THE POSITION OF THE MARKETING MANAGER IN THE ORGANIZATION AND HIS BEHAVIOUR
Gjorgjiev M.
International Slavic University „Gavrilo Romanovic Derzavin“ – Sveti Nikole – Bitola – R. Macedonia
THE POSITION OF THE MARKETING MANAGER IN THE ORGANIZATION AND HIS BEHAVIOUR
Abstract
This abstract explains and demonstrates the functions in the organization of the marketing manager, and, mostly, his focus is on improvement of the competitiveness, marketing research on products and services in order to get familiar with the consumer’s needs, as well as developing marketing strategies that will be applied/used, the managing of the relationship with clients and employees in the marketing department.
The marketing manager shall find new business opportunities through marketing research and possibilities that it provides.
Keywords: functions, research, strategies, analysis, goals
INTRODUCTION
The marketing managers in the organizations are mainly focused on the practical implementation and management of the marketing activities in the organization. A marketing manager is an efficient marketing manager in his function in the organization shall possess excellent communications and analytical skills.
The marketing managers, especially the ones in the smaller organizations are responsible for all marketing activities and strategies for that organization and they deal with formulating, directing, coordinating of the marketing activities in order to influence the end users and customers to select products and services offered by the organization instead of the competitive products and services. The marketing managers execute many duties aimed at developing and implementing long-term and short-term marketing strategies in the organization.
The wide range of tasks require the marketing manager to have a strong communication with the various sectors in his organization including the research and development sectors, production sector, sales sector and in some organizations the legal service.
Conducting marketing research by the marketing manager
Common for all marketing managers is that their obligation in the organization is to conduct the marketing research in order to get a clear picture for the clients and consumers of the products and services offered by the organization are actually on demand and wanted.
According to them, the marketing research enables the marketing managers to identify new market possibilities and help the organizations create market niche[1] for their products and services. The marketing research as one of the obligations and role of the marketing manager in the organization also includes studying the competition in order to get a picture on how to develop superior products and apply efficient marketing techniques.
General and common for all marketing managers is that research should provide better positioning in relation to the competition, or to position the product on the market in a way that will be recognized by the consumer. The advantage over the competition, such as low costs and high quality does not necessarily affect the position of the product on the market. The perception by the consumers of the same products is different. The marketing manager is tasked to position the product in the minds of future consumers. Therefore, the positioning of the products is a sum of perceptions and feelings that the consumers have for a certain product in relation to the competition’s product.
From the interviews provided by our marketing managers in the Macedonian organizations we can see that they often conduct marketing research by using questionnaires to fill, analysis and interviews with consumers in order to make better analysis of the buying habits of the consumers, face to face with customers and similar methods that help get closer to the needs of consumers.
Developing marketing strategies
The marketing managers are responsible for developing the marketing strategies in the organizations. According to them, these strategies give a clear idea as to how the organization will promote its products and services on the targeted markets in order to increase sales and maintain the competitive advantage over its competitors.
The marketing managers here share the opinion that some advantages over the competition is too small, too expensive to develop or not in accordance with the profile of the company. Any difference in the competition has the potential to create costs for the company and for the consumer’s welfare. Hence, the marketing managers must be careful when selecting how they will differ from competitors.
They design their strategy positioning and give priority to several possible advantages.
The marketing managers agree that one difference in terms of competition is worth asking if they meet the following criteria including: relevance, diversity, superiority, communication, prevention, availability, profitability.
The company needs a framework to choose the one advantage that has makes sense to be developed.
Managing the relations with the client
The marketing manager also executes the function of protecting the relation with the clients in the organization. The marketing manager collects the information from the client’s data base in order to assist the client in creating special survey/questionnaire for evaluation of the client’s satisfaction.
After receiving the data from the client’s survey/questionnaire, the marketing manager shares the received information with the other employees in order to ensure that they will offer the best service to the clients in terms of building permanent relations.
Managing the employing in the marketing department
The marketing managers are responsible for the marketing department for the employees in it. The marketing manager assigns tasks and sets targets for the personnel in the department. Also, a task of the marketing manager is to conduct periodical evaluations of the organization’s employees.
The marketing managers and the employees in the marketing department shall gain competencies for the effective work, and to be initiators and engines of changing the internal relations towards greater sustainability of the company’s competitiveness, determining the competitiveness factors over which the employees have immediate jurisdiction and with that responsibility to successfully face the same.
Identifying new business possibilities
The marketing mangers analyze the market trends in order to identify new and unused markets for the products and services of the organization.
Thus, the strategy for successful working of each organization should be directed towards improvement of the assortment and quality of supply, to penetrate new markets and segments, as well as stabilizing the acquired positions on the existing markets. Instead of mass marketing, here the marketing managers most often apply targeted marketing, identifying the market segments, selecting one or several segments and developing certain strategies for each targeted market.
Segmentation and positioning on the Macedonian market
The marketing managers say about the market segmentation that it has a series of advantages for the Macedonian enterprises which enable finding favorable market opportunities and their utilization. The adoption of the optimal portfolio can be made based on accurate analyzes and forecasts of the market. There are many ways of segmentation, but every segmentation is not effective.
The marketing managers in Macedonia, based on their market analyzes and surveys, as well as the ones from the individual participants, came to the conclusion that the efficiency and effectiveness of segmentation and positioning of the Macedonian market can be improved in the following ways: training of team managers in the enterprise in order to ensure competitiveness and greater consumption and demand for their products and services in the domestic and foreign market shares at a discount or free products, teamwork and low prices, creating new products and services, promotion marketing, quality improvement, improvement of communication, better promotion of each product and service, greater engagement of the marketing sector through direct marketing and online communication with consumers.
We can conclude from that the analysis of the interviews with the marketing managers of several successful companies in Macedonia, that depending on the type of organization and its activities, the marketing managers use similar marketing strategies that are individually adjusted to the type of activity, and the needs of the market.
[1] Market niche is one segment or one part of the market which in a way possesses special characteristics and specificities in relation to the other segments
References
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