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Introduction

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

Introduction

This unit is divided into two sections: ‘Understanding market orientation’ and ‘Managing a market-led organisation’. In Section 1 ‘Understanding market orientation’ sets out different approaches to marketing. I argue that marketing should not be the property of just the marketing department but an organisation-wide philosophy that centres on satisfying customers. The way in which marketing ideas can be applied to non-profit organisations is also discussed.

In Section 2 ‘Managing a market-led organisation’, I go on to discuss the importance of managing key internal and external relationships.

Learning Outcomes

After studying this session, you should be able to:

describe the difference between marketing as a function and the concept of being market led;

evaluate whether an organisation is market led;

evaluate the relevance of marketing concepts to your own and other organisations, whether commercial (for-profit) or non-profit;

identify your own customers and consumers;

list the tangible and intangible elements of your own products and services;

evaluate the role of relationships in adding value to market-led organisations;

identify the key relationships and markets in a case study;

identify key market-led relationships within your own organisation.

What does 'marketing' mean?

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

What does 'marketing' mean?

Activity 1

Before you start working through this unit, take a moment to write down what you understand by the term ‘marketing’, either on the basis of your previous studies or the everyday use of the term.

Now read the discussion

Commentary

Here is what one group of marketing experts has to say:

What does the term marketing mean? Marketing must be understood not in the old sense of making a sale – ‘selling’ – but in the new sense of satisfying customers’ needs. Many people mistakenly think of marketing only as selling and promotion. And no wonder, for every day we are bombarded with television commercials, newspaper ads, direct mail and sales calls. Someone is always trying to sell us something. It seems as if we cannot escape death, taxes or selling!

(Kotler et al., 1996, p. 6) ©

Next time you are at work and talking with colleagues, ask them what they think ‘marketing’ is. It is likely that many think of marketing as only about selling and promotion. Many people think that marketing is some form of selling or perhaps advertising. Some people even think that it involves getting the consumer to buy or use something they don't want.

In this unit I am going to argue (as Kotler et al. do) that we need a much wider definition of marketing because the process of satisfying customers’ needs covers a much wider range of activities than those carried out by a marketing department.

1.1 Three approaches to marketing

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

1.1 Three approaches to marketing

This section has been written with the assumption that you have some prior marketing knowledge. As a brief revision you will read how marketing can be described both as an organisation-wide customer-orientated philosophy and as a functional department that handles activities concerned with understanding and satisfying customers’ needs. Studies show a direct link between the success of an organisation and the extent of its market orientation. These marketing concepts are applicable to both for-profit and non-profit organisations.

In the opening activity we started to discuss what we mean by marketing. In the following sections I set out three rather different ways in which this term has been used.

Marketing as a job title

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

Marketing as a job title

The term ‘marketing’ became common in the UK during the 1960s. During that time it was quite common for businesses to rename their sales departments marketing departments. Communications and sales managers became marketing managers. Stephen King called this ‘thrust marketing’ (King, 1985). Although the functional name changed, managers typically still placed an emphasis on selling what the organisation made or the services it offered, cutting costs and manipulating prices, rather than giving their customers what they needed. This type of organisation can be described as production orientated. A common form of production orientation can occur when an organisation becomes too focused on cutting costs to achieve economies of scale and loses sight of what their customers really need, as the following example illustrates.

Example 1 Manufacturing cartons

Tetra Pak, the Swedish carton manufacturer, makes 68 billion cartons a year for worldwide customers like Del Monte and Gerber. The problem was that the cartons were difficult to open, and tended to spill the contents on the floor. Tetra Pak did not invest in innovation to solve the problem because it was trying to control costs tightly in order to maintain its position as a low-cost provider. The result was that it lost its market share to its main rival, Norway's Elo Pack, who produced a carton with a proper spout which better met the customers’ needs.

(based on Brassington and Pettitt, 2000, p. 14) ©

Marketing department marketing

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

Marketing department marketing

It is common practice for an entire organisation's marketing activities, such as advertising, sales and market research, to be grouped together in a marketing department. The department's function is to create marketing plan activities that are designed to increase the customer's understanding of existing products and services. The marketing director manages all specialisms. Marketing is seen as ‘what the marketing department does’.

Marketing as a management process

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

Marketing as a management process

This last definition is the one that most modern marketing writers support. Piercy (1997) makes a distinction between ‘marketing plan marketing' – the activities that traditional marketing departments do – and the concept of ‘going to market’ – a much more general management issue. He writes:

‘Marketing’ belongs to marketing specialists but ‘going to market’ is a process owned by everyone in the organisation.

This approach sees marketing as managing an exchange process. In commercial (for-profit) organisations, products and services are exchanged for money and resources. In non-profit organisations, goods and services are sometimes exchanged for money and sometimes also to support ideas and beliefs. An example might make this clearer – why do I buy my Christmas cards from Oxfam rather than from the local supermarket? There is a commercial exchange, i.e. a card for money, but also there is an exchange based on ideas and beliefs. Buying from Oxfam enables me to support their ideas and beliefs and to feel good about spending money on a worthwhile cause. Examples of other exchange relationships are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Exchange relationships

Marketing as the managing of exchange relationships is described in the following extract:

Marketing consists of individual and organisational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas.

(Dibb et al., 1997) ©

Piercy (1997) describes this approach to marketing as a market-led approach – others refer to it as pan-company marketing. The distinguishing feature of both these approaches is that they emphasise that every department in the organisation is involved with the customer – not just the marketing department. I shall use the terms market-led, market orientation and pan-company marketing throughout the text to describe this organisation-wide customer-led approach.

Another suggestion is that:

Marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department.

(Bill Packard, Hewlett Packard, in Piercy, 1997) ©

An example of pan-company marketing (from the Chartered Institute of Marketing's marketing portal website https://www.cim.co.uk/cim/sho/html/boo.cfm/ [accessed 09/10/06]) is given in the following example.

Example 2 Pan-company marketing was pioneered by British Airways

Customer champions

In 1982 the pressure to prepare for privatisation was intense. A fundamental shift in the way BA did business was needed.

Lord Marshall – then Sir Colin – took charge of transforming BA into a totally customer focused organisation.

Insight

Lord Marshall and his top team instituted investigative techniques, mainly in-depth interviews with staff, to uncover what they thought about customers. An insight was generated: speed and efficiency, although important, were of secondary importance to the customer. They wanted to see warm, personal and caring staff.

Innovation and improvement

All existing business processes and operations were disregarded. Only the customers and their needs were used as the basis for redesigning the company.

Customer culture

Front-line staff were now rated as the company's main assets. The ‘Putting People First’ programme involved them in redefining the tasks which win customers, based on teamwork. This became the driver of business strategy.

Engineers and pilots insisted that they too be involved in the programme. Customer First Teams were created to suggest solutions to customer problems.

