Marketing management is a management discipline that encompasses fields such as strategic planning as well as other processes involved in achieving the objectives of an organization through delivery of quality values to customers. The main focus is aimed satisfying the requirements of the customers. It begins with market research through analysis of the needs and wants within the society. The attraction of the customers continues together with cultivation of mutual benefits, the management of brands and marketing through direct response.
In Brunei, marketing has not been recognized from the management perspective. From the academic perspective, marketing has trended right from the managerial focus to an analytical one hence this leads to increased level of competition. These days the importance of marketing has been lost completely together with its relevance as a management function in quite a number countries including Brunei. Most probably marketing thought improvement is not performing well as far as market environment is concerned hence it has already become less applicable for many managers more especially the ones who are accountable for strategy as well as general management. However, marketing leaders in the country have just pointed towards customer oriented ways, service dominated concept of marketing as the major development, definition and the delivery of customer value that highly focuses on marketing as one of the set of production process instead of a separate management function (Robert 1959).
Despite the fact that marketing is not viewed as an economic activity, it is viewed as a management discipline and it emerged in the beginning of the year 1950. However, this same alteration got marked by two developments. First is the marketing perspective concept as a philosophy in management which puts more emphasis on the customer orientation. The second one is the amalgamation of quantitative methods as well as behavioral science into the marketing discipline. The biggest change in my country Brunei is that considerable changes have increased due to so many ways of marketing. During the old days marketers used to believe that they should always make their products appeal to a great number of people. However, that idea has not been changed from the mind of people hence what they have done is to influence the capabilities of the information age in order to get more information more than customers together with their preferences (Zaltman 1968).
Marketing has been always changing every now and again due to the market place dynamics. Brunei spends a lot of money when it is trying to market products to other countries because out of that, the situation has changed within a short period of time in terms of marketing. The techniques and the ways of marketing keep on changing with time whereby a firm cannot afford to avoid involving itself in the latest techniques of marketing (Judith, 1965).
The country has to manage the possible changes when it wants to predict the future requirements of market of the goods produced. Consequently, as much as the changes occur in marketing, they will as well keep on affecting the marketing environment. Surprisingly enough, even as advertising dollars have gone up from other activities to the field sales force operation, academic interest in sales management has disappeared completely. The way sales as well as marketing are quite distinct management activities in several companies, it looks like so many academics don’t think of sales management whenever they think of marketing (Anderson 1980).
Even though the theory of market segmentation came into existence so many years ago, before the existence of the means and ways of improving marketing efficiency and effectiveness; the theory increased in this hyperactive market environment. Marketing strategy relied on statistical analysis of the market research statistics. Market segmentation strategy remained wholly reliable with the philosophy of client orientation. Marketing management has experienced so many changes during Era four. Among the changes that have occurred is the rapid diffusion of computer together with telecommunications technology. Evolution has equally changed from bureaucratic into very flexible organizational forms. On the other hand, marketing has become less essential at the corporate level and marketing management roles have been moved out to the field sales organization within the country hence they have been removed as a different activity (Alderson 1959).
Management functions in the product level brand, as far as firms of the consumer packaged goods are concerned, has redefined as well as relocated to the field sales organization instead of the traditional roles in the development of the brand whereby the consumer advertising in highly used. At the business level, the outstanding marketing management positions focuses so much on the brand strategy together with marketing communications (Peter 1954). Sales management, pricing as well product strategy and channel strategy are SBU level responsibilities with a relatively short term tactical focus. However, the innovation for long range product development is seemingly loosing priority. Large scale availability of computers and the reliable databases, marketing scholars are encouraged by the academic culture to emphasize on the empirical data, quantitative methods of data analysis and arithmetical modeling in doing their research. A very strong element of this approach used to be the well-known DuPont model of marketing management and it was based greatly on return on investment. The big companies were controlled effectively from the careful allocations of financial resources across a strategic business units competing for the very limited funds (Beatrice 2001).
Return on investment appeared to be dominant criterion in doing the evaluation on business performance as well as in budgeting expenditures together with marketing. Attributing profit and revenue results to marketing expenditures is considered to be very difficult for the reason of multiple causation, similar measurement, lagged effects and estimation problems. In the midst of the year 1970, the regulation of strategic planning was really in full bloom because it was evidenced by the propagation of business strategic planning departments. Several key concepts within the marketing arena for example market segmentation, customer orientation and positioning were promoted and adopted aggressively by the strategic management field (John 1979).
To the teachers of marketing who are eager to bring about managerial impact within the field, they have an uphill task because there is little attention currently in the areas of marketing strategies as well as the sales-force management. They need to advocate for the new paradigm of marketing management to influence the focus of the field firms to the clients and from the products to quality services as well as the benefits. Value driven approach has the ability to seal the gap that exists in marketing management. Meaningful communication among the scholars of marketing, the marketing managers as well as the general managers to bring about meaningful work becomes highly significant.
Bibliography
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