The Essay Explores Marketing's Role In Multinational Companies. (70 Characters)

You have been tasked with the responsibility to explain the role of marketing. You have decided to present your explanation by using a multinational company as your case study, where you will reference how the company utilises marketing to achieve overall business objectives. However, you are aware that marketing is not an isolated function of business, and therefore you will also explain how marketing interrelates with other business functions to deliver results (i.e. profitability, customer satisfaction, market expansion etc …).

Based on a multinational organisation of your choice, explain the role of marketing in the selected organisation and how marketing interrelates with other functions in the business. Illustrate all of your questions with evidence from the chosen organisation. The case study should blend theoretical explanation of relevant concepts with an analysis of examples of your chosen organisation. Your analysis must be exclusive to the selected organisation, and you must provide evidence of independent research .

Please answer the following questions:

1. Explain the role of marketing as a function of business, opposed to marketing as a department in a company.
2. Explain the structure of the marketing department of your selected organisation, and succinctly explain a
minimum of two different marketing roles (e.g. Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Manager, and the Social
Media Manager).
3. Provide an overview of the marketing process, and analyse the importance of the marketing environment to the marketing function.
4. Analyse how the marketing function influences and interrelates with other departments in the organisation.

Explain the role of marketing as a function of business, opposed to marketing as a department in a company.

In the present world, for any organization marketing plays a very important role which cannot be ignored. It is the power of this marketing which has brought smaller and big companies together on the same platform of competition by offering them same market (Gronroos, 2011). It is because of this marketing that present has recognized the value of even small organization and is offer all the necessary help which support the sustainability of their development.

It is this marketing which establishes an association between the organization and the customers by offering the same platform. Marketing helps in providing confidence to the organization to try a new product or introduce a new product in the existing market or create a new market for their product (Sharm et al., 2010). Also, marketing helps in creating a unique image of the organization in the minds of the potential customers, it is not wrong to say that in present time organization are able to achieve their name because of this marketing for both profit-making and non-profit making organizations. For the profit-making organization, marketing help in increasing the revenue and profitability along with helping in expanding customer base which is one of the important aspects to generate sales (Sarkees, Hulland, and Prescott, 2010). It also helps in cracking deals with the corporate customer and partners where more than one party is involved.

The marketing department structure of the Unilever is formulated in such a pattern that at the top of the marketing pyramid, the position belongs to CMO which is known as Chief marketing office. It is the responsibility of CMO to formulate the major marketing strategy of the Unilever along with the necessary processes in the marketing department. It is the duty of the CMO to report the possible outcome of all the marketing strategy to the board of directors. Then comes the president of marketing department whose role is correct to implement the formulate strategy in the Unilever and also helps the CMO in some business decisions (Rugman and Verbeke, 2008). Then, comes the vice president of marketing department whose responsibility is to work with department managers to ensure the right implementation of the marketing strategy which has been decided by top executives. Then comes all the three managers of the marketing department who are marketing manager whose responsibility is to put light on the work of the vice president and help them in implementing marketing strategy on groundwork in the form of creating messages, selecting the modes of medium like websites, social media, and television ads. Then analytics manager whose role is to conduct all the researches related to the formulate marketing strategy for their product, market in which they are going to launch their product and finally comes public relation managers whose role is to maintain the good reputation and goodwill of the Unilever in the eyes of the potential business partners which includes customers, suppliers, investors, and employees.

Currently Keith weed is serving as CMO for Unilever and according to him as a CMO of this organization it is the responsibility is that this organization must work on long-term vision in command to Unilever organizations structure, image in the market both in domestic as well as international market, position of organization in terms of financial capital and its geographical presence. It is the duty of the CMO to develop a group strategy which will be helpful for both organizations as well as for their employees (Unilever, 2018). It is also the duty of the CMO to analysis the amount of risk with the strategy with respect to geographical presence, customer groups, supplier groups because as they all are related with the organization so this strategy will also impact in the same proportion as it will on the Unilever organization. Hence, in case of any change, it becomes CMO duty to involve these entire stakeholders in the new vision of the Unilever. As the present business world is of volatile nature, so it becomes very important for the organization to keep on adopting necessary skills and technique which are helpful in meeting the volatile demands of the present as well as future customers.

Explain the structure of the marketing department of your selected organisation, and succinctly explain a minimum of two different marketing roles.

In Unilever organization, the role of the marketing manager is to focus on the practical aspects of formulated marketing strategy by higher executives of the organization. It becomes the duty of the marketing manager to analyze the strength of the department and tries to find out related skill to implement this strategy successfully on the ground (Gök and Hacioglu, 2010). For success of this strategy the marketing manager also takes help of analytic manager to find out the success ration on the real market in which Unilever is going to launch their product and share the necessary outcome with feedback of both marketing manager as well analytic manager with the vice president of the marketing department which further convey this message to higher authorities. It is also roles of marketing manager to manage the employees of the department by further assigning them duties and fix their target in order to bring out necessary competency in them. It is also the duty of the marketing manager to conduct the necessary performance evaluation of the employees of the department.