Media advertising communicated ‘The World's Favourite Airline’ to staff as well as to customers. Motivation and incentives were prioritised and company-wide performance-related pay was instituted. Awards for Excellence were conferred by Lord Marshall on 1–1.5% of staff annually.

Measurement

Everything pointed to the need for better metrics and standards. A Market Place Performance Department, reporting to the CEO, was set up. Mystery flyers were created [Mystery shoppers/flyers are researchers who are hired by organisations to pretend to be customers and secretly evaluate the quality of the customer service].

A continuous upward trend in customer satisfaction ratings was now registered right through into the late 1990s. Continuous improvements in market share, passenger traffic and staff productivity were achieved.

Profitability

The direct result of adopting pan-company marketing was a 30% increase in productivity and an increase in market share of 2.4% in a highly competitive market and the posting of improved profits when, for example, from 1990–1994 the airline industry world-wide lost US$15 billion.

www.cim.co.uk ©

An organisation like British Airways (BA), which takes into account the needs of its markets before it plans its processes, is said to be market led or market oriented. It has changed the focus of its marketing from a marketing plan devised in the marketing department to an organisation-wide involvement in creating an offering of superior value for the customer. Studies have shown that being market led is linked to profitability in profit-based organisations and to survival in non-profit organisations (Slater, 1990).

The market-led approach has three components:

consumer orientation
competitor orientation
inter-functional co-ordination.

Figure 2: The market-led organisation (Source: Jaworsky and Kohli, 1990)

The first two involve the organisation-wide generation of market intelligence regarding current and future customer needs, and making this information available to all departments. Customer orientation also involves continuously monitoring customer information in order to be able to create superior value.

Inter-functional co-ordination concerns the organisation-wide co-ordination of resources in response to customers. Inter-departmental ‘connectedness’ has a key role to play in the dissemination of and the responsiveness to market intelligence by the organisation (Jaworski and Kohli, 1990).

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) suggests that:

Marketing is the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers’ needs at a profit.

Can you see how the CIM has incorporated market-led concepts in this definition of marketing? If you work in a non-profit organisation you may be put off by the word profit in their definition. As we discuss later, the notion of being market led is also relevant outside the commercial sector.

1.2 Do all organisations need to be market oriented?

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

1.2 Do all organisations need to be market oriented?

As you have seen, many marketing writers maintain that to be successful all organisations (commercial and non-profit) must be market oriented and must focus their attention on adding value to their products and services to satisfy their customers’ needs.

Leaving aside the word profit from the CIM's definition of marketing, at a conceptual level the process of becoming market orientated is concerned with identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers’ needs. Kotler (Drucker, 1992) believes that changes in funding and the introduction of competitive tendering have forced some organisations to use these customer-focused approaches to help them compete in their marketplace. Kotler explains:

Marketing really is spurred on by the presence and the increase in competition that the institution faces in a way that it never faced before. Most organizations don't get interested in marketing when they are comfortable. Suddenly they find that they don't understand their customers very well, and their customers are leaving that church, or they're not signing up for the college, or coming to that hospital. And these institutions become aware of a competitive situation.

How do you deal with a competitive situation? Well, one way some early hospitals dealt with it was to pray that the world hadn't changed and that they would just survive. Now, prayer may have a role to play, but it is not the answer. The normal answer is that may be there's something in this thing called marketing that will help us to understand why customers chose to be with us in the first place and why they're not choosing to be with us anymore.

(Drucker, 1992, p. 80) ©

He believes that marketing techniques could be used to facilitate ‘mutually satisfying exchanges’ between the organisation and its publics (a ‘public’ is any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on an organisation's ability to achieve its objectives). This concept of ‘exchanges’ is important. As you have seen, marketing is denned as facilitating the exchange process. In the commercial sector, this means products and services are exchanged for money. In the non-profit sector, this means products and services are exchanged for ideas, values and beliefs.

To run a non-profit organisation effectively, the marketing must be built into the design of the service. This is very much a top management job, although, as in every other area, you need a lot of input from your people, from the market and from research.

(Drucker, 1992) ©

The NSPCC's 'FULL STOP' campaign

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

The NSPCC's 'FULL STOP' campaign

An example of a marketing communications campaign is given below. This National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Childred (NSPCC) campaign was named a ‘Campaign of the Year’ in the CIM&Sol;Marketing Week's 1999 marketing effectiveness awards.

Example 3 NSPCC's 'FULL STOP' campaign

The charities market is highly competitive, with a large number of organisations trying to get their message across on a limited budget.

Just prior to the launch of the NSPCC's FULL STOP campaign in March 1999, the annual Comic Relief Appeal took place. This was heavily televised for a two-week period and intensified the competition between charities to raise public awareness and gain support for their cause. Despite this, the NSPCC's campaign excelled its target figure for new supporters by 70%.

‘Together we can end cruelty to children’ was the unique selling point (USP) of the three-week FULL STOP campaign launched by the NSPCC in early spring 1999. The charity believes that it was the biggest integrated campaign ever launched by the voluntary sector – and probably bigger than any commercial organisation had ever undertaken in such a concentrated time scale.

The campaign's objectives were four-fold:

to raise awareness of the problem of cruelty to children
to communicate that the NSPCC had launched a campaign to end the problem
to generate support, and involvement in, the campaign
to create huge PR and media coverage.

The launch of FULL STOP was held in London, hosted by Cilla Black, and attended by Tony Blair, HRH Duke of York (Chairman of the appeal), Baby Spice and a number of key business leaders. Throughout the campaign, on-going support from celebrities, such as Madonna and Ewan McGregor, played a key part in raising public awareness of the cause.

‘Increasing awareness was critical because a campaign like this was only ever going to succeed on the basis of mass support and involvement from individuals and organisations throughout the UK,’ explained Marion Rose, the charity's Head of Marketing. What we wanted to achieve was partnership. The NSPCC was leading the initiative, but we wanted to encourage everyone to participate in the campaign.’

‘The timing was also significant. The NSPCC had been in business for nearly 100 years – the end of the century was the ideal time to look at what had been achieved and create a vision for the future.’

The key involvement device used in the campaign – asking the public to sign a pledge promising to do something to help end cruelty to children – proved highly effective. A door drop of 23 million items reached every home in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while a further mailing reached one million existing donors and 1.5 million leaflets were distributed face-to-face.

TV advertising ran on terrestrial and satellite channels, supported by press advertising in national newspapers and ethnic press. There were also a total of 8,242 poster sites used throughout the country.

The advertisements picked up on this theme, all featuring a number of children's icons – including Rupert the Bear, a teddy bear and Action Man – covering their eyes as a situation of abuse could be heard going on in the background. Viewers were left to infer cruelty from what they saw or heard – a powerful, but not explicit approach. One advertisement depicted a teenager's bedroom. A Rupert the Bear mug on the bedside table carried the words ‘One word of this to anyone and you're dead’.

A number of milestone events were arranged during the campaign period to keep its momentum going. These included a ‘Call to Action’ weekend, when campaigners went around the country setting up stalls in 1,500 shopping centres and public areas and encouraging people to sign the pledge.

