Marketing is at the core of success of any product or that of the company that produces it. Sometimes it is said even an average product can be sold by intelligent marketing management.

It is not the product that matters but how you sell it which underlines the importance of this core department in any firm. For that matter in many leading organizations, it is not the technical or administrative people who get chosen for top positions of Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and become part of the board.

Marketing Management Functions

Following are the marketing management function:

1. Market Research

First stage in any product development is market research which is done to assess the potential demand and growth expectations in the market. If it is already an existing product category such as shoes, cooking oil, soap, TV, there would be lot of secondary data available from research agencies and in the public domain.

However, if it is a new product or service, it makes sense to do a sample market survey with the help of a competent firm. In such cases, a more broader term is used – marketing research. This can gauge the attitude of buyers, potential market size, consumer preferences, acceptable pricing, product features and attributes. Likewise, in the service industry too, a new marketing management concept or service is normally launched after elaborate surveys.

Market surveys or competitions are organized to decide on product or brand names. William Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name? A rose smells sweet by any other name. However, in business, a good brand name can spell success while an inappropriate name can spell failure.

Product, Price, Promotion and Place are the four P’s of marketing and market research usually focuses on one aspect such as price or promotion. Marketing management professionals depend on two types of data for analysis of the market- qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative focuses on consumer perception, attitudes and opinion of a particular product or service while quantitative data refers to units sold, produced, distributed in a particular region and time.

It may be noticed that when a company launches a new product or brand, if there in adequate research or market surveys most probably the initiative is bound to fail.