1. Introduction
As today’s business is increasingly competitive, companies are thriving for a place in the market. In this age, marketing needs to be more customer-oriented as customers are seeking more values out of what they buy. With the pressure both from the market and customers, companies are forced to seek innovative products with added value for their customers in order to beat out their competitors and stay ahead of the competition. There are also other factors which influence the success of marketing of a company.
The purpose of this study is going to review Zara as an organization and provide recommend on how it can take the market-orientation concept and apply it, also, benefits involved in adopting the principle, and challenges that may occur while implementing this concept.
1.1 Market orientation
Market orientation (MO) has been a key concept in the marketing discipline.
The term can be defined in a broad and representative way as the “organization-wide generation of market intelligence pertaining to customers, competitors, and forces affecting them, internal dissemination of the intelligence, and reactive as well as proactive responsiveness to the intelligence,” (Jaworski and Kohli, 1996, p.131).
Cited by Sorensen (2009), Stoelhorst and van Raaij (2004) described market orientation as marketing’s explanation of performance differentials between companies. The strategic MO provides some advantages: being able to respond to the market better, especially
In this modern society, marketers have a desire to build a customer driven marketing strategy, in a view to creating lasting customer relationships, to do this they can use one of the five marketing management philosophies which consist of production, product, selling, marketing and societal, and finally marketing concept. The suitableness of these philosophies depends on the nature of the business and its target market. This report will discuss each of these philosophies for a particular product, with comparisons.
The leading and best marketers across the globe have a major thing in common i.e. they have focused on the customer as the heart of their marketing strategies and practices. The modern marketing process basically revolves around the development of customer value and profitable relationships with customers. This process begins with the identification and understanding of the needs and wants of customers, detecting the organization's most suitable target markets, and creating an appealing value proposition that attracts
In the article Marketing is Everything, the author Regis McKenna emphasizes the significant of managing strategic marketing. He also highlights that the transformation process of marketing and several important marketing elements that lead originations toward success. First and foremost, McKenna compares two periods of companies. Before technology developed, most companies concentrated on sale or product driven. In other words, during that time, products were displayed as the first priority in corporations rather than being customer oriented. Instead of researching customers’ desires and customizing new products for them, manufacturers and sellers did not pay attention to their customers’ needs and only tried to alter their minds to match products.
The market-driven approach is a business perspective that puts the customers as a starting point in all its strategies and operations in order to deliver the superior customer value and gain a competitive advantage (Day, 1994). This approach totally contradicts with the one of the previous years of the industrial age, which the prominent scholar Drucker (1954) defined that the main purpose of the organization is to generate profit. But nowadays, it appears clear that for the future prosperity of the company, the building of the loyal customer base is necessary condition to be profitable. The support of the latest argument comes from Webster, et al. (1994) where it is concluded that the profit becomes as remuneration for a satisfied and retained customer. There are few capabilities that the company should be aware of in order to be oriented on the market (Cravens and Shipp, 1991). There is the marketing strategic process which describes the development and implementation
o achieve superior performance, a business must develop and sustain competitive advantage. But where competitive advantage was once based on structural characteristics such as market power, economies of scale, or a broad product line, the emphasis today has shifted to capabilities that enable a business to consistently deliver superior value to its customers. This, after all, is the meaning of competitive advantage. Our recent research shows that a market-oriented culture provides a solid foundation for these value-creating
Companies face countless challenges to preserve market share and to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive market place. Consumers are demanding greater product variety and enhancement as their requirements and desires change. Therefore marketing is central to a company’s continuing achievement. By definition 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 organisational goals” (Kotler et al, 2013). It important to introduce products or services to the market by building brands and trust, nurturing innovation, developing relationships, creating good customer service and communicating benefits, thus differentiating the company from its competitors (Gilligan & Wilson 2009, p 3).
* Ensuring that all staff understand that the customer is at the centre of all business objectives
Zara positioning due to affordability has managed to still attract product sales even as economic factors impact consumer spending. Its economical focus, affordability and fashionableness has resulted in purchases by “upscale shoppers” who
Market orientation requires a business to focus both on customers and its’ competition in addition to coordinate all internal business function inclusing HR, finance, operations, IT and
Businesses can develop new products based on either a marketing orientated approach or a product orientated approach. According to Jaworski and Kohli (1993), marketing orientation is ‘the organization-wide generation of market intelligence pertaining to current and
According to the survey by researchers, companies which adapt to marketing- orientation were more profitable associated with the extent of inter-functional (Narver and Slater, 1990).in “Easy-Go!” case, this creative business idea completely meet consumer’s needs because of the weariness during travel make consumers prefer to release their hands than move the heavy suitcase by themselves. In this way, it is inevitable that organizations tend to transform to the market-driven business.
The first half of the assignment deals with the adoption of market orientation as a key principle for guiding
Today, marketing plays an important role in business success. “Marketing drives successful organization, but it is often misinterpreted and sometimes gets bad press” (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2013: 4). Peter Drucker stated that “the basic function of marketing is to attract and retain customers at a profit”. On the other hand, British Institute of Marketing (BIM) defines “Marketing is the management process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.” Along with rapid globalization, changing information technology, changing consumer profile and intensity of competition, “marketing is more sophisticated than the past” (Dalgic and Yeniceri, 2013). There are many ways for new products approaching the markets. Many companies use customer oriented marketing as the main strategy, especially in the context of the marketing mix for their new products. This assignment will discuss customer orientation and its implications of two factors of the marketing mix: product and price.
In such a dynamic setting, the business players come to devise and put into practice numerous means by which to appeal to the customers, to attract them, and to retain them. In other words, the role of marketing in today's society is increasing at an exponential rate. At a generic level, marketing is understood as the totality of measures implemented by the economic agent in an effort to attract customers and support the sale of their products. In a more pragmatic formulation, marketing is defined as follows:
The marketing concept is a relatively recent one (Blythe, 2008), and while there are several definitions of marketing, it is agreed that marketing involves the process of exchange between firms and customers, where both parties benefit (Adcock et al, 2001), and that the customer and his needs are placed in the centre of the organization’s activities (Blythe, 2008). Due to this, it is the goal of many organizations to establish a strong brand and significant equity based on their customers.