‘We did have the odd qualm about the possibility of getting a negative reaction to the campaign because the advertising was very strong,’ says Marion Rose. ‘However, it proved to be hugely motivating. We were overwhelmed by support – getting out on the streets and being visible made the campaign more real to people.’

Measuring effectiveness

The effectiveness of the campaign was measured by tracking both the response to it and the amount of PR generated – particularly vital to charities because of their limited resources. According to Marion Rose, the results showed that FULL STOP was the most ambitious and effective awareness campaign that any charity had ever run. ‘It met and succeeded all its targets,’ she claimed.

Television advertising reached an estimated 85% of the population at 7.1 opportunities to see (OTS), while the posters were seen by around 55% of the public at 21 OTS. PR coverage exceeded all expectations. In addition to over 2,000 press articles, the campaign featured in 230 radio programmes and 71 TV programmes.

In addition to CIM&Sol; Marketing Week's ‘Campaign of the Year’ award, FULL STOP also won the ‘Campaigning Poster of the Year’ title, two Direct Marketing awards, and a Gold Lion at Cannes ‘99.

Evidence of success

The number of new supporters generated by the campaign was 70% above target, as the following figures demonstrate.

	Target	Actual
Fund raisers	83,000	100,000
Donors	75,000	103,000
Campaigners	43,000	141,000
Total	201,000	344,000

(Source: www.cim.co.uk)

Interestingly, the huge database of new supporters created included a group of people – the young and single – who usually restrict their allegiance to political organisations and to charities that campaign on the environment. According to the charity, prior to the campaign, its key supporters had been middle class middle-aged women with older children.

www.cim.co.uk ©

As you have read, the charity sector exists in a highly competitive market. The NSPCC FULL STOP campaign is an excellent example of how commercial market-led concepts can be very effectively applied in a non-profit organisation. However, in other areas of the non-profit sector, managers believe that commercial marketing concepts are not transferable to their services. The philosophy of ‘going to market’ creates a number of very sensitive issues – most based around the word ‘customer’.

Who is the customer?

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1 Understanding market orientation

Who is the customer?

Customers are people who buy our products and services, and may or may not use them. The key to defining these people as ‘customers’ is that each engages in an exchange relationship that adds value to the organisation providing the product or service. Consumers do not give any value to organisations – there is no exchange relationship. They use products and services, but do not buy them.

Activity 2 (revision)

Think about how these definitions apply to both internal and external business relationships.

Now read the discussion

Commentary

If you could complete this activity, well done. You have met these concepts before and probably deal with customers in your day-to-day work, but could you identify your consumers?

If you had difficulty don't worry, in my experience it's sometimes quite difficult to answer such a fundamental question. Keep reading, as there is an opportunity to do this activity again later.

For the most part, the commercial sector uses the terms customer and consumer interchangeably. This is because members of this sector have to satisfy the needs of both groups with their products and services. However the non-profit sector makes a clear distinction between the two groups. In the non-profit sector the resource provider is seen as the customer and the resource user as the consumer.

Outside the commercial sector, customers and consumers are often treated as two distinct markets. While market-led philosophies transfer well from customer to customer, many non-profit organisations believe that their consumers are different. This is because it is the resource provider's job to specify what product or service the consumers need and how they can obtain it.

One of my marketing students, commenting on their first assignment, wrote to me recently:

I was so relieved when I saw that I could apply the marketing concepts internally – we don't really have any customers in our hospital – we tend to classify people by their illness.

The publicly-funded health sector is a good example of the resource provider / user split. The government is the customer and provides the financial resources to medical practitioners and hospitals. These financial resources are used to provide goods and services to patients, i.e. the consumers. However, with closer investigation, we could say that patients should also be regarded as customers because without patients the hospital would close. The patients have an exchange relationship with the institution. When a patient chooses which hospital to go to he or she exchanges their patronage for the services the hospital provides.

Activity 3

Think of the police – do they have customers or consumers?

List four customers for the police service.

Make another list of four consumers for the police service.

Can you identify the differences in the relationships that customers and consumers have with the police?

Now read the discussion

Commentary

I asked my local policeman if he could answer this activity. He said: ‘I don't have any customers – they're either guilty or innocent.’

A common misconception in public services is that, because there's no price charged for the service provided, managers think that they don't have any customers. I hope you now agree with me in thinking that they have both customers and users (i.e. consumers).

The government is the customer for the police service – it provides the financial resources to enable the police to run their service, in exchange for law and order in society. You could say that victims are their customers too – victims are looking for retribution and they pay taxes to the government to make sure they get it. You could even say that the general public are its customers – it is our tax money the government uses to fund the police. We want to be able to feel safe in our homes and have the police deal with the people who break the law.

But what about criminals – do they participate in an exchange relationship? They do not intentionally give their patronage to the criminal justice system. They don't add value to that system. This is an example of a resource provider/user split. The criminal is the consumer and the general public – via the government to whom it pays taxes, part of which are passed on to the police service – are the customers.

Activity 4 (Activity 2 revisited)

Make a list of your customers and consumers. I hope that what you have just read will help you answer this question more fully now.

Implications of market orientation

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

Implications of market orientation

An organisation that develops and performs its production and marketing activities with the aim of satisfying the needs of its customers is market oriented. However, using market-led ideas in the non-profit sector requires a fundamental shift in organisational philosophy. Identifying those people who add value to the service means renaming some users ‘customers’. It also means that you have to establish what they want before you begin the planning processes and you have to concede that they may have some influence over the goods and services you provide.

Kotler (Drucker, 1992) has no doubt that market-led cultures should be introduced into non-profit organisations:

Most people think that marketing is a tool, but for governments and not-for-profits it is a way of thinking. It goes beyond selling and advertising, it is a mindset that puts the customer first and ensures that the organization's philosophy is ‘without consumers there is no organization’.

This is a sensitive issue for some non-profit organisations. The problem is that many have missions that encourage them to take a long-term view about what is best for their consumers.

Professional service providers such as lawyers and accountants have to deal with this on a regular basis. Sometimes what their customers want in the short term is in direct conflict with their needs in the long term. Such service providers therefore need:

a thorough understanding of what their customers consider as added value
open communication channels with their customers
to foster an environment where customers trust their services. Think of the services provided by lawyers and accountants, for example. Their customers have to trust that they have their best interests at heart, even when the end result is not what the customer wanted.

We know what's best for you: high-credence services

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1 Understanding market orientation

We know what's best for you: high-credence services

The professional's knowledge and experience adds value to the services provided by lawyers and accountants. These types of service are classed as high-credence services. Credence means trust. A lawyer has ‘credentials’ to handle your case – their qualifications are written evidence of trustworthiness and authority.

High-credence services are found in both the commercial and the non-profit sectors. Services are mainly, by their very nature, intangible, so customers have difficulty evaluating them. In general, products too are a mixture of tangible elements and intangible elements.

