Chapter
8
Marketing Strategy
Chapter 8
Marketing
Implementation
Organizations do not implement strategies,
PEOPLE DO!
Chapter
8
Marketing Implementation
• Marketing implementation is the process of executing the
marketing strategy by creating specific actions that will ensure
that the marketing objectives are achieved.
• Marketing strategies almost always turn out differently than
anticipated because of the difference between intended
marketing strategy and realized marketing strategy.
– Intended marketing strategy is what the organization wants to
happen; it is the organization's planned strategic choice.
– Realized marketing strategy is the strategy that actually takes
place.
– The difference between the intended and realized strategy is
more often than not the result of the way the intended marketing
strategy is implemented.
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8
Issues in Marketing Implementation
• Planning and Implementation Are Interdependent
Processes
• Planning and Implementation Are Constantly
Evolving
• Planning and Implementation Are Separated
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8
Planning and Implementation Are
Interdependent Processes
• While it is true that the content of the marketing
plan determines how it will be implemented, it is
also true that how a marketing strategy is to be
implemented determines the content of the
marketing plan.
• Certain marketing strategies will dictate some parts
of their implementation.
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8
Planning and Implementation Are
Constantly Evolving
• The reality of marketing is that critically important
environmental factors are constantly shifting.
– As customers change their wants and needs, as competitors devise
new marketing strategies, and as the organization's own internal
environment changes, the firm must constantly adapt.
– Because of the interrelationship between marketing strategy and
marketing implementation, both must constantly change.
• Managers often assume that there is one correct way to
implement a given strategy.
– Just as strategy often results from trial and error, so does marketing
implementation.
– The fact that marketing is customer-driven (marketing concept)
requires that the organization be flexible enough to alter its
implementation to counter changes in its customers' preferences or the
competitive environment.
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8
Planning and Implementation Are
Separated
• The ineffective implementation of marketing strategy is often
a self-generated problem stemming from the planning process
itself.
– While strategic planning is carried out by top managers, the
responsibility for implementing marketing plans falls on lower-level
managers and frontline employees.
– Because top managers are separated from the "front line" of the
organization, they often do not understand the unique problems
associated with implementing marketing strategies.
– Conversely, those employees who do understand the problems of
marketing implementation usually have no voice in developing the
marketing plan.
• Another trap that top managers often fall into is believing that
lower-level managers and frontline employees will be excited
about the marketing strategy and motivated to implement it.
Chapter
8
The Components of Successful Marketing
Implementation
• Shared goals and values among all employees within the
organization are the "glue" that binds the entire organization together
as a single, functioning unit.
• Marketing structure refers to how an organization's marketing
activities are organized.
• Organizational systems and processes are collections of work
activities that take in a variety of inputs to create information and
communication outputs that ensure the consistent day-to-day
operation of the organization.
• An organization's resources can include a wide variety of assets that
can be brought together during marketing implementation.
• People refers to the human side of marketing implementation, the
"5th P" of marketing.
• Leadership, the art of managing people, includes how managers
communicate with employees, as well as how they motivate their
people to implement a marketing strategy.
Chapter
8
Organization’s Shared Goals and Values
• Without a common direction to hold the organization
together, different areas of the company may work
toward different outcomes, thus limiting the success of
the entire organization.
• Institutionalizing shared goals and values within a firm's
culture is a long-term process.
– The primary means of creating shared goals and values is
through employee training and socialization programs.
– Creating shared goals and values is the most important
part of marketing implementation because it stimulates
organizational commitment where employees become
more motivated to implement the marketing strategy and
meet customer needs.
Chapter
8
Organization’s Marketing Structure
• The organization's marketing structure establishes formal lines
of authority, as well as the division of labor within the
marketing function.
• Managers must decide how to divide and integrate marketing
responsibilities and how much to centralize decision making.
– In a centralized marketing structure, all marketing activities and
decisions are coordinated and managed from the top of the marketing
hierarchy. Centralized structures are very cost-efficient and effective in
ensuring standardization within the marketing program.
– In a decentralized marketing structure, marketing activities and
decisions are coordinated and managed from the front line of the
organization. Decentralized marketing structures have the advantage of
placing marketing decisions close to the front line where customer
needs are the priority.
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8
Organizational Systems and Processes
• By providing a continuous flow of information, the
marketing information system (MIS) can assist in the
analysis of the internal and external environments before
marketing strategies are developed.
• The MIS is also used during implementation to assist in
the evaluation and control of all marketing activities.
Chapter
8
Organization’s Resources
• Organization assets may be tangible or intangible
– Tangible resources include financial resources,
manufacturing capacity, facilities, and equipment.
– Intangible resources include marketing expertise, customer
loyalty, and external relationships/strategic alliances.
• A critical and honest evaluation of available resources
during the environmental and SWOT analyses can
help ensure that the marketing strategy and marketing
implementation are within the realm of possibility.
• Once the marketing plan is completed, the manager
must seek the approval of needed resources from top
management.
Chapter
8
Organization’s People
• The implementation of any marketing strategy
depends on the quality, diversity, and skills of the
firm's work force.
• People are considered by many as the “5th P” of
marketing.
• The people component also includes employee
selection and training, reward policies, employee
motivation, commitment, and morale.
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8
Organization’s Leadership
• Leaders are responsible for establishing the corporate
culture necessary for implementation success.
• Marketing implementation is more successful when
leaders create an organizational culture characterized
by open communication between employees and
managers.
• One of the most important tasks leaders perform is to
motivate their employees to give their best effort.
• A final trait that all leaders possess is a leadership
style, or way of approaching a given task.
Chapter
8
Approaches to Marketing Implementation
• With the command approach, marketing strategies are
evaluated and selected at the top of the organization and forced
downward to lower levels where frontline managers and
employees are expected to implement them.
