Drucker looked at leadership positions as places that marketing can be applied. Since business can be broke down in to marketing and innovation (with creating customers) a good leader must be good at marketing. Drucker discusses how employees must be viewed as partners in the business and that the company must market is sell internally. Where I work, I am able to see the mangers (my leadership) having buy in to the company mission statement. The company releases internal documents (road maps, competitor information and corporate propaganda) to us employees so that we see that leadership is keeping in tune with the corporate mission statement and marketing strategy. Drucker says there are eight universal principles of leadership and they can be applied in marketing.
Dilbert highlights how employees can become cynical if their leadership is only using jargon, weather it be TQM, 6sigma, ACE, LEAN, etc, and not applying the principles or focusing on their customers.
Marketing manages are an essential part of a company as they define the customers values and values in the market places. Marketing manages must be concerned with net marketing contributions (NMC) - the profit before fixed costs - conducting market research and internal marketing. Net marketing contribution is used to determine the effectiveness of the marketing. It can be used to see what the marketing is contributing to costs compared to the fixed costs and net income for the company. NMC can also be broken down to each item or product a line a company has to show the effectiveness in each market. Though the market mangers are not part of the process of creating the company missions statement they help to define the marking missions and values. Marketing managers are part of a circular process as they define customer loyalty and product value, deliver the vale and monitor the value through market research. The marketing managers must also set the metrics that use to evaluate the value of the product and customers. Then it is rinse and repeat after the marketing research has been evaluated.
"The Gut, Statistics or Experts?"
Lehmann details the statistics process for market research by utilizing linear regressions, statics, bell curves, etc (music to my engineering ears) and the need for accurate market forecasting based on the numbers. Lehmann discusses the resources for primary and secondary sources and how to utilize this information when formatting the data for analysis. But Lehmann does point out that market forcasting will not catch the left turn that market can make. Drucker on the other hand looks to use the gut for the market instead of solely relying on statistics or experts. "Only hindsight can tell us whether the experts are right or wrong in their assessment," said Drucker (157, Drucker on Marketing). The customer must define the market for the product and he looked to reaching the potential customer and what they wanted for a product. Drucker looked to the gut because of the pit fall Lehmann addressed of the market shift and companies that had missed it in the past i.e. IBM and the first personal computer.
"My Opia?"
Why do company's fail in a market? Myopia, apathy, lethargy. The company's management fails to effectively keep the company innovating and marketing for growth. Company's do not see the end in sight as products continue to produce profits and the day to day monotony continues. One example is in transportation as railroads are failing today because they didn't fight airlines, buses and cars that took away their customers because they were railroads not transportation. Or the oil industry has been transformed to energy companies as customers have looked to use oil in different ways than originally intended. If a company looks to their customers, they can avoid market failures and continue to grow. And it is not myopia but my opportunity.
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