Figure 3 illustrates the fact that a commodity such as salt contains no intangible elements. Customers evaluate its quality by its intrinsic (inherent) characteristics such as taste and appearance.

Figure 3: Tangible / Intangible elements of products and services (adapted from Shostack, G.L., “Breaking Free from Product Marketing”, Journal of Marketing, April, pp. 73–80)

Services such as teaching contain very few tangible elements. There are very few intrinsic clues to quality, so customers and consumers have to rely on extrinsic (non-essential) clues, such as the cleanliness of the classrooms, the general environment and the standard of the teaching materials.

A fast food service lies in the middle – half-tangible and half-intangible. Customers evaluate this service using a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic clues, such as the taste and look of the food (intrinsic) and the environment in which it is served (extrinsic). Customers also take clues from the general appearance of the staff, the cleanliness of surroundings and the packaging, for example.

A dictionary definition of intrinsic would include: inward, inherent, essential. A dictionary definition of extrinsic could be: not contained in or belonging to a body, to operate without, not essential.

Extrinsic clues become important in high-credence services because customers have to devolve the decision making regarding what's best for them to the service provider. From the above definitions of intrinsic and extrinsic, you will see that not only are high-credence services intangible, but also customers may lack the knowledge needed to make an informed judgement of the quality. So they have to rely on extrinsic clues to tell them about the quality of service to expect.

Example 5 A fast-food service

McDonald's menu, decor, staff uniforms, order processing, equipment and cooking procedures are all standardised (with some minor exceptions for local conditions). Taken as a whole, the restaurant creates a consistent and familiar experience, which in turn provides customers with a strong tangible impression of the character of McDonalds, what to expect and what it delivers.

Source: Brassington and Pettitt, 2000, p. 944 ©

You would probably not be surprised to find a McDonald's wherever you travel. The branch shown in the photograph is in Cairo and is a popular lunch venue for tourists. Can you spot the other well-known UK brand in the photo? Yes, that's right, the UK food retailer Sainsbury's also has a branch there.

Service providers such as banks, lawyers and doctors have an ethical and sometimes legal responsibility to guard the interests of their customers.

If a lawyer advises you to plead guilty to a parking offence because, if you go to court and are found guilty, the fine will be doubled, you have to believe the advice to be based on correct information. You can get a second opinion – but, in the end, you have to put your trust in the lawyer's ability to look after your best interests. In financial service literature this is described as a ‘fiduciary’ responsibility. The dictionary definition of a fiduciary is ‘one who holds anything in trust’. Banks hold our money ‘in trust’ for us and have to act in our best interests.

You can use the concept of fiduciary to explain most high-credence services. We trust our health to doctors, our legal matters to lawyers and our money to banks.

In the financial and legal professions, these fiduciary responsibilities are written in law. For the medical profession, the General Medical Council looks after this responsibility.

Activity 5

Consider an accounts department in an organisation manufacturing computers.

Identify the department's internal customers.
Identify the department's service.
Estimate the percentage of the service that is tangible and describe this tangible part.
Calculate the intangible percentage and describe the intangible part of the service.
Does the service have a high or low level of credence? Give a reason for your answer.

Now read the discussion

Commentary

I wrote the following.

Internal customers: the managers of other departments who make decisions based on the financial information provided by the accounts department
Service – provide financial statements for the rest of the organisation
Tangible: 60% – the financial statements
Intangible: 40% – the financial statements reflect the financial health of the organisation
High level of credence – the managers of the various departments have to trust the accuracy of the information.

In this financial service example, the accounts department provides the financial statements that enable managers to make forecasts and allocate budgets for marketing, human resource management, production and investment. The organisation has to trust that those figures are correct – it hires accountants with the right credentials and has to assume that the reports are accurate. Incorrect financial forecasts have implications for every part of the organisation. For instance, overly-high forecasts may result in excess production and purchasing. The accounts department builds up trust by long-term relationships. The more often the forecasts turn out to be correct, the more the managers will rely on them.

Activity 6

Now can you do the same exercise for your own organisation?

Identify your customers – they may be internal or external.
Identify your product(s) / service(s).
Estimate how much of what you offer is intangible – and how much is tangible.
Estimate how many of your product(s) / service(s) are high credence.

1.3 How do organisations become market leaders?

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

1.3 How do organisations become market leaders?

Drucker (1992) wrote:

The five most important questions you will ever ask about your organization [are]:

What is our business?

Who is our customer?

What does our customer consider value?

What have been our results?

What is our plan?

Can you answer these questions for your own organisation? I don't expect you to know all the answers now. Try to think about them as you read through the text. I shall refer to them again at the end of this session.

As you can imagine there are many books about how to become a successful organisation – most make recommendations on identifying target markets and redesigning organisations to produce superior value to the customers within the target markets. I have chosen one such book The Discipline of Market Leaders (Treacy and Wiersema, 1996) to illustrate how, once organisations understand who their customers are, success comes from focusing their activities on providing superior value to them.

In their study, Treacy and Wiersema (T&W) discuss the concept of market orientation. They recommend organisations to:

choose their customers
narrow their focus to provide a unique ‘value proposition’ to their market
dominate their market.

T&W describe three ‘value disciplines’ to use to dominate a market:

product leadership
operational excellence
customer intimacy.

An organisation must focus on one of these value disciplines but, at the same time, it must pay close attention to the others.

The following is an explanation of these ideas.

Choosing customers

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

Choosing customers

Think about your own organisation – or your own experiences as a customer. I'm sure you'll agree that, over the last few years, customers have become very sophisticated. They expect higher standards, lower costs, and a wide range of goods and services that are provided at their convenience. If an organisation does not provide what they want, they find one that can.

Most companies have experienced changes in their markets, such as new customer demands and expectations, and new competitors, often unconventional ones.

These changes in buyer-seller relationships are making it difficult for organisations to satisfy all their customers in all their markets. T&W found that successful organisations chose groups of customers within their markets and offered them superior value. They call this a company's value proposition and defined it as follows.

Value proposition

The implicit promise a company makes to customers to deliver a particular combination of values – price, quality, performance, selection, convenience, service, and so on.

(Treacy and Wiersema, 1996, p. xiv) ©

Narrowing the focus

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

Narrowing the focus

Offering a unique value proposition involves designing a value-driven operating model. This is a combination of operating processes, management systems, business structures and culture that will give the organisation the ability to deliver superior value. The value-driven operating model is the means of delivering the value proposition.

Organisations that are market leaders have value-driven cultures and management systems that treat all employees as ‘part-time marketers’ (Gummesson, 1990) giving them responsibility to create the unique value customers want. These organisations have several common characteristics (Slater and Narver, 1998). They:

take a long-term view
have the ability to create and sustain crucial external and internal networks that are able to:
- anticipate and respond to evolving customer needs
- listen closely to their customers, but understand that different types of customer provide different types of information
- focus on customer satisfaction
- build and sustain long-term relationships.

