Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 12

Marketing - Essay Example Marketing is a particularly fundamental function for strategy formulation in a business. It informs a strategy, counsels it, reviews it and provides insights into strategy formulation in an organization. An outstanding marketing department is involved in a continuous cycle of measure-analyze-plan-measure. This cycle is as well a key ingredient of strategic business management function. Therefore, in essence, marketing is a key element of strategic management function. Great marketing can help the company in identifying and addressing improvement strategies to customers in either product differentiation or distribution channels (Kotler et al 2009). For example, forecasting is part of strategic planning, sales and marketing forecasts as always the main tools used in budgeting for the marketing function. In marketing research, the Research and Development personnel are essential for effective results analyses and interpretation. Kotler et al (2009), the chief aim of strategic planning i s promoting the discernment of the company in the minds of the customers and consequently to increase customer relation and profitability of the business. Business strategic planning has to be undertaken to ensure the evaluation of all the options in a given situation. In such considerations, only the marketing function and research and development function are involved in result oriented research for improvement of service to the customer. Marketing Function versus Other Organizational Functions The marketing function of a business is the process that combines the product with pricing, promotion and distribution to reach the respective customers or end users. Marketing is one of the most significant functions of a business since it has a direct impact on sales and profitability of the business as well as customer relation. Because of this importance, the marketing function has a greater interrelation with other business functions like finance, accounting, production, research and d evelopment, technology, procurement and human resource among others. Building a profitable customer relationship in the marketing function requires interaction with the other business functions (Kotler et al 2009). I. Finance and marketing Every marketing plan always includes a primary financial dimension. Key aspects of a marketing planning and control are budgeting and profitability analysis. These issues require high resolution on significant financial issues like the definition of profits (e.g. Returns to equity or returns to investment) and determination on the appropriate controls for such profits (e.g. Taxes or inventory evaluation). All marketing decisions are investment decisions aiming at profitable customer relation hence adequate financial information is significant. Nevertheless, marketing is essential for the finance department since the information generated from marketing is used in financial analysis and forecasting (Kotler et al 2009). For example, the marketing te am in organization utilizes the annual company financial reports and other financial documents to help them with budgeting. This helps to reduce duplication of work in the marketing team for employing financial personnel since the financial personnel are already available in the company. The marketing team is, therefore, able to apply financial performance indicators to their relevant respective market segments to ensure that they always remain relevant to customers. II.