm to standards. Grading refers to the process of classification of products into different categories on the basis of quality, size, etc. Grading is generally done for agricultural products, such as fruits and vegetables. Graded products are of uniform quality and become easy to market.
Branding: A brand is a name, sign, symbol, or design assigned to a product so as to differentiate it from products of competitors.
Packaging: Packaging is the act of designing and producing the package for a product. A package is a wrapper or container in which a product is kept.
Labeling: A label is a carrier of information about the product. Labels are attached to the product package to provide information about the product, such as manufacturer of the product, date of manufacture, date of expiry, its ingredients, how to use the product, and its handling.
Customer Support Services: In today's competitive environment, customer support services play an important role in marketing. Services such as after sale services, maintenance services, and handling customer complaints provide satisfaction to customers and also helps in building product loyalty.
Promotion: Promotion refers to communication used to inform, persuade, and influence the prospective customers to buy a product.
Physical Distribution: Is concerned with making the goods and services available at the right place. It includes 2 important decisions:
- Channels of Distribution are middleman or intermediaries like wholesaler, agents, and retailers that facilitate the movement of goods and services and their title between the point of production and the point of consumption, by performing various marketing activities.
- Physical movement of goods from producers to consumers through means of transport, storage and warehousing, and inventory control .