Dominating the market

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

1 Understanding market orientation

Dominating the market

Value disciplines refer to the ways in which organisations can combine value-driven operating models and propositions to dominate their markets. In their discussion of market domination, T&W identify three distinct value disciplines, each of which will deliver a different kind of customer value. They recommend that an organisation chooses one of the value disciplines on which to make its reputation but stress that these value disciplines are not mutually exclusive.

The choice of value discipline depends on extensive analysis of the company and its markets. The final decision will influence every subsequent plan and decision an organisation makes, affecting the entire organisation from its competencies to its culture. It defines what the organisation does and therefore what it is. However, no matter which discipline it chooses to focus on, it must still pay attention to the others. Each value discipline is now described below.

Product leadership

Its practitioners concentrate on offering products that push performance boundaries. Their proposition to customers is an offer of the best product, period. Moreover, product leaders don't build their positions with just one innovation; they continue to innovate year after year, product cycle after product cycle.

(Treacy and Wiersema, 1996) ©

For product leaders, competition is not about price; it's about product performance.

Operational excellence

Companies that pursue this [value discipline] are not primarily product or service innovators, nor do they cultivate a deep one-to-one relationship with their customers. Instead, operationally excellent companies provide middle-of-the-market products at the best price with the least inconvenience. Their proposition to customers is simple: low price and hassle-free service.

(Treacy and Wiersema, 1996) ©

This is sometimes called the no-frills approach.

Customer intimacy

[Customer-intimate companies] focus on delivering not what the market wants but what specific customers want. [They… ] do not pursue one-time transactions; they cultivate relationships. They specialize in satisfying unique needs, which often only they, by virtue of their close relationship with – and intimate knowledge of – their customer, recognize. The proposition to the customer is: we have the best solution for you – and we provide all the support you need to achieve optimum results and/or value from whatever products you buy.

(Treacy and Wiersema, 1996) ©

Companies practising customer intimacy with a vengeance, achieve success in a competitive market by consistently going the extra mile for their selectively chosen customers.

Marks and Spencer: a case study

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1 Understanding market orientation

Marks and Spencer: a case study

The following case study examines a company coming to terms with market orientation.

Case study 1 M&S goes online to reverse crisis

Marks & Spencer is the latest UK retailer to turn to the web to revive its fortunes.

In the week that the company announced a halving in its pre-tax profits over the past year, Chairman Sir Peter Salsbury announced plans to roll out a national e-commerce strategy to develop closer relationships with customers.

Customers will be able to buy online selections from the M&S catalogue

Its current e-commerce trial, which is confined to staff on BT’s Intranet, will be extended nationally and will establish ‘the basis of a programme for customer relationship management’.

Using information from the online service, M&S hopes to develop its Chargecard customer database to target customers more effectively.

M&S is now looking to its new marketing department to help revive its sales. It confirmed that part of its change programme means placing more decisions with the marketing team.

M&S has confirmed that its pre-tax profits collapsed to 546 million for the year ending March 1999, compared with the £1.2 billion pre-tax profits it made in the previous year.

The retailer also confirmed that its share of its core market of clothing and footwear was down from 15.1% last year to 14.3%.

Figure 4: Spark out (Source: Credit Suisse First Boston (Europe))

Salsbury blamed the results on stronger competition in the retail sector in recent years, admitting that: ‘We lost touch with our customers and forgot about the competition. Those are quite fundamental for a retailer.’ He has swiftly cut costs. He is pushing decision-making down to the shop level and prying open the group’s inward-looking culture: ‘I would be disappointed if customers would not see a difference in a year’s time.’

M&S customers criticised the winter range for being too dull and dowdy, and opinions are split over the desirability of its current spring and summer clothing. Mr Salsbury assigns much of the blame to M&S’s powerful buying teams, who stock what they think people will like rather than listening to the store managers who actually meet customers. So he is devolving power away from buyers. He has also started to source more from overseas, to reduce costs and improve flexibility – vital now that cut-price rivals such as Zara and Gap are spreading along Britain’s high streets. The company may even drop its tradition of selling only its own brand, and slip in some designer names – it already uses British designers such as Paul Smith, although their labels are nowhere to be seen.

M&S has launched the first advertising campaign in its history, employed branding consultants, set up a marketing department and is about to appoint its first marketing director – rumoured, encouragingly, to be a heavy-hitting outsider. In a statement, M&S said that the creation of the marketing department was important in improving ‘analysis of the competitive environment, better information to inform buying decisions, more focused and proactive communication, greater clarity in presentation and display, and clear customer targeting’.

(Sources: based on Jardine, 1999 and a news item from The Economist, 10 July 1999)

Is M&S market led?

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1 Understanding market orientation

Is M&S market led?

Activity 7

Allow half an hour.

Read Case study 1 and then use the evidence there to answer the following questions.

Do you think that M&S is market led?
Which value discipline do you think M&S should focus on?
What kind of marketing do you think M&S supports?

Now read the discussion

Commentary

This is an interesting case because M&S has an opportunity to incorporate up-to-date marketing ideas into the organisation.

1 Is M&S market led?

Market orientation is made up of three areas. I now discuss each in turn with reference to the M&S case study.

Customer orientation

The company seems to be trying to understand its customers. The function of the new marketing department is to provide ‘more focused and proactive communication, greater clarity in presentation and display, and clear customer targeting’.

Competitor orientation

Although the company has been left behind by its competitors, it now acknowledges that competition exists. The new marketing department is expected to provide on-going ‘analysis of the competitive environment’. In addition, the introduction of e-commerce will provide a competitive edge – for a short while.

Inter-functional co-ordination

From the description of the activities planned for the new marketing department, it seems that the company is falling into the common trap of using ‘marketing department marketing’.

To be truly market led the old functional barriers must be blurred. Everyone in the organisation should become a ‘part-time marketer’ so that the company can offer superior customer value all the time. And ‘customer value’ doesn't only mean competitive prices, it also includes areas like service, quality and reliability.

2 Which value discipline?

T&W would recommend that M&S focuses on its operations, products or customers, i.e. on one value discipline. I discuss each of these below.

Operational excellence

To focus on its operations would mean concentrating on offering a mass-market, no-frills approach. M&S offer products to a very large market. However, the no-frills approach would contradict the up-market M&S brand and culture.

Product leadership

To gain product leadership would involve competing on the basis of product performance – the current M&S emphasis on quality would be consistent with this focus. Traditionally the company has always looked for new ideas; for example, by attending fashion shows to enable it to predict trends in styles, fabrics and colours. It uses ‘secret shoppers’ to check its performance against its competitors and it uses consumer panels to check the strengths and weaknesses of its product range. M&S's problem is a common one: unique value propositions do not stay unique forever.

Customer intimacy

To focus on customers involves consistently going the extra mile for selectively chosen customers. This involves an organisation in satisfying the unique needs of its customers so that they obtain the optimum value, quality and service from whatever products they buy.

