Marketing Knowledge & Profession: Relationship With Business Performance

Background of the Study

Marketing strategy can be defined as a tool to make a positive approach in front of the target market. Globalization of business has made the fact clear that if a firm is looking for a competitive edge in the market or within the industry, it should focus on the ways of internationalization. Previous studies on marketing strategy have suggested that entrepreneurs must be updated with current market trends, customer preferences in order to frame marketing strategy. It helps them to attract consumers towards their products. Strategy is nothing but creating a brand image and assist the buyers to recognise product or brand in the midst of similar products. With an insight gathered from Prajogo and Sohal, (2013), it can be said, in the era of advanced technology the numbers of competitors has been increased as customers can compare the product and have extensive knowledge of the product. Studies on marketing strategy has always emphasized the practice of creativity and innovation within this department. In order to do that, the profession of marketing professional is becoming relevant gradually. Studies on effective promotional movement have shown how market demand of a particular product has increased after implication of right strategy.

As written in the article of Hallbäck and Gabrielsson, (2013), however, the impact of effective strategies on overall business performance of a firm is still unexplored as far as the dynamic business environment is concerned. It has been observed that lack of marketing skills and unpredictable nature of business trends are the reasons of project failure. Therefore, the role of detail market research before framing the set of promotional activities has become relevant in recent time. Practitioners have understood that without proper marketing management, products cannot be launched to the customers.

Issues have been addressed that even after executing promising marketing strategy, performance of the firms fail to make any difference in the market. This happens because of increasing competition in the market or systematic error within the company. Systematic error can be defined as wrong estimation of the customer preferences or faulty assumption of several aspects related to business operation. In this case, necessity of skill development has been spotted among the workforce. Hence, the aim of the study is to discover the relationship between business performance and marketing strategies considering the global culture of business along with that as skill and knowledge is necessary to perform important business decisions, research will focus on finding how professional degrees help to understand external factors, which are controlling the market. It can be stated that, this study will help to understand these aspects and will influence entrepreneurs to practice accordingly (Meloncon & Henschel, 2013).

Statement of the Problem

The study will be performed to shed light on current business environment from a global perspective. While conducting the study, the ever-changing nature of business environment influenced by digital aids, will be considered as the most influencing variables (El Sawy & Pereira, 2013). Objectives are as follows.

1. To understand the relationship between marketing and business performance of firms.

Question 1: What is the relationship between marketing strategy and business performance?

According to Scott, (2015), in order to create right platform for a brand it is important to think in an innovative way. With the advancement of technology and digitalization, every brand wants to create a global approach while performing promotional activities. Past studies have suggested that brands should maintain a consistent and frequent social presence in order to be recognised. Social media has taken the spotlight away as far as medium of marketing are concerned. Traditional method of printed or telecasted advertisements are still present, yet social media is found to be the most approachable one to the contemporary customers. The study confirms frequent presence of brands in public platforms would be great and greater if it can be integrated with the messages of customer experience (Brodie et al., 2013). Therefore, it can be assumed that for penetrating the business performance right marketing strategy should be used in its best approachable form.

According to the findings described in Du, (2014), Educational qualification is not about getting a job or earning money, an educated person can make significant change in the aspects like social, personal and intellectual context (Pratono, 2013). In order to set proper promotional strategies, which are capable of influencing the market, there is an increasing demand of marketing professionals who has obtained higher degree. While posting job vacancy advertisements firms look for degrees first, then comes technical experience. Although, technical efficiency sometimes beat higher degree yet the process of receiving the education changes an individual by adding professional mind-set to them. It has been observed that education provides greater depth of understanding than that of experience. Therefore, learning orientation and the system of education helps a potential manager to understand the scenario better considering all the external variable factors. That is why; demand of degree is higher while recruiting marketing executives and officer.

Moreover, it is important to discuss that why all of a sudden demand of professional degrees has been increased. As described in Vaughan, (2017), the dynamism of globalized industry influences the market trend to the extreme level.  Therefore, as described in the article of Leeflang et al., (2014) managers with extensive experiences even are not capable of handling contemporary issues of digital fields. In this context, the relevance of professional degrees has been taken into account. The demand of managers, who can integrate marketing theories with the real scenario, has been increased to make a performance wise difference in a competitive market.

Rationale

With the reference from the study of Pratono, (2013), a clear idea can be generated that with better brand image comes recognition and customers understand what the company is trying to deliver following the consumers’ interest. The more efficient and contemporary the marketing approach will be; firm will receive beneficial growth depending on that. There are other crucial factors as well like product quality and service, efficiency of human resource in operation department and many more. However, innovative as well as creative promotional activities are the central attributes of marketing which leave a positive and direct impact on the customers to take shopping decisions (Wach, 2016). The objective is to gain competitive advantage within the industry and market to the extent where performance can be directly linked with the effective implication of marketing strategy.

Explanatory, exploratory and analytical are the three types of designs by which researches can be conducted. Whereas, analytical design makes a descriptive approach, exploratory presents several theories to understand the research topic in an elaborate way. On the other hand, explanatory tries to establish relationship between variables. In this case, analytical design will be considered as it covers all the possible areas of investigation in a detailed and descriptive manner. Explanatory method can be used to understand the relationship between marketing and performance of the firms. However, the remaining design cannot be applicable for present study.

