When Marketing is Strategy

Now a day, many industries upstream activities such as sourcing, production and logistics. On
other hand they do downstream activities that aim at reducing customer’s costs. Downstream
activities such as delivering a product for specific consumption circumstances are increasingly
the reason customers choose one brand over another and provide the basis for customer loyalty.
The Strategic question these days is what else can we do for our customers? The new center of
gravity demands a rethink. First, the sources and locus of competitive advantage now lie outside
the firm. Second downstream is no longer about having the better product. Third, the pace and
evolution of markets are now driven by customers shifting purchase criteria rather than by
improvements in products. The competitive advantage of upstream is that companies fight to
build unique assets then construct a wall to prevent them from leaking on the contrary,
downstream resides outside the company it is often embedded in the process for interacting with
customers in marketplace information and in customer behavior. A company is market-oriented,
according to the technical definition, if it has mastered the art of listening to customers,
understanding their needs, and developing products and services that meet those needs. But the
reality is that companies are increasingly finding success not by being responsive to customers’
stated preferences but by defining what customers are looking for and shaping their criteria of
purchase. The company is set up to respond to actual customer purchase behavior, rapidly
making thousands more of the products that fly off the shelf and culling those that don’t. When
advantage moves downstream, three critical decisions can determine whom you play against:
how you position your offering in the mind of the customer, how you place yourself vis-à-vis
your competitive set within the distribution channel, and your pricing. In choosing how to
position products, managers have tended to pay attention to the size and growth of the market
and overlook the intensity and identity of the competition. Downstream, you can actively place
yourself within a competitive set or away from it. Although choosing to avoid competitors may
minimize head-on competition, there is no guarantee that you won’t still have to contend with
competitors you didn’t want or ask for. Brands compete by convincing customers of relative
importance of their criterion of purchase. The product remains an essential ingredient in
demonstrating the brand’s positioning. Technological improvements don’t drive the pace of
change in the industry; marketing power does. Market change can be evolutionary, generational,
or revolutionary, and each type can be comprehended as far as shopper brain science.
Evolutionary changes push the limits of existing criteria of procurement. Generational changes
present new criteria that supplement old ones, regularly opening up new market fragments.
Revolutionary changes don't simply present new criteria, they render the old ones out of date. A
progressing downstream tilt in the industry after industry raises doubt about many instilled
suppositions about business specifically, those about serious bit of leeway, rivalry, and
advancement.
 Marketing is Management
It was Peter Drucker who first offered a distinct view of marketing as the central management
discipline. By tracing Drucker’s influence on marketing thinking, begins with his assertion of the
centrality of marketing to the management function. Which lead to huge arguments about the
importance of principles, values and theory of business management as drivers of analysis and
action. McKitterick like Drucker saw marketing as a component of organizational culture. On the
contrary unlike Drucker, he saw it as a distinct function within the organization hierarchy.
Himself thought marketing was the most developed of the management disciplines and thus the
most teachable. He proceeded to pressure that advancement of a showcasing framework
including physical circulation, a monetary framework to encourage dissemination and genuine
advertising to incorporate buyer needs, needs and buying power with assets and creation
abilities, was the essential initial phase in financial improvement, changing over inert interest
into compelling interest. At that point promoting can make the improvement for the advancement
of present day, dependable, proficient administration by making open door for the maker who
realizes how to design, how to compose, how to lead individuals, how to advance. While
Drucker was persuaded of showcasing's capability to lead the improvement of a business and an
economy by applying expository strategies to advertise information, he was stressed over the
drawback of attempting to make the executives progressively logical. Would the management
science drive out thoughtfulness regarding the executives’ standards, hypothesis and qualities?
Drucker warned about the possibility that analytical techniques of management science would
undermine management. The main goal of a management science must be to enable business to
take the right risk by providing knowledge and understanding of alternative risks and
expectations. Drucker frequently noticed the contention between an emphasis on transient money
related objectives and the since quite a while ago run endurance and development of the firm in a
unique market condition. The promoting idea contended that client direction prompts benefit
amplification and augments the estimation of the firm as time goes on. Himself was also
concerned that strategic planning as a formal discipline would doubt the importance of social and
moral leadership by management. Drucker was certain that the requirements and needs of the
two workers and clients were continually developing and that the administration's key duties
were long haul and key, surveying the changing business sector condition and reconfiguring the
association's assets and capacities to react in like manner. A careful reconsideration of the
principles and values espoused by Drucker can suggest a more optimistic future for marketing.
 Personal Opinion
Both articles go through the idea that companies should study the needs, wants and values of
targeted customers for product implementation and positioning. As for growth maximization and
profit both articles showed the necessity for customers’ value by hitting the idea reducing costs
and long run survival goals.
Generational changes and technological changes both had a part of the argument were they
approved that affects the behavior of the customers.
On the contrary, Ducker didn’t ignore management from the marketing concept. As his point of
view was behavioral, economic managerial and quantitative approaches can be more stimulating
than the four P’s and the marketing mix. Whereas Niraj Dawar “Harvard Business Review” was
emphasizing on the positioning of the product i.e. 4 P’s.