MKT 361Marketing Management & Decision Making SeminarMarketing Discipline |
Professor: Office: Office Hours: Phone: E-mail: Time: Classroom: |
Dr. Aspy P. Palia SCB Room C-402-e W,F (4:00 - 5:00 pm) & by appointment 956-8642 (Work) 947-5144 (Home) aspy@hawaii.edu W,F 1:30 - 2:45 pm SCB Room E-203 |
Marketing is an art which requires for its successful practice the application of the latest scientific tools. In performing their responsibilities, marketing managers need to draw upon the foundations of several disciplines.
First, marketing managers rely on their knowledge of consumer behavior, the heart of marketing, which draws upon the fields of psychology (intra-personal behavior), sociology (inter-personal behavior), and anthropology (behavior over time). Consumer behavior helps marketing managers find the answers to the "what, who, where, how, when, and why" of marketing, and formulate marketing plans that address consumer needs.
Second, marketing managers are familiar with economic principles which help them understand consumer behavior. In particular, the theory of consumer behavior helps explain how a consumer with specific tastes and preferences, faced with a budget constraint, decides to purchase a specific brand from competing brands available at different prices. In addition, marketing managers are cognizant of the concept of elasticity (individual and joint response functions) which measure the responsiveness of consumers to a change in price, advertising, salesforce, or any other marketing variable under their control.
Third, marketing managers are constantly making decisions in a dynamic and complex environment under conditions of uncertainty. They rely on their knowledge of statistics to gather and anlyze data and to handle uncertainty. Making decisions in the face of uncertainty requires familiarity with probability theory, hypothesis testing, interval estimation, and forecasting.
Fourth, marketing managers draw on the discipline of managerial science to plan, organize, staff, direct and control their marketing operations. They seek to achieve group objectives through group effort.
Fifth, marketing managers use their knowledge of production and materials management to ensure that there is a smooth flow of material from the purchase and storage of raw material, goods in-process, finished goods, shipments, and delivery through the distribution channel to the consumer. They strive to achieve a delicate balance in the flow of material and to avoid either excess inventory carrying charges or stock-outs which entail lost sales and lost customers.
Finally, marketing managers draw upon the discipline of accounting to systematically collect, sort, analyze, and present the results of the marketing operations of the firm to provide the basis for informed decision making. Cognizant of the "90-10" (iceberg) principle, marketing managers continually monitor the performance of individual regions or product divisions in addition to the overall performance of the organization. They convert "natural accounts" into "functional accounts" and allocate these "functional accounts" to separate product categories, customers, regions, or divisions, to determine their individual performance.
Marketing managers are aware of the significance of the "80-20" principle. They segment their markets into relatively homogeneous groups of consumers. They target their products/services at one or more of these market segments, and position their firm/brands in relation to the market segments and the competition.
Aware that eternal vigilance is the price of success, marketing managers design marketing information systems to monitor their performance over time, relative to their objectives, and relative to competitor performance.
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