In this case, only secondary data collection process will be considered while executing the research. Every single detail of annual reports of eminent companies will work as one of the major sources of data as well as printed and online media sources, journal and books and government websites will be considered to build up secondary sources of information to accomplish the research objective. Some of the secondary sources of journal have already been mentioned in literature review section. Apart from these, at least four companies’ annual report will be evaluated and compared, in order to understand the process of positive transformation based on their dynamic marketing strategies. The revenue report of various companies will help to understand the gradual growth of performance with the improvisation of strategies. Company websites are trustworthy in the cases of collecting necessary information. Books on innovative marketing strategies will be consulted to have a distinct idea about best application of appropriate marketing strategy. The annual report of Amazon will be included to show it as an example that how a successful company sets its vision, mission and strategies in order to boost the performance. The report will also consist of import data regarding financial achievement of two consecutive years and gradual growth will be compared in order to understand the transformation. Expectation is based on this kind of examples the research objective can be achieved.

Objective of the Research

Secondary sources are capable of offering several theories on relation of marketing strategy and better performance. Moreover, it can be understood from recruiters’ perspective that why the demand of professional degrees among the officials is increasing day by day to cope with the competitive market (Kosinski et al., 2015). Firms, by recruiting professionals want to cope with the current external factors of business environments, which will technically influence the management to frame strategies, which are contemporary enough to boost the performance by increasing Sale.

As the study is based on the changing and unpredictable nature of business, qualitative data analysis method will be good to apply, because numerical figures, chart and graphs can hardly explain the ongoing turmoil of changing situations and their preferences of highly qualified professionals for that. However, the performance of business based on marketing strategies can be measured and compared with a quantitative analysis. The annual report of the companies will be sorted and compared to understand how it has been evolved with the progression of time. According to Deakin and Wakefield, (2014), online information from the government website, speeches from professionals can be considered to save time.

Researches on ethics like Henderson, Johnson and Auld, (2013) suggests, a strict ethical guideline will be maintained while executing the research. While considering any online information or data its authenticity must be judged before including them as a part of research, because whenever a research has been conducted readers look for some original and new invention. In case of any conflict while collecting data, if needed authorization letter from university will help to justify the standpoint. While using references from secondary sources, acknowledgment in bibliography list is necessary to avoid the act of violation and present the work as plagiarism free. A research, which has been conducted maintaining ethical guidelines, is broadly acceptable.

Planning and framework are helpful still reality cannot be predicted. Researchers come across several challenges while conducting the survey, which can be considered as limitations of the concerned study. Unavailability of resources while collecting data can be an issue to draw any judgement out of that. Occasionally, researchers have a hard time gathering necessary information and evaluating its authenticity before using them for research purpose. Numerous blogs of successful entrepreneurs can be a way to find out the procedure they had applied to influence performance. However, researchers, most of the time get confused about the originality of information.  In that case, studies are influenced by biased sources of information. The stipulated period is another limitation for almost every research work. This study has been proposed to complete within 12 weeks. Yet, the situations do not follow the planning always. It has been understood why it takes time to come to a conclusion and why it is not easy to sum up the study with the available yet not relevant sources.

Although, it cannot be predicted accurately whether the entire study can be completed within the stipulated schedule or not, yet within the proposed time of 12 weeks an effort can be made by framing the agenda with the help of Gantt chart model. It will help the execution of the research easy.

References

Brodie, R. J., Ilic, A., Juric, B., & Hollebeek, L. (2013). Consumer engagement in a virtual brand community: An exploratory analysis. Journal of business research, 66(1), 105-114.

Deakin, H., & Wakefield, K. (2014). Skype interviewing: Reflections of two PhD researchers. Qualitative research, 14(5), 603-616.

Du, J. T. (2014). The information journey of marketing professionals: Incorporating work task?driven information seeking, information judgments, information use, and information sharing. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(9), 1850-1869.

El Sawy, O. A., & Pereira, F. (2013). Business modelling in the dynamic digital space: An ecosystem approach. Heidelberg: Springer.

Hallbäck, J., & Gabrielsson, P. (2013). Entrepreneurial marketing strategies during the growth of international new ventures originating in small and open economies. International Business Review, 22(6), 1008-1020.

Henderson, M., Johnson, N. F., & Auld, G. (2013). Silences of ethical practice: dilemmas for researchers using social media. Educational research and evaluation, 19(6), 546-560.

Kosinski, M., Matz, S. C., Gosling, S. D., Popov, V., & Stillwell, D. (2015). Facebook as a research tool for the social sciences: Opportunities, challenges, ethical considerations, and practical guidelines. American Psychologist, 70(6), 543.

Leeflang, P. S., Verhoef, P. C., Dahlström, P., & Freundt, T. (2014). Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), 1-12.

Meloncon, L., & Henschel, S. (2013). Current state of US undergraduate degree programs in technical and professional communication. Technical Communication, 60(1), 45-64.

Prajogo, D., & Sohal, A. (2013). Supply chain professionals: a study of competencies, use of technologies, and future challenges. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 33(11/12), 1532-1554.

Pratono, A. H. (2013). The Impact of Social Capital on Market Power: Analysis of Competitive Advantage in Small Medium Enterprises.

Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons.

Vaughan, R. J. (2017). Examining the Data Analytics Skill Gap in Mid-Level Marketing Professionals, Driven by the Continuing Exponential Growth of Big Data. Journal of Business Theory and Practice, 5(3), 267.

Wach, K. (2016). Innovative behaviour of high-tech internationalized firms: survey results from Poland. Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review, 4(3), 153.

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