Strategic Marketing - Best Practice to Next practice(part -1)

STRATEGIC MARKETING – Best Practice to Next Practice
This article is penned by Doreen Rosario with inputs from Arun Kuruvila,Sr Marketing Manager,Godrej Interio.

Godrej & Boyce co-sponsored a two-day National Marketing & Media Convention on Strategic
Marketing – Best Practice to Next Practice - under the aegis of the Bombay Management Association onJanuary 19 & 20, 2007 at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. The two-day event saw several eminent speakers fromthe marketing, media and academic field share their thoughts, experiences and practice. This write-up focusses mainly on Dr Jagdish N Sheth, world renowned marketing guru and Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois, U.S.A. who was the key-note speaker at the above convention and was honoured with the Life-time Achievement award by BMA for his contribution in this field.

The subject chosen for Dr Sheth was Evolution of Strategic Marketing : Future challenges &
Opportunities where he historically chronologicaled the origin and evolution of the same. He mentionedthat a lot of marketing theory comes from practice as marketing is an applied, contextual field.
He spoke about the various following marketing frameworks/models:
· 4 Ps of Marketing
· SWOT Analysis
· Strategic Portfolio Management (BCG Model)
· Competitive Advantage Strategy (Porter)
· Customer centric marketing
· 4 As of Marketing (his contribution)
· Relationship Marketing
· Share of Heart Model
He also mentioned that strategic marketing & marketing are blurring their boundaries even as organizations became more and more market driven.As per Dr Sheth, Marketing, as we know it today, traditionally began with the 4 Ps of Marketing i.e.Product, Price, Place and Promotion. It was Prof. Richard Lewis who first started talking about the 4 Ps.

The first text book around the 4 Ps was published in the 1950s by Jerome (Jerry) Mc Carthy and later it was Kotler, the marketing genius, who publicized, exploited and took this concept to the world.The 4 Ps of Marketing all started with P&G’s strategy to reposition Ivory which was a bathing bar tocompete against Levers Lux which had captured the (niche) market by smartly positioning itself as a facialsoap against Ivory which was P&G’s growth engine (as well as had dominated America and the world then)and as it was imperative to get the buy-ins of every functional head in order to reposition itself in the wake of competition from Lux which it could not do due to certain ‘disconnect’ between the functions as per theorganization structure existing then. Thus, Camay came into being and to directly compete against lux.
Brand management as a concept emerged. Internal marketing as a forerunner to external marketing alsocame about and product manager as a co-ordination and resource gathering function came into practice.