Marketing Research And Strategy

Article Review: Pursuing a Growth Strategy

Introduction

Marketing is an integral part of an organization. Marketing is a process for creating value in and awareness of a product or service, informing and communicating to customers about what a company offers, and engaging customer relationships to reach desired results. Ultimately, marketing benefits the organization and its stakeholders because marketing can drive profits if done correctly. Marketing is an art that requires marketing managers to research, create a strategy and plan based off of this research, understand the desires and needs of the consumer and then show how the company's product fills this desire or need. Successful marketing is not as easy as snapping your fingers. In order to ensure marketing is being maximized, managers should have an understanding of how marketing research and marketing strategy and tactics work together.

Marketing Strategy

An organization's marketing strategy is the backbone of the marketing plan. The strategy should serve to integrate a company's marketing goals, policies, and tactics into a whole picture. An example of a marketing strategy is: "Use a low cost product to attract consumers. Once our organization, via our low cost product, has established a relationship with consumers, our organization will sell additional, higher-margin products and services that enhance the consumer's interaction with the low-cost product or service" (Wikipedia, 2006). The marketing strategy provides a foundation for tactical measures to be used.

Marketing Research

Marketing research is comprised of using existing, discovering, or creation of new information and knowledge for the purpose of an organizations need. Marketing research is used to determine many things that an organization needs to flourish such as information about competitors, market structure, governmental regulations, economic trends, technological advances, product innovations, and advertising needs (Wikipedia, 2006).

Article Summary

Marketing research and marketing strategy go hand in hand because the knowledge from research is needed to develop a strong marketing strategy and tactics. In the article: Pursuing a Growth Strategy, the relationship between research and strategy is solidified. The article is a case study of Dixons Group a specialist electrical retailer. The examination was done on this organization to show their ability to maintain a strong growth strategy in spite of its rivals. Dixons level of success is attributed to their emphasis on research. The company has a promise that states, "We aim to provide unrivalled value to our customers by the range and quality of our products, our competitive prices and our high standards of service (The Time 100, n.d., Section 1)" In order to reach this promise it is vital that customer needs are not just merely delivered but that expectations are exceeded.

Dixons ensures this level of customer satisfaction is maintained through the use of several research methods both internal and external. Before initiating development these