Strategic Marketing PDF

Preview

Summary

Strategic Marketing...

Description

University of South Wales

Faculty of University of south wales business school Department of: Business Administration - Masters (MBA)

Assignment-1

Word counts: 4662 (Without reference list)

Introduction Nowadays, many businesses from all industries are launching agile development tactics and actions at different scales. Miceli et al., (2021) advocated that Unpredictable external environment, the exponential pace of innovation and technological change, the access to technology, increasing interconnectedness, and changing demands of customer have contributed to the fundamental shift in the industry. Specially, Covid-19 measures shut down whole businesses whereas it forced industries to divert almost entirely online, and dramatically altered the essence of consumer purchasing. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to illustrate the importance of agility drive strategic marketing during covid-19. Because, changing environment and landscape of marketing strategies forced companies to formulate new strategy during the pandemic for the lightning the spread of Covid-19 through developing entrepreneurial agility (Russell and Swanson, 2019). Moreover, Calnan and Rozen, (2019) construed that organisational agility contributes in rapidly sensing, perceiving, anticipating, and responding to the rapid changing dynamic market. However, this strategic way of thinking and acting consistently improves customer loyalty while also allowing for the acquisition of new market segments. Most notably, the idea of organisational agility assist a company to understand circumstances and by using internal resources and skills, agile organisations enable to uncover and seize opportunities for innovation. Furthermore, agility influences business coping with changes in customer demand. In the contrary, adopting agile strategies, actions, and methodologies, is no guarantee of success. In addition, 3M is a multinational science-based technology organisation dedicated to enhancing people's lives and doing business ethically. Therefore, at the beginning of the report, brief overview of 3M Company has been described whereas illustration of the marketing agility by literature review has been represented in the second part of the report. Finally this study delineated how 3M Company incorporated the agility drive strategic marketing in response to covid-19 and how those decision brought the overall success for the company.

Overview of 3M Company profile

From multimedia.3m.com, (2002) it has been found that in 1902, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) was established as a mining company with the aim of extracting corundum from Crystal Bay. Since the mine didn't produce much corundum, the company switched to make sandpaper and built sandpaper factory in 1910. According to 3M Annual report, (2019) it has been found that 3M gradually developed into a profitable, multinational corporation. 3M International was founded in 1952, and it is now a diversified multinational manufacturer, technology innovator, and marketer of a wide range of goods and services. Also 3M science-based technology firm has been named the World's Most Ethical Business for the past eight years. Moreover, now 3M have 90,000 employees in 70 countries and produce over 60,000 goods that are sold in over 200 countries whereas sales are total over $30 billion. In addition, 3M is currently split into five company groups such as Consumer, Industrial Health Care, Electronics and Energy. Adhesives, laminates, fire safety materials, medical and surgical supplies, dental products, office supplies, optical film, and car care products are just a few of their main products. Scotch Tape, Post-It notes, ACE bandages, Nexcare, and thinsulate insulation goods are some of 3M's most well-known brands. 3M's Corporate Research Laboratories have established 46 technology platforms that can be categorised into four categories such as Materials, Processing, Capabilities, and Applications (Annual report, 2020). From the study of Scarlett, (2013) it can construe that localization is the best way to grow and establish a foothold in global markets. 3M expands into new foreign markets by exporting its goods. It focuses on localising the supply chain after developing a significant presence by utilising locally produced raw materials, manufacturing goods in local plants, and selling through local distribution networks. 3M shifts its attention to retaining key customer relationships and improving productivity and efficiency once the local supply chain is established. Furthermore, 3M's primary generic approach in different consumer markets is cost leadership. This strategy helps 3M to increase its market share by focusing on the middle class, which accounts for the majority of the overall customer market mix in most countries (Razdan, 2017). However, their long-term success and prosperity didn’t come immediately. They made several unsuccessful attempts and came up with something different again. Over the years,

3M's scientific, technological, and marketing advances led to success after success, finally establishing the company as a Fortune 500 fixture (3m.com, 2021).

Literature review of marketing agility Marketing mix is at the heart of all marketing theories that adopted by businesses. However, the inclusion of the principle of relationship marketing and agility in strategic marketing systems has enhanced and made the elements of marketing mix more diverse. Also marketing agility has been regarded as one of the most effective solutions for problem that businesses facing in the global market (Wu, Y., and Li,Y., 2017). Again, Skare, M. and Soriano, D., (2021) asserted that organizations in the early and late 900s were dependent on developing and emerging markets whereas faced less competition and survived with or without agility. But unpredictably occurring events can have either positive or negative consequences for a business. For instance, globalisation, the 2008 financial crisis, trade war, Europe's migrant crisis, Brexit, digitisation and the challenges posed by Covid-19 are rapidly changing the business environment, reducing planning horizons, encouraging the growth of the virtual world, opening up new markets, expanding the variety and scope of goods and competition, and raising consumer standards for personalised service. As a result, in recent years, a number of academics have attempted to describe how companies adapt in volatile market environments in order to ensure their long-term survival. Thereby, strategic agility refers to a collection of activities that an organisation engages to generate value in a volatile and unpredictable world. Despite the fact that marketing agility is becoming increasingly important, it is unclear what it entails. Therefore numerous literatures have been reviewed in this paper for defining the concept of marketing agility (Hagen, B., Zucchella, A. and Ghauri, P., 2018). Although the origins of agile marketing can be traced back to software developers about 30 years ago, today's marketers have developed programmes that have enabled agile marketing. The Sprint Zero conference was one such programme. The goal of the Sprint Zero conference was to create a value system and a set of rules for the marketing industry using agile marketing. Sprint Zero resulted in the development of the Agile Marketing Manifesto. However, Scrum, a popular agile marketing strategy, aligns priorities with the goals of the

