Taylor Comer
Due Date: 2/3/15
Dr. Jifeng Mu, MKT 514: Management of Marketing Activities
Chapter I: Foundations of Strategic Marketing Management
The first chapter in the textbook Foundations of Strategic Marketing Management written by Roger Kerin and Robert Peterson has a plethora of insightful information within the text. The discussions in this textbook range from SWOT analysis to a brief description breaking down the marketing mix. The goals of this chapter are to help the reader’s understand the following concepts:
1. Defining an organization’s business, mission, and goals
2. Identifying and framing organizational growth opportunities
3. Formulating product-market strategies
4. Budgeting marketing, financial and production resources
5. Developing reformulation and recovery strategies
These 5 categories translate to being the foundations of strategic marketing management and are thoroughly discussed throughout the chapter.
The first section defines and discusses an organization’s business, mission, and goals. I learned that when defining a business, one should start by defining the customer they are willing to serve, the needs of those particular customers, and the technology needed to serve those customers. In the long-run, starting a business from a customer-oriented or market-oriented strategy instead of the outdated product-producing or service-delivering enterprise will benefit the company in being more successful. In the next step of developing the company’s mission, one should ensure that it reinforces and compliments its business definition. When drafting the mission for the company, most statements explain the organization’s purpose in reference to its customers, products and/or services, market, philosophy, and technology. When creating the mission, one could look to see if it embodies these three characteristics:
1. Clearly define management’s vision of its long-term direction and character.
2. Provide guidance in identifying, pursuing, and evaluating opportunities in the market or for the product.
3. Inspire and challenge employees to live up to the character of the mission in everyday working environment. Having these three characteristics in mind can set away a carefully and powerful mission from the standard run of the mill mission statement. The last part of this section discusses carefully drafting the goals and objectives of the company. Goals and objectives should include a focus on production, finances, and/or marketing, as these three principal categories give a fused image of what you want for the company in a certain time period. Ultimately, the goals and objectives are taking the intangible mission and converting it into tangible actions. The second section discusses identifying and framing organizational growth opportunities. When looking at growth opportunities marketing managers must consider these three simple questions when developing a strategy: 1. What might we do?, 2. What do we do best?, 3. What must we do? The first question introduces the concept of environmental opportunity in the market. The second question distinguishes what one’s company’s competencies are and if they are distinctive in the market. A competency is essentially what the company does better than others, what sets them apart from the competition, resulting in a competitive advantage. The third question initiates thought into what actions must be taken to make the company successful. Another concept discussed in this section is the Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis. It is used as a simple framework to define how the company can grow by taking the organization’s strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats and using them to create a course of action. The third section deals with formulating product-market strategies. Formulation