Overview of the marketing process and their importance in terms of marketing environment to marketing functions

Every organization in this business world follows necessary steps which are essential in terms of satisfying their customer and potential customer, such process is known as the marketing process. Here, Unilever follows four-step marketing process:

In this stage Unilever tries to research for the current market chances which they can convert in to opportunities by recognizing the needs of the customer, analyze environment of the market in terms of external as well as internal and then try to relate their capability with the need of the opportunity (Elbe, Hallén and Axelsson, 2009). They also involve the trend of past, present and future that can impact the organization. 

Once the opportunity has become clear, then the organization goes for formulating the strategy on the basis of conducted market research which helps the organization to process necessary marketing segmentation and select their target (Murray, Gao and Kotabe, 2011).

Then Unilever tries to place their strategy in the market in terms of marketing mix according to the targeted audience with the mode of the medium which they will use for the positioning their strategy.

According to Keith weed, the present business world is based on a dynamic platform which is changing every second. So in order to compete with this uncertainty business environment, Unilever is continuously monitoring their implemented marketing strategy in order to make them ready for small changes which can be done by only just reshaping the message (Griffith et al., 2014).

For any organization whether small and big, marketing environment plays a very important role in deciding the exact time and strategy for the launch of any product or service. In any case it has been seen that some organizations had overlooked the marketing environment and as a result of this the organization had to face heavy losses because marketing function is directly proportioned to the marketing environment (Morgan, Vorhies and Mason, 2009). In any business decision Unilever always explores the marketing environment for functions because they believe that any change or strategy which organization is going to implement comprises of huge investment, time and effort and in this process if the organization will not consider marketing environment then all the invested capital, time and effort will go totally waste.

It is known to every organization that marketing is not an isolated function; it is motivators which influence the whole organization to focus on the find out chances which can be converted into opportunities. By elaborating the benefits and risk of the particular opportunity, marketing act as a person who triggers a light of hope to achieve organization long-term vision. But at the same time marketing cannot function alone, it always required the help of all other departments in making the strategy successful like R&D, production/operation/logistics, human resource, IT department support and many others (Daugherty et al., 2009). In the case of Unilever after formulating marketing strategy the organization involves the other entire department in order to ensure that strategy will go on the right track.

It is that department of the Unilever that actually shapes the need and expectation of the customer into reality and display the real face of the strategy in front of the board of directors (Ernst, Hoyer and Rubsaamen, 2010). Here the R &D department connects the marketing strategy with the physical and functional appearances of the product in order to generate a satisfied feedback from the potential customer.

As operation function include various activities like inventory, wrapping and distribution which connects the marketing activity of increasing sale, selling products and product services which is being supported by this operation department. It also connects the logistics and distribution channels of the product with the marketing activities.

References

Daugherty, P.J., Chen, H., Mattioda, D.D. and Grawe, S.J. (2009) Marketing/logistics relationships: influence on capabilities and performance. Journal of business logistics, 30(1), pp.1-18.

Elbe, J., Hallén, L. and Axelsson, B. (2009) The destination?management organisation and the integrative destination?marketing process. International journal of tourism research, 11(3), pp.283-296.

Ernst, H., Hoyer, W.D. and Rübsaamen, C. (2010) Sales, marketing, and research-and-development cooperation across new product development stages: implications for success. Journal of Marketing, 74(5), pp.80-92.

Gök, O. and Hacioglu, G. (2010) The organizational roles of marketing and marketing managers. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 28(3), pp.291-309.

Griffith, D., S. Lee, H., Seob Yeo, C. and Calantone, R. (2014) Marketing process adaptation: Antecedent factors and new product performance implications in export markets. International Marketing Review, 31(3), pp.308-334.

Gronroos, C. (2011) A service perspective on business relationships: The value creation, interaction and marketing interface. Industrial marketing management, 40(2), pp.240-247.

Morgan, N.A., Vorhies, D.W. and Mason, C.H. (2009) Market orientation, marketing capabilities, and firm performance. Strategic management journal, 30(8), pp.909-920.

Murray, J.Y., Gao, G.Y. and Kotabe, M. (2011) Market orientation and performance of export ventures: the process through marketing capabilities and competitive advantages. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39(2), pp.252-269.

Rugman, A.M. and Verbeke, A. (2008) A regional solution to the strategy and structure of multinationals. European Management Journal, 26(5), pp.305-313.

Sarkees, M., Hulland, J. and Prescott, J. (2010) Ambidextrous organizations and firm performance: the role of marketing function implementation. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 18(2), pp.165-184.

Sharma, A., Iyer, G.R., Mehrotra, A. and Krishnan, R. (2010) Sustainability and business-to-business marketing: A framework and implications. Industrial Marketing Management, 39(2), pp.330-341.

Unilever. (2018) chief marketing and communication officer [online]. Available from: https://www.unilever.com/about/who-we-are/our-leadership/keith-weed.html [Accessed 25/11/18].