STRATEGIC MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Strategic Marketing Management

Strategic Marketing Management

Planning principles and range of tools and techniques involved in developing a marketing strategy

In most of the standard literature on marketing and marketing management, the marketing mix is considered the core of marketing decision making. There is also a newer body of literature which relates marketing to the development of long-term relationships with customers, and other parties such as suppliers, distributors and financial institutions. These two views of marketing represent different paradigms. The marketing approach and activities of a given firm will differ depending on which paradigm, or view of what marketing is, this firm applies. The marketing concept as it is formulated in the standard literature on marketing is predominantly related to the exchange concept and leads to the use of a marketing mix paradigm. In this article we argue that the number of marketing strategies that may be used can be seen as a continuum. Depending on where on this continuum a given firm places itself, different marketing and management decisions will have to be taken, and internally the firm will function differently. In the 1990s a static view of the marketing concept predominantly geared to one single marketing paradigm will not be enough. A much more differentiated approach is required. The purpose of the present article is to discuss the concept of the "marketing strategy continuum", in which marketing and management implications are related to various positions on this continuum, and where on the continuum firms marketing various types of goods and services would typically place themselves.

Exchanges and the Marketing Mix Paradigm

The marketing mix paradigm is geared to the exchange concept. Decisions concerning the 4 Ps of the marketing mix (e.g. and renewed by American Marketing Association in 2003) based on Borden's and Culliton's notion of the marketer as a "mixer of ingredients" form the core of marketing . The notion of exchanges as a central concept in marketing means that marketing revolves around the exchange of various types of values (e.g. goods and services[14-18]. As Bagozzi put it: "Exchange is a central concept in marketing, and it may well serve as the foundation for that elusive 'general theory of marketing"'.

There should not be any contradiction between marketing as exchanges and a long-term relationship view of marketing. As Houston and Gassenheimer say in a discussion of the exchange concept in marketing, "if we limit our attention to the study of single, isolated exchanges we ignore much of the heart of what we call 'marketing'. Good marketing management emphasises the building of long-term relationships". Levy and Zaltman in their discussion of marketing as a social system define marketing as a system where people or groups are interrelated, engaged in reaching a shared goal, and "... having patterned relationships with one another". The common goal is described as "the consummation of an exchange. In spite of the obvious connection between exchanges and relationships, the discussion of the exchange concept in marketing has remained on a static level and focused on isolated transactions, without ...