organisation as a whole and the sales department, improves communication within and around the marketing department, and increases the speed and effectiveness with which marketing is done. Another agile methodology is Kanban, which is a lean framework for managing and improving work through human structures. This method aims to improve the system-level bottlenecks by matching demand with available capacity (Ahmad, M., Lwakatare, L., Kuvaja, P., Oivo, M. and Markkula, J., 2017).

However, Fourné, S., Jansen, J. and Mom, T., ( 2014) argued that agility is described differently by different researchers and writers in relation to market determinants and challenges, such as technology, innovation, digitalization, human resources, labour markets, sustainability, and the environment. Corporate agility is a feature of business competencies and productivity in dealing with day-to-day challenges, disruptive technologies, and creativity. Moreover, Strategic agility is a meta-capability that describes a large corporation's ability to operate strategically by allocating sufficient resources to the development and execution of all three complex capabilities, as well as its ability to remain agile by dynamically managing these capabilities over time. On the other hand, according to Kalaignanam, K., Tuli, K., Kushwaha, T., Lee, L. and Gal, D., (2021) it has been found that Sense making, iteration, speed, and marketing decisions are all part of marketing agility. Marketing agility is described as the degree to which an organisation iterates between making sense of the market and putting marketing decisions in place to respond to the market. Furthermore, a study related to agility marketing for new product development delineated that manufacturers profit greatly from the advent of agile manufacturing in meeting consumer demands. It allows you to adapt quickly and effectively to an evolving and unpredictable world. In the manufacturing sector, it also provides a competitive advantage through speed, versatility, market planning, responsiveness, robustness, creativity, integration, and efficiency. It is directly related to dynamic capability, in which a development team with organisational agility can address unpredictable circumstances by combining the organization's internal and external capabilities (Hoonsopon, D., and Puriwat, W., 2019). Also, Holbeche, (2018) asserted agility drive strategic marketing for digitisation and innovation. Many customers now engage with businesses across one or more digital channels. As a result, agile refers to a company's ability to respond quickly, adapt, and excel in a

rapidly evolving environment. A strong future focus on anticipating and adapting to change, ability to scan and interpret potential patterns and challenges, customer collaboration, experimentation and innovation, and empowerment are all important aspects of agility. Gurkov, I., Goldberg, A. and Saidov, Z ., (2017) said that consumer agility refers to a company's

ability to detect and react to customer-based opportunities, while marketing agility refers to a company's ability to predict, detect, and respond quickly to marketing opportunities. Furthermore, changing market conditions such as demand and technology can present both opportunities and risks forcing businesses to devise new ways to deal with them. These are entrepreneurial management skills that combine money, expertise, experience, technology, consumer demand, and a flexibly changed organisational structure. Improving an organization's agility three steps are initiation, adaptation, and execution. The capacity of a company to exploit opportunities and handle the risks of doing business is known as initiation. Adaptation refers to a company's ability to react quickly to changes in both its internal and external environments. The improvement of an organization's reliable and successful operating processes is known as execution (Thrassou, A., Vrontis, D. and Bresciani, S. (2018).

Figure: Agile marketing framework

There are 3 key steps of framing internal marketing agility and those are agile logic, agile learning, and agile action.

Agile logic: The process primarily consists by a nonconformist and open-minded agile logic. This refers to a willingness to reconsider existing activities, to question exiting actions, and explore new ideas and actions. International businesses must establish routines, processes, and frameworks that allow real-time detection and interpretation of real or potential market changes. Firms must be able to create a transparent and participatory mechanism in which managers from various business units can make sense of the various international situations (Zhou, Jing, Mavondo, Felix T & Saunders, Stephen Graham, 2019). Agile learning: Search, interpretation and sense-making marketing are an agile response to constantly changing environment. The sense-making process necessitates drawing on understandings established in various international contexts, such as cultural differences, institutional and economic growth levels, and other significant contextual factors. Interpretation, on the other hand, is a method involving the convergence of international horizons, in which managers must make an effort to comprehend the circumstances and viewpoints brought by various geographical markets and realities (Khan, H., 2020). Agile actions: It is consist with responsiveness, flexibility, commitment, and co-ordination. Responsiveness refers the ability to react rapidly and take the requisite steps in response to the unique needs and wants of foreign customers which entails the creation of international marketing strategies. Marketing agility emphasizes the importance of companies understanding of country differences and rapidly adapting or drastically changing their marketing mix following rules, legislation, competitive conditions, consumer needs, and buying power. Moreover, flexibility refers to a company's willingness to adjust its tactics in order to respond to the needs of a global market. It is especially useful in today's complex and competitive global market, which is categorised by rapid technological, political, economic, and sociocultural change. Commitment, on the other hand, is the ability to commit financial, intangible, physical, and human resources in order to quickly adjust and change their strategies in response to the characteristics of the global market. Finally, co-ordination refers to a company's ability to coordinate its resources and activities around markets to increase its competitiveness. It aids the firm in increasing its productivity and effectiveness by matching resources to various requirements (Osei, C., Amoah, J., Khan, Z., Omar, M. and Gutu, M., 2018).

