Strategic Marketing attempts to determine how an organisation competes against its competitors in a market place. In particular, it aims at generating a competitive advantage relative to its competitors.
Operational Marketing executes marketing functions to attract and keep customers and to maximize the value derived for them, as well as to satisfy the customer with prompt services and meeting the customer expectations. Operational Marketing includes the determination of the marketing mix.
A market-focused, or customer-focused, organization first determines what its potential customers desire, and then builds the product or service . Marketing theory and practice is justified in the belief that customers use a product/service because they have a need, or because a product/service provides a perceived benefit. Two major factors of marketing are the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management) and the recruitment of new customers (acquisition).
Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts the marketer to building a relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits that sold the buyer in the first place, and improving the product/service continuously to protect the business from competitive encroachments.
Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly sociology, psychology, and economics. Antropology is also a small, but growing, influence. Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts.
For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four 'Ps' must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. Marketers depend on marketing research, both formal and informal, to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for it. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing management is the practical application of this process. The offer is also an important addition to the 4P's theory.
Within most organisations, the activities encompassed by the marketing function are led by a Vice President or Director of Marketing. A growing number of organizations, especially large US companies, have a Chief Marketing Officer position, reporting to the Chief Executive Officer.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) states, “Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives".