3 Marketing approach

To become a market leader again M&S needs to analyse its customers and to focus on the company's reputation for innovation and quality. Product leadership means beating its competitors to market with new styles and fabrics. Innovation comes from finding new ways to do business. For the moment, the move to e-commerce will redefine its unique value proposition.

2.1 Managing relationships

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2 Managing a market-led organisation

2.1 Managing relationships

You should now understand that markets and the customers within them are the responsibility of all managers within an organisation. An organisation needs to identify what will create extra value for its customers, and design a value-driven operating system that will concentrate all its efforts on producing it. This process of going to market involves the organisation in managing the relationships between itself and its customers and competitors, and also in the co-ordination of the organisation's inter-functional activities.

This section investigates the importance of managing these key relationships to the overall success of the organisation.

To become a market leader in the 21st century, an organisation has to progress from ‘marketing department marketing’ to a value-driven culture that incorporates market orientation throughout the business. Doyle (1998) explains that the move from a marketing plan to a market culture involves managing relationships that are beyond the control of the marketing department. These relationships are key to adding value to the firm's product/service offering and, ultimately, to the success of the company (I'm using success here rather than profitability because, as I have discussed, there are some organisations that do not have profit-making objectives).

You have probably heard the term ‘relationship marketing’, which has emerged as common terminology in the 1990s. It has been used to describe everything from the handful of loyalty cards in your credit card case and the monthly sales call of the office supply salesperson, to the unsolicited junk mail that falls through your letterbox. It has evolved from the vast expansion of customer profiling data (lifestyle and census data), financial data, and to the increasing power and speed of data processing and transmission. Using technology to link huge collections of electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) data gives organisations the ability to speak one-to-one with their customers and suppliers. Natasha Murrell, global Internet site manager for British Airways, explains:

We are aiming for a one-on-one interaction with our customers and you can't do that if your information is stored in pots which are remote and inconsistent. We used to have six or seven global databases, but now we have one, from which we can provide a consistent customer experience.

However, relationship marketing is much more than this. The concept has grown from studies of industrial and service marketing of the 1980s and focuses on managing a series of ‘network interactions’ that create long-term customer relationships. Piercy (1997) identifies four such relationships to be considered when managing market-led organisations.

Figure 5: Key relationships in market strategy (Source: based on Piercy, 1997)

He identifies the key relationship-marketing issue as the refocusing of marketing effort: moving activities away from a marketing mix that creates a series of one-off transactions, to managing a complex network of relationships involved in the production of the whole consumer offering. The following table contrasts these two types of marketing.

Transactional marketing	Relationship marketing
Focuses on single sales	Focuses on customer retention
Oriented to product features	Oriented to customer value
Short timescales	Long timescales
Little emphasis on customer service	High customer service emphasis
Limited customer commitment	High customer commitment
Moderate customer contact	High customer contact
Quality is primarily the concern of the production/service department	Quality is the concern of all

The four key relationships identified by Piercy occur in both manufacturing and business organisations, and include networks of business systems, supply chains and virtual networks all working together to create the value proposition for the customer.

Suppliers, shareholders, customers and employees are not rivals for the battle for profits – they are partners, and will be more successful once they learn to work together.

Example 6 Royal Mail

If you live in the UK, you probably use the services of Royal Mail. Although you don't see much of Royal Mail's activities other than the familiar red vans on the road and the postman at your door, the scale of operations is enormous. Identifying the key relationships is vital to the smooth running of its services. The letter service handles 76 million letters a day, collected at 210,000 points and feeding into 26 million delivery points in the UK alone. As you can imagine, the logistics chain offers plenty of scope for things to go wrong. A mail delivery is collected, taken to one of 74 outward mail centres, distributed via a network of 55 trains, 37 aircraft and 7500 long-distance lorries, and passed through a network of mail centres, local distributors and eventually delivered to the customer's door.

2.2 An integrated perspective on relationship management: the six markets model

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2 Managing a market-led organisation

2.2 An integrated perspective on relationship management: the six markets model

Christopher et al. (1991) developed a complementary model to Piercy's. Based on the idea of stakeholders, the ‘six market model’ of relationship management works equally well in either a commercial or non-profit setting. I have combined the Piercy and Christopher et al. models in the following table to illustrate some of the critical issues in the key relationships that organisations need to address.

Key relationships and markets	Critical issues
Customers
Customer markets	What value proposition can the organisation choose to attract new customers and to keep old ones loyal?
Co-workers
Internal markets	Are the employees willing and capable of delivering a quality service of the value proposition that the organization has chosen?
Recruitment markets	Does the organisation have careful selection, motivation and training of employees?
Collaborators
Supplier markets	How many partnerships are involved in creating the value proposition? How can relationships with other organisations such as suppliers and distributors be managed effectively?
Influence markets	Word of mouth communication must be recognised as a valuable tool in the marketing mix. How can relationships be forged with journalists, analysts, reference groups and pressure groups that will enhance the reputation of the organisation?
Referral markets	Does the organisation have good communication links with the experts and professionals who make recommendations regarding purchasing decisions? How can the organisation progress its customer relationships along the ‘loyalty ladder’ to encourage customers to become strong advocates of the company? Does the organisation recognise customer-driven value?
Competitors
	Is the organisation vulnerable to competitive attack and how well does it understands its capabilities? How long will its value proposition stay unique?

Wace Burgess: the importance of managing relationships

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2 Managing a market-led organisation

Wace Burgess: the importance of managing relationships

The case study below illustrates the importance of managing relationships. Read the case study, then answer the questions that follow it.

Case study: Wace Burgess

Background

Wace Burgess is a member of the Wace Group, a company in the pre-press and print technology market, with a mission:

to become a world-class company providing complete production service for corporations, enhancing the perceived values of their products and services by improving the quality and efficiency of the communication process.

The Wace Group operates in a wide range of communication-related sectors including imaging networks, advertising, promotional print, corporate literature, academic journals, rigid and flexible packaging, and labels. Wace Burgess, a business employing around 250 people, specialises in the colour printing of greetings cards, gift wrap, posters, calendars, book jackets and folders. Their customers are mainly creative publishers, supplying retailers.

Greetings cards

The largest part of the business is the production of cards, which are of three types: Christmas cards, everyday cards (including birthday cards) and special days’ cards (Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, etc.). Although Wace Burgess is the preferred supplier of many publishers, each order is typically quite small, but with many different designs. However, the situation had begun to change at the beginning of the 1990s. More and more cards were being sold through larger retailers including supermarkets, which had begun to take a greater interest in the highly profitable card market.

Wace Burgess had always been a company that wanted to be at the leading edge of the market and technology developments. If there was a market out there for supplying the larger retailers, they certainly planned to be part of it. Both as a result of their excellent reputation for quality and responsiveness, and as a result of considerable sales effort, they had their first real chance to supply a big retailer – Marks & Spencer (M&S). Vicky Dockety, one of the account managers, had for some time been talking, via a publisher, to M&S and she now seemed to be close to actually getting the first order. She had already outlined the preliminary requirements to some of the technical specialists and to several managers within the company.

