The Marketing Function - Market Environment, Marketing Cycle and Components of Marketing Information System

Introduction

The role of information technology and systems is to improve productivity of organization. Information systems are deployed across functional department of organization.

The Marketing Function

In broader terms, marketing is defined as a process through which organizations are able to deliver products and services as per the need of the customers. Organizations conduct market research to identify needs and requirement of customers.

The marketing process ensures the following:

• It ensures that customers are able to buy the products they want.
• It ensures that producers are able to sell products in a free market.
• It ensures a stable financing is available to conduct production.
• It ensures that perishable goods are stored in an appropriate manner for consumption.
• It ensures that products are transported to all customer markets.
• It ensures that quality standards are always maintained.

The Market Environment

The market environment directly impacts the function and working of an organization. The 3 categories of market environment are internal environment, micro environment and macro environment. Organizations develop strategies as to be successful in all three environments.

The culture and environment of organizations play an important role in delivering value to customers. Internal customers of organization are the ones which contribute in delivering the final products. Organization needs to look at strategies to motivate internal organization to satisfy external customers.

Internal customers, suppliers, etc. combine to make the micro-environment of an organization. Organization to deliver a good final product needs to develop and maintain strong relationship with vendors and external agencies. Therefore, it is important for organization to maintain continuous analysis of ever-changing micro-environment.

The macro-environment of an organization consists of government policies, global economic condition, and political stability. Organization does not have direct control or say in the macro-environment.

The Marketing Cycle

The marketing cycle is closely associated with the product life cycle. The marketing life cycle is divided into development stage, introduction stage, growth stage, maturity stage and decline stage.

Companies deploy different marketing strategies during each stage of marketing life cycle. These strategies are closely associated with revenue generation from product sales.

Marketing Information System

An information system which captures, stores, analyzes and distributes marketing information to facilitate the decision-making process is called marketing information system.

The source of marketing information comes through internal records and external records. The internal record includes day to day production data as well as product sales data. Internal data helps manager track marketing impact on the different product mix.

External data is market performance of a competitor also plays important in the decision-making process. Company's sales force is a huge data source. Therefore, it is essential for system to capture their market intelligence input.

The data collected through external or internal market research agencies plays an important to provide a holistic market view to the managers.

An information system captures information from all the different sources. The information is analyzed and then distributed to managers for decision-making process.

Marketing information systems advantages is as follows:

• It helps organizing data from different sources at one location.
• It helps in development and tracking of marketing plans.
• It helps in manipulation data as per management requirement.
• It facilitates historical analysis of marketing data.

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