• The change approach is similar to the command approach
except that it focuses explicitly on implementation.
• In the consensus approach, top managers and lower-level
managers work together to evaluate and develop marketing
strategies.
• The cultural approach carries the participative style of the
consensus approach to the lower levels of the organization.
Chapter
8
The Command Approach
• The command approach has two advantages:
– It makes decision making easier.
– It reduces uncertainty as to what is to be done.
• The command approach has several disadvantages:
– It does not consider the feasibility of implementing the
marketing strategy.
– It divides the organization into strategists and
implementers, with no consideration for how strategy and
implementation affect each other.
– The command approach often creates employee motivation
problems.
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8
The Change Approach
• The basic premise here is to modify the organization
in ways that will ensure the successful implementation
of the chosen marketing strategy.
• A manager taking this approach is more of an
architect and politician, skillfully crafting the
organization to fit the requirements of the chosen
marketing strategy.
• The change approach still suffers from the issue of
separation of planning and implementation.
• This approach often take a great deal of time to design
and implement.
Chapter
8
The Consensus Approach
• The underlying premise is that managers from different areas and
levels of the organization come together as a team to "brainstorm"
and develop the marketing strategy.
• Through this collective decision-making process, a marketing
strategy is agreed upon and a consensus reached as to the overall
direction of the organization.
• This approach moves some of the decision-making authority
closer to the front lines.
• The consensus approach often retains the barrier between
strategists and implementers.
• Managers at all levels within the organization must communicate
openly about strategy on a daily basis, not just during formal
strategy development sessions.
• This works best in complex, uncertain, and highly unstable
environments.
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8
The Cultural Approach
• The basic premise is that marketing strategy is a part of the
overall organizational vision.
• The goal of top managers using this approach is to shape the
organization's culture in such a way that all employees—top
managers to janitors participate in making decisions that help
the organization reach its objectives.
• As a result, the cultural approach breaks down the barrier
between strategists and implementers so that all employees
work toward a single purpose.
• Employees are allowed to design their own work procedures,
as long as they are consistent with the organizational mission,
goals, and objectives. This extreme form of decentralization is
often called empowerment (i.e.,allowing them to make
decisions on how to perform their jobs).
Chapter
8
People: the Human Side of Marketing
Implementation
• Employee Selection and Training
• Employee Evaluation and Compensation Policies
• Employee Motivation, Satisfaction, and
Commitment
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8
Employee Selection and Training
• One of the most critical aspects of marketing
implementation is matching employees' skills and
abilities to the marketing tasks to be performed
through employee recruitment, selection, and training.
– One of the best ways to ensure a match of skills to
activities is to select individuals with raw abilities and
train them to perform certain tasks.
– Through training and socialization programs, employees
learn to understand what is expected of them in
implementing a marketing strategy.
– An increasingly important aspect of selection and training
practices is the management of employee diversity,
whether it be ethnic or generational.
Chapter
8
Employee Evaluation and Compensation
Policies
• Develop an evaluation and compensation program
that ties employee rewards to performance levels on
required marketing activities.
• Employee evaluation and compensation should be
based on either outcome-based or behavior-based
control systems.
– Outcome-based control evaluates and compensates
employees based on measurable, quantitative standards,
such as sales volume or gross margin levels.
– Behavior-based control evaluates and compensates
employees based on subjective, qualitative standards such
as effort, motivation, teamwork, and friendliness
toward/problem solving with customers.
Chapter
8
Employee Motivation, Satisfaction, and
Commitment
• This is the extent to which employees are motivated
to implement a strategy, their overall feelings of job
satisfaction, and the commitment they feel toward
the organization and its goals.
– While factors such as employee motivation, satisfaction,
and commitment are critical to successful implementation,
they are highly dependent on other components, especially
training, the evaluation/compensation system, and
leadership, as well as marketing structure and processes.
– The key is to recognize the importance of these factors to
successful marketing implementation, and to manage them
accordingly.
Chapter
8
The Expanding Role of Internal Marketing
• Internal marketing refers to the managerial actions
necessary to make all members of the organization
understand and accept their respective roles in
implementing marketing strategy.
– Under the internal marketing approach, every employee has
two sets of customers: external and internal.
– Unlike traditional approaches where the responsibility for
implementation rests with lower levels of the organization,
the internal marketing approach places this responsibility on
all employees, regardless of organizational level.
– Successful marketing implementation comes from an
accumulation of individual actions where all employees are
responsible for implementing the marketing strategy.
Chapter
8
The Four Ps of Internal Marketing
Internal Products
The marketing strategy
Employee tasks, behaviors, values, & attitudes
Internal Prices
Employees’ job-related changes
Working harder; expanding abilities
Internal Distribution
How the marketing strategy is communicated (e.g., planning sessions,
workshops, formal reports, employee training)
Internal Promotion
Informing and persuading employees about the merits of the
marketing strategy (e.g., speeches, newsletters, etc.)
Chapter
8
Successful Implementing an Internal
Marketing Approach Requires
• The recruitment, selection, and training of employees must be
considered an important component of marketing
implementation.
• Top managers must be completely committed to the marketing
strategy and overall marketing plan.
• Employee compensation programs must be linked to the
implementation of the marketing strategy.
• The organization should be characterized by open
communication among all employees, regardless of
organizational level.
• Organizational structures, policies, and processes should match
the marketing strategy to ensure that the strategy is capable of
being implemented.
Chapter
8
Hypothetical Implementation Timeline
Weeks
Conduct customer surveys
Analyze data, present findings
Develop point-of-purchase materials
Conduct sales force training
Roll out program in selected regions
with personal and mass promotion
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