Orders

The vast majority of the orders were for print runs of between 500 and 10,000 sheets, the average being about 8000. The most popular size of cards was around 175 mm x 125 mm. A sheet was a piece of thick paper printed in the lithographic printing machines, normally with standard sizes of up to 720 mm x 1020 mm, and with typically 12 to 16 cards printed on it. However, M&S had specified a smaller size of sheet with smaller cards, very carefully arranged on the sheet so that almost no paper would be wasted. They were asking for just five design variants. The delivery requirements were also unusual in that they would be precisely scheduled over several weeks, in contrast to the single delivery for most normal orders.

If they were to get the order from M&S, it would mean processing a single order of 600,000 sheets, so Vicky was somewhat concerned about their ability to deliver on time and to preserve their excellent reputation in the market. However, she had recently been in a meeting with the management team, where Barry Jackson, the Managing Director, had made the case for pursuing the order:

Our market is changing. We know now that the big retailers and supermarkets will play a larger part in the future of selling cards, as well as the specialist publishers, which have made up our traditional customer base. We must do all we can in order to be in that market when these changes take place. We don't want to lose our first-place position. I urge you all to ensure that you really have done everything you can to get these new accounts. As you all know we are totally committed and determined for Wace Burgess to grow with the developing market.

Barry was, however, aware that Vicky was close to getting the contract with M&S and specifically urged her:

Come back to me on that order, we could do with this business! If we can prove ourselves this time we might be able to win more of their work in the future. Check with the manufacturing and technical side once again to see that there aren't any issues we've overlooked, and come back to me as soon as possible. Because the prices will be tight, we cannot afford to have any problems with this one!

The factory

Although Vicky had been through the factory many times since she joined the company six months earlier, she paid particular attention to what John Wakeling, the Technical Director, had to say about the manufacturing details when they made a factory tour with some customers.

While the customers were being shown some details by one of the supervisors, John and Vicky started to discuss the M&S order. John reassured Vicky of their capabilities to handle the order, but admitted that capacity could be a problem. The situation did not look too bad and she trusted the judgement of John, who had been in the company for a long time and knew everything worth knowing about the printing business and technology. The factory certainly worked very smoothly and was good at keeping delivery promises, producing high-quality cards at short notice.

On her way back from the factory, she passed the Customer Services and Pre-press room. Here the graphics were finalised and checked by the customers and company specialists, before being made into printing plates. The staff here were among the best in the industry at ensuring that the artistic details in the card designs were reproduced accurately and to the required colour standards – routinely improving the customers’ artwork using the latest computer imaging technologies as well as the staff's own design skills. Vicky had confidence in these technical skills, but also knew that the customers valued the department's organised approach to getting this work completed quickly. There could be no better supplier for M&S, she was sure of that! She had done absolutely everything to accommodate them, but she clearly understood that, with these huge volumes, the customer could be very particular with regard to quality and delivery performance.

She had earlier asked one of the supervisors about the issue of extra personnel, should they be forced to put on an extra shift. She dialled his internal number again; the reply was, again, positive:

Yes, I have checked it with personnel as well, and there should be no problems. You know, it is quite easy for us to hire extra people when required, both students and others on a short-term basis; but only for the labour-intensive jobs such as packing. We usually put them in teams of two: one experienced and one new. It usually works out very well.

The M&S Christmas cards

The set of cards that M&S had ordered did not really appear so different from many past orders. All the cards were embossed, and the colours were mainly warm reds and greens, with some use of metallic inks and gold foil blocking, which had not often been required on this type of paper. The designs comprised simple eye-catching images including Christmas trees, tartan teddy bears, nostalgic images of children, and a winter rabbit – they were really very charming. The publisher's graphics skills had been used very effectively and the final designs were to be die-cut to give a more interesting shape. The quality of the special paper gave an unusually matt finish to the sample printing, and so the cards would have a very sophisticated, up-market appearance. Combined with Wace Burgess’ manufacturing skills, this design concept would be a winner, and so Vicky felt sure that this would be the beginning of a successful long-term relationship with M&S.

(Source: based on Johnson et al., 1997, p. 29)

Activity 8

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2 Managing a market-led organisation

Activity 8

The M & S case study illustrates the importance of managing relationships. Having read it, try to answer the following questions.

On which value discipline has the company chosen to focus?
How did you identify this?
Are the following key relationships mentioned? Where a particular relationship is mentioned, identify the partner(s).
- Customers
- Co-workers
- Collaborators
- Competitors
Can you identify the following markets? Where you can, describe the markets. Customer markets
- Internal markets
- Recruitment markets
- Supplier markets
- Influence markets
- Referral markets

One key relationship is not discussed in the case study – which one?

Now read the answer

Commentary

A sample answer is given below.

The chosen value discipline of the company is product excellence.

The company has a mission to be at the leading edge of the market and of technological developments.

Three key relationships are mentioned. These are described in the following table.

Customers	Creative publishers; supplying retailers; a wide range of communications-related sectors and large retailers
Co-workers	Technical Director; Managing Director; Customer Services and Pre-press department
Collaborators	Retailers; designers; printers

All the six markets model markets can be identified and are described in the next table.

Customer markets	Creative publishers; supplying retailers; a wide range of communications-related sectors and large retailers
Internal markets	Vicky is responsible for obtaining orders for the whole company, so all the various departments are her customers – they all depend on her for work
Recruitment markets	Colleges and universities
Supplier markets	Paper suppliers; ink and machinery suppliers
Influence markets	Word of mouth; trade journalists; satisfied customers (All these influence the reputation of the organisation)
Referral markets	Freelance designers; publishers

There is no mention of competitors in the case study. We get the impression that Wace Burgess is aware of competitor pressures – if it doesn't get the M&S order, someone else will!

Relationships in your organisation

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2 Managing a market-led organisation

Relationships in your organisation

In this section I have introduced you to case studies and reading that should have helped you understand how market orientation affects an organisation's performance. I have also asked you to look at your own organisation and make judgements regarding its performance. Near the beginning of this session I asked you to consider some questions from Drucker (1992). I have added a few more questions to his list and ask you now to try to answer these questions for your organisation. You probably don't know all the answers, so this activity may involve you in asking colleagues questions or visiting other departments. The ease/difficulty of your information search should give you a clear indication of the extent to which your organisation is market led.

Activity 9

Try to answer the following questions for your organisation:

What is our business?
Who is our customer?
What does our customer consider as value?
What have been our results?
What is our plan?
Now consider the four key relationships (with customers, co-workers, collaborators and competitors). Can you identify these relationships in your organisation?
What influences do these key relationships have on the decisions your organisation makes?
How are these key relationships managed?

