Deck 9: Marketing Implementation and Control

Question 1

Find a recent news article about an organization that changed its marketing strategy. What were the reasons for the change? How did the organization approach the development and implementation of the new strategy?

Answer 1

One recent example is a Korean electronics firm that upped its promotional budget by over a third, yet decided to spend less on ads and more on discounts, rebates, and other sales incentives. The goal is to attract customers dissatisfied with the most popular smartphone to its own similar product line. Another example is the athletic shoe company that slashed its TV and print ad budget by two-fifths, pouring that money instead into social media and other "nontraditional" advertisements. The company's CEO says this move furthers and emphasizes a dialogue between his company and worldwide consumers. In both companies, the implementation was top-down, or implementation by command.

Question 2

Forget for a moment that planning the marketing strategy is equally as important as implementing the marketing strategy. What arguments can you make for one being more important than the other? Explain your answers.

Answer 2

You could certainly make the case that one cannot implement a strategy one has not already planned, which would make planning more important. On the other hand, a strategy that has not been put into action is literally useless, which makes implementation more important. In actual fact, the balance between these two truths is what makes planning and implementation equally important.

Question 3

One of the best sources for shared goals and values to guide implementation is the firm's own mission or values statement. Find the mission or values statement for the organization you identified in Exercise 1. Do you see evidence of the mission or values in the way the organization handled its change in marketing strategy? Explain.

Answer 3

One recent example is a Korean electronics firm that upped its promotional budget by over a third, yet decided to spend less on ads and more on discounts, rebates, and other sales incentives. Another example is an athletic shoe company that slashed its TV and print ad budget to pour that money instead into social media and other "nontraditional" advertisements. In the first case, that firm's mission statement, "Inspire the world, create the future," promises inspiring new, cutting-edge products. The sales incentives are designed to push those new products, so there is a connection. As for the shoe company, its mission statement is "To bring inspiration and motivation to every athlete," a statement the company's CEO generalizes by saying anyone with a body is an athlete. If that's the case, then it makes sense to push the company's marketing deeper into ground-level social media.

Question 4

If you were personally responsible for implementing a particular marketing strategy, which implementation approach would you be most comfortable using, given your personality and personal preferences? Why? Would your chosen approach be universally applicable to any given situation? If not, what would cause you to change or adapt your approach? Remember, adapting your basic approach means stepping out of your personal comfort zone to match the situation at hand.

Question 5

Think about the unwritten, informal controls in your life. Develop a list of the controls that exist at work, at home, or at school (or substitute another context such as church, social gatherings, or public activities). Are these controls similar or different? Why?

Question 6

What do you see as the major stumbling blocks to the successful use of the internal marketing approach? Given the hierarchical structure of employees in most organizations (e.g., CEO, middle management, staff employees), is internal marketing a viable approach for most organizations? Why or why not?