BUS203: Principles of Marketing

At the beginning of this chapter, we mentioned that the view of marketing has changed from a static set of four Ps to a dynamic set of processes that involve marketing professionals as well as many other employees in an organization. The way business is being conducted today is changing, too, and marketing is changing along with it. There are several themes, or important trends, that you will notice throughout this book.

• Ethics and social responsibility. Businesses exist only because society allows them to. When businesses begin to fail society, society will punish them or revoke their license. The crackdown on companies in the subprime mortgage-lending industry is one example. These companies created and sold loans (products) that could only be paid back under ideal circumstances, and when consumers couldn't pay these loans back, the entire economy suffered greatly. Scandals such as these illustrate how society responds to unethical business practices. However, whereas ethics require that you only do no harm, the concept of social responsibility requires that you must actively seek to improve the lot of others. Today, people are demanding businesses take a proactive stance in terms of social responsibility, and they are being held to ever-higher standards of conduct.
• Sustainability. Sustainability is an example of social responsibility and involves engaging in practices that do not diminish the earth's resources. Coca-Cola, for example, is working with governments in Africa to ensure clean water availability, not just for manufacturing Coke products but for all consumers in that region. Further, the company seeks to engage American consumers in participating by offering opportunities to contribute to clean water programs. Right now, companies do not have to engage in these practices, but because firms really represent the people behind them (their owners and employees), forward-thinking executives are seeking ways to reduce the impact their companies are having on the planet.
• Service-dominant logic. You might have noticed that we use the word offering a lot instead of the term product. That's because of service-dominant logic, the approach to business that recognizes that consumers want value no matter how it is delivered - whether through a tangible product or through intangible services. That emphasis on value is what drives the functional approach to value that we've taken - that is, creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging value.
• Metrics. Technology has increased the amount of information available to decision makers. As such, the amount and quality of data for evaluating a firm's performance is increasing. Earlier in our discussion of the marketing plan, we explained that customers communicate via transactions. Although this sounds both simple and obvious, better information technology has given us a much more complete picture of each exchange. Cabela's, for example, combines data from Web browsing activity with purchase history in order to determine what the next best offer is likely to be. Using data from many sources, we can build more effective metrics that can then be used to create better offerings, better communication plans, and so forth.
• A global environment. Every business is influenced by global issues. The price of oil, for example, is a global concern that affects everyone's prices and even the availability of some offerings. We already mentioned Coke's concern for clean water. But Coke also has to be concerned with distribution systems in areas with poor or nonexistent roads, myriads of government policies and regulations, workforce availability, and so many different issues in trying to sell and deliver Coke around the world. Even companies with smaller markets source some or all their offerings from companies in other countries or else face some sort of direct competition from companies based in other countries. Every business professional, whether marketing or otherwise, has to have some understanding of the global environment in which companies operate.