Summary

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Summary

The aim of the first section was to introduce you to the concept of the market-led approach to marketing (also referred to as pan-company marketing or marketing orientation) and to differentiate it from ‘marketing department marketing’. I used examples and case studies to make you think about the applicability of this concept to commercial (for-profit) and non-profit organisations, and gave you activities to help you apply it in your own organisation.

Five of the learning outcomes were addressed in Section 1.

Describe the difference between marketing as a function and the concept of being market led – A high-performance organisation understands that being market led is a cross-functional philosophy that has changed its organisational culture to include a value-driven structure and systems designed to co-ordinate all activities around the needs of the customer. There should be three issues on every manager's agenda – customers, competitors and inter-functional co-ordination.

Markets and customers have become the responsibility of every manager in the company – not just the marketing specialists.

A need to focus on meeting the needs of customers has been clearly identified. Managers need to move away from traditional marketing roles towards an organisation-wide process of ‘going to market’. This involves focusing on one of three value disciplines (while still paying attention to the other two value disciplines) to provide added value to their customers. These value disciplines are operational excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy.

Evaluate the relevance of marketing concepts to your own organisation and others, whether commercial or non-profit – The issues raised in the marketing of services in the commercial sector are similar in many respects to those in the non-profit sector. The growing competitive environment in which non-profit organisations have to exist is requiring them to take a more market-focused approach to their service delivery. The problems they face in changing to a customer-focused approach are similar to those in the commercial services sector. Because of the intangible nature of many services, customers tend to rely on extrinsic clues to make judgements about the quality of such services. There are many services (high-credence) for which customers are unqualified to judge the quality or are unable to ascertain the long-term benefits they provide. In these cases, organisations hold a fiduciary responsibility to look after their customers’ best interests.

Identify your own customers and consumers – I gave you the opportunity to think about your customers and consumers at the beginning of this section because the most fundamental process in any market-led approach is that of identifying customers and finding out what they need. It's not just a problem for non-profit organisations. If you are working in a small department of a large organisation, you may be able to identify your internal customers but may never come in contact with your external customers and have no idea who they are.

Identify the tangible and intangible elements of your own products and services – You were given an activity to help you identify the nature of the product(s)/service(s) you offer. That activity also made you think about the role of internal as well as external customers.

Evaluate whether an organisation is market led – I chose one book out of the many marketing texts to illustrate the way that organisations have to focus on adding value to their product or service offering. Treacy and Wiserma suggest that market-led organisations need to focus on three areas: customer orientation, competitor orientation and inter-functional co-ordination to give the best value to their customers. Each organisation also has to decide on a focus for their organisation – this can be operational excellence, product leadership or customer intimacy. The last activity in this section asked you to look at a case study of Marks & Spencer and to apply the Treacy and Wiserma concepts. Three of the learning outcomes related to Section 2.

Evaluate the role of relationships in adding value to market-led organisations – Managing relationships is seen as crucial to a successful market-led approach. I used Piercy's model of key relationships and Christopher et al.'s six markets model to identify the key roles of customers, employees, suppliers, referrers, recruiters and influencers as important stakeholders for any organisation.

Identify the key relationships and markets in a case study – I used the case study of Wace Burgess to help you identify markets and to understand their roles in the success of a company.

Identify key market-led relationships within your own organisation – In this session I have introduced you to case studies and readings that should have helped you understand how market orientation affects an organisation's performance. I have also asked you to look at your own organisation and make judgements regarding its performance.

Do this

Now you have completed this unit, you might like to:

Post a message to the business and management forum.
Review or add to your Learning Journal.
Rate this unit.

Try this

References

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

References

Brassington, F. and Pettitt, S. (2000) Principles of Marketing, 2nd edn, England, Pearson Education Limited.

Christopher, M., Payne, A. F. T. and Ballantyne, D. (1991) Relationship Marketing: Bringing quality, customer service and marketing together, Oxford, Butterworth Heinemann.

Curtis, J. (2000) ‘A clear view of CRM’, Marketing Direct, No. 50, pp. 43–7.

Doyle, P. (1998) ‘Looking to the future: marketing in the 21st century’, in Egan, C. and Jones, M. (eds) The CIM Handbook of Strategic Marketing, Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann.

Drucker, P. F. (1992) ‘Managing the Non-Profit Organisation: Principles and Practices’, New York, HarperCollins.

Egan, C. and Thomas M. (1998) ‘Evaluating stakeholder principles in strategic marketing’, in Egan, C. and Jones, M. (eds), The CIM Handbook of Strategic Marketing, Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann.

Gummesson, E. (1990) ‘The role of the part time marketer’, University of Karlstand Research Report.

Jardine, A. (1999) ‘M&S go online to reverse crisis’, Marketing, 19 May 1999, p. 20.

Jaworski, B. J. and Kohli, A. K. (1990) ‘Marketing orientation: the construct, research propositions, and management implications’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 1–18.

Johnson, R., Chambers, S., Harland, C, Hamson, A. and Slack, N. (1997) Cases in Operations Management, London, Financial Times and Pitman Publishing.

King, S. (1985) ‘Has marketing failed or was it even tried?’, Journal of Marketing Management, No. 1 Summer, pp. 1–19.

Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Saunders, J. and Wong, V. (1996) Principles of Marketing, European Edition, Europe, Prentice Hall.

Narver, J. and Slater, J. (1990) ‘The effect of a market orientation on business profitability’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 54, Issue 4, pp. 20–35.

Piercy, N. (1997) Market-led Strategic Change, Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann.

Slater, J. and Narver, J. (1998) ‘Customer-led and market-oriented: let's not confuse the two’, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 19, pp. 1001–6.

The Economist staff (1999) ‘Marks and Spencer: food for thought’, The Economist, 10 July 1999, p. 76.

Treacy, M. and Wiersema, F. (1996) The Discipline of Market Leaders, London, HarperCollins.

Acknowledgements

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

Acknowledgements

The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this book.

Figures

Figure 2: American Marketing Association;

Figure 5: Piercy, N. (1997) Market-Led Strategic Change, 2nd edn, Butterworth Heinemann Publishers, reprinted by permission of Butterworth Heinemann Publishers, a division of Reed Educational & Professional Publishing Ltd.

Text

Example 2: Pan-company marketing was pioneered by British Airways’, The Marketing Council;

Example 3: 'NSPCC Campaign of the Year’,Marketing Business, the magazine for The Chartered Institute of Marketing;

Case Study 1: 'M&S goes online to reverse crisis’,Marketing, 20 May 1999, Haymarket Publishing Ltd;

Case Study 2: Adapted from Chambers, S. and Helander, T. (1997) ‘Wace Burgess’, in Johnston et al., Cases in Operations Management, 2nd edn, Financial Times Management. Copyright © Robert Johnston, Stuart Chambers, Christine Harland, Alan Harrison, Nigel Slack 1997.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright owners, but if any has been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Related educational resources

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:18:01 GMT

This is a list of all the Related educational resources for the unit B700_1 - The market-led organisation