Construction of several themes relating to Agility Businesses must be much more adaptable to emerging developments in science and technology in the current age of information technology. No organisation will succeed and prosper in the long run without a viable strategy to cope with the technological changes that occur over time. Therefore several key themes relating to agility have been construed in this section whereas 3M Company has been taken as a case study. 1. Coopetition strategies: In the 1990s, business-to-business marketing researchers began to pay attention to competition. Brandenburger & Nalebuff,(1996) described coopetition as an organizationalwide mind-set in which managers and functional-level employees believe that cooperating with industry rivals is essential. Bengtsson and Kock,(1999) argued that coopetition is a collection of firm-level behaviours in which companies share resources and skills with their rivals

in

order

to

increase

their

business

efficiency

(Demir,

R.Campopiano,G.,Kruckenhauser,C.,Bauer,F., 2021).

However, Zhu,Y., Wang,V.,Wang,Y.,Nastos,J.,(2020) advocated that while coopetition is a business-to-business marketing technique, previous research has shown that these interorganizational partnerships may have broader implications for example, companies can collaborate with their rivals to provide superior value to their final customers rather than using their own resources and capabilities. As a result, coopetition is described in this study as a collection of cooperative relationships between rivals that can benefit competing firms, their customers, and other key stakeholders (Crick, J. and Crick, D., 2020).Thus, during periods of crisis focusing on COVID-19, decision-makers can change their business models by adopting coopetition strategies. While there is a small body of information about marketing in a pandemic crisis, it provides an opportunity to add to the literature on businessto-business marketing. These advances were used in this paper to look at how 3M responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by coopetition. Thus, it has been witnessed the highest change to the collaboration model of 3M. Throughout the pandemic, 3M collaborated with governments and the private sector in over 70 countries

to help protect residents, health care staff, first responders, and critical workers from COVID19. Over the last two decades, 3M has worked in many of these countries on epidemic preparedness and response projects, including PPE stockpiling programmes. Collaborating with a number of manufacturers and organisations to look at ways for hospitals in the United States to use decontamination devices to safely decontaminate, reuse, and prolong the life of N95 respirators under Emergency Use Authorizations from the US Food and Drug Administration. Moreover, they are collaborating with MIT to create a COVID-19 rapid diagnostic test that could detect viral antigens and produce results in minutes through a paper device eliminating the need to send samples to a lab. Along with 3M Worked with HP to share free large-format graphics for commercial signage applications, which are vital for communicating social distancing and health and safety messages as public spaces, workplaces, and businesses continue to operate in the face of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic (Goh, S., 2020 and Wilson, M., 2020).

2. Corporate Social responsibility: Being socially responsible means for individuals and organizations to manifest ethical behavior and to demonstrate sensitivity to the social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues Being socially responsible means for individuals and organizations to manifest ethical behavior and to demonstrate sensitivity to the social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues Being socially responsible means for individuals and organizations to manifest ethical behavior and to demonstrate sensitivity to the social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues Being socially responsible means for individuals and organizations to manifest ethical behavior and to demonstrate sensitivity to the social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues Today, corporate social responsibility is no longer seen as a moral responsibility of business people, but as a strategic resource that aims to improve the efficiency of functioning between society and corporation Today, corporate social responsibility is no longer seen as a moral responsibility of business people, but as a strategic resource that aims to improve the efficiency of functioning between society and corporation Today, corporate social responsibility is viewed as a strategic resource that seeks to increase the efficiency of the function between society and corporations, rather than a moral responsibility of business people. CSR is a self-regulating business model that describes how an organisation interacts with its stakeholders and the general public, resulting in a socially responsible scenario (Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2021). However, corporate social innovation

policies can have a positive effect on both society and the bottom line of companies. CSR activities add value to the economy as a whole, improve social security, and help to create a more prosperous environment. CSR engagements also help to build trust between a company and its stakeholders, as well as keeping the company safe in the event of a crisis. The pandemic of Covid-19 provides a huge opportunity for companies to move toward more real and authentic CSR and contribute for solving global social and environmental challenges. Some companies have been observed conducting CSR activities by fostering social awareness for social distancing in the current era of covid-19. Often big corporations speak about their social mission and beliefs, as well as how much they care about their workers and other stakeholders. No...