Today’s Marketing Role in the Organization

A lot of forces are shaping today’s marketing role in organizations. Some parts of the marketing mix, which was traditionally the responsibility of the marketing department, are now the responsibility of other departments (i.e. the Sales department decides on distribution channels choice, pricing, sales promotion tools; the Production department gets involved in customers/suppliers service). What is happening?

- There is a tendency for marketing to be disintegrated and responsibilities to become split among various departments in the organization. Marketing is no longer the “job” of the marketing department; it is becoming a way of doing business in the organization.

- As retailers gain more leverage power and new media channels are emerging, the focus is shifting towards customer relationship management, trade promotions and field sales force (i.e. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and amazon.com).

- The need for quarterly results and the lack of proper metrics to measure marketing productivity have led to the decline of the marketing department (budget and man power), because the long-term benefits have not been taken into account. However, there is a feedback loop between strong brands and the marketing budget. Budget cuts lead to weak brand management and low product innovation.

Is Marketing Dying?

The marketing function as we know it is dying. The decentralization of the marketing function is a good thing because it usually improves efficiency. However, strategic planning decisions (i.e. media strategy, marketing research, brand management) should remain under marketing unit’s control as they require more marketing skills and a “bird’s eye view” of the situation. So, maybe “dying” is not the proper word. We should use change or redefine. Corporate marketing has been redefined as global brand management and marketing communication strategy. Two aspects are relevant to the changes in the way the marketing is seen in today’s organizations:

1. As the marketing becomes a way of doing business, some of the overall marketing strategy components are transferred to other departments within the organization (i.e. tactical marketing decisions become more the responsibility of the sales units). The marketing unit should however retain control over strategic marketing decisions and, as marketing responsibilities become dispersed, it should become responsible of building, sustaining and organizing marketing competence within the organization.

2. We should use different metrics for short-term (tactical marketing) and long-term (strategic marketing) goals. Product innovation is the major influence on long-term growth. Do not mistake product innovation with improvements on existing products or development of better featured products. Product innovation means: analyze the consumer, identify, anticipate and even create new needs. That’s what marketing does; it looks at consumers’ market spaces and identifies value gaps in the customers-activity cycle.

Conclusion

So, the role of marketing will be changing continuously; between short term and long-term goals, between centralization and decentralization. As long as there will not be accurate metrics to measure marketing productivity (especially in the industrial markets where there are less direct relationships between marketing expenditures and sales), marketing will be seen by some CEOs as an expense that can be easily cut.