Lecture 1 – Introduction
Marketing strategy = a thoughtful plan by a company to produce desired outcomes in the
marketplace in relation to customers, channel members, and competitors.
▪ It is an organisation’s integrated pattern of decision that specifies its crucial choices concerning
products, markets, marketing activities and marketing resources in the creation, communication,
and/or delivery of products that offer value to customers in exchanges with the organisation and
thereby enables the organisation to achieve specific objectives.
In order to achieve a competitive advantage, a marketing strategy should be:
▪ Distinctive (versus having similar characteristics or decisions as competing firms).
▪ Coherent (versus set of (uncoordinated) tactics).
▪ Dynamic (versus poor implementation of activities).
Strategic marketing decisions = long-term holistic decisions concerning the future directions for the
organisation.
Features are:
Entail major resources commitments spread over longer periods.
Impact over longer time periods.
Result in a distinguishable competitive advantage.
Irreversible or difficult to reverse.
Entails trade-offs.
Made in the context of other strategic decisions (interdependencies).
Made at a higher level in the organisation.
An example of a marketing strategy is setting up a loyalty program (British Airways). It is supposed to
keep customers for a long time by giving them a discount when they fly their company.
Customers do not really care about the discount, but they like the benefits of the program:
▪ Access to business lounges.
▪ Priority boarding.
▪ Dedicated contact number.
▪ Free seat selection at booking.
▪ Member only offers.
Another example of marketing strategy would be Apple Pay and the partnership for that with
Mastercard.
Examples of strategic marketing decisions are:
Launching of a new product.
Rebranding: changing your brands’ position.
Entering new product-market combination.
Introduce a loyalty program.
Catering to new market segments.
Developing product leadership.
Promotional policy changes.
Rationalising a product line.
Expanding distribution coverage.
Initiating a major advertising campaign.
Divesting/withdrawing from the market.
, Install a social media campaign.
Establishing a supplier partnership.
Tactical marketing decisions = short-term (annual or quarterly) decisions to execute the strategic
directions within the firm.
▪ Filling in the marketing mix of the individual project or brand to realise the company’s strategic
goals.
▪ E.g. brand price level, advertising by brand, sales force allocation.
, Lecture 2 – Strategic Decision-Making pt. I
To make good decisions, we need to do four things:
Accumulate organisational knowledge. ▪ Organisational learning.
▪ Enhancing culture and climate.
Get help. ▪ Compiling opinions, the wisdom of the crowd.
▪ Obtaining and using data.
▪ Marketing management support systems.
Be responsive. ▪ Business cycles.
▪ To competition.
▪ Implementation intentions.
Think and decide rationally. ▪ Rational decision making.
▪ Cognitive biases in decision making.
V&D for example went bankrupt because they did not have a good strategy. They did not adapt their
strategy to the changing environment. and were really slow to go online. They did not respond well
to the recession. They did not create a culture and climate where organisational learning was
present.
Nature of organisational learning
The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive
advantage.
An example: a hospital surgery team learning to use a new technology to increase operation
efficiency and effectiveness.
There are multiple ways to learn how to use the machine. When they have a good doctor that knows
to use the machine, there is a step behind it. They have someone who can teach others how to use it,
which creates a competitive advantage. But it is not sustainable, because when competitors learn
how to use the machine, the advantage is gone.
Organisational learning = the process of improving organisational actions through better knowledge
and understanding or as the outcome of such a process.
Key concepts:
▪ Individual learning vs. organisational learning
▪ Explicit vs. tacit knowledge
▪ Single-loop learning vs. double-loop learning
Individual vs. organisational learning
Organisational knowledge = the accumulation of the knowledge bases of all the individuals within an
organisation and the social knowledge embedded in the relationships between those individuals.
Lots of people having knowledge is great, but sharing this knowledge is even more useful.
▪ Organisational learning assumes individual learning, but individual learning is an insufficient
condition for organisational learning.
o Without sharing or transferring the knowledge, the organisation will not learn.
Organisational knowledge is more than a sum of the parts, it is also about exchanging and sharing
individual assumptions, models, and knowledge across the organisations at various levels:
▪ Individual > group > organisation > inter organisational
Examples:
Marketing strategy = a thoughtful plan by a company to produce desired outcomes in the
marketplace in relation to customers, channel members, and competitors.
▪ It is an organisation’s integrated pattern of decision that specifies its crucial choices concerning
products, markets, marketing activities and marketing resources in the creation, communication,
and/or delivery of products that offer value to customers in exchanges with the organisation and
thereby enables the organisation to achieve specific objectives.
In order to achieve a competitive advantage, a marketing strategy should be:
▪ Distinctive (versus having similar characteristics or decisions as competing firms).
▪ Coherent (versus set of (uncoordinated) tactics).
▪ Dynamic (versus poor implementation of activities).
Strategic marketing decisions = long-term holistic decisions concerning the future directions for the
organisation.
Features are:
Entail major resources commitments spread over longer periods.
Impact over longer time periods.
Result in a distinguishable competitive advantage.
Irreversible or difficult to reverse.
Entails trade-offs.
Made in the context of other strategic decisions (interdependencies).
Made at a higher level in the organisation.
An example of a marketing strategy is setting up a loyalty program (British Airways). It is supposed to
keep customers for a long time by giving them a discount when they fly their company.
Customers do not really care about the discount, but they like the benefits of the program:
▪ Access to business lounges.
▪ Priority boarding.
▪ Dedicated contact number.
▪ Free seat selection at booking.
▪ Member only offers.
Another example of marketing strategy would be Apple Pay and the partnership for that with
Mastercard.
Examples of strategic marketing decisions are:
Launching of a new product.
Rebranding: changing your brands’ position.
Entering new product-market combination.
Introduce a loyalty program.
Catering to new market segments.
Developing product leadership.
Promotional policy changes.
Rationalising a product line.
Expanding distribution coverage.
Initiating a major advertising campaign.
Divesting/withdrawing from the market.
, Install a social media campaign.
Establishing a supplier partnership.
Tactical marketing decisions = short-term (annual or quarterly) decisions to execute the strategic
directions within the firm.
▪ Filling in the marketing mix of the individual project or brand to realise the company’s strategic
goals.
▪ E.g. brand price level, advertising by brand, sales force allocation.
, Lecture 2 – Strategic Decision-Making pt. I
To make good decisions, we need to do four things:
Accumulate organisational knowledge. ▪ Organisational learning.
▪ Enhancing culture and climate.
Get help. ▪ Compiling opinions, the wisdom of the crowd.
▪ Obtaining and using data.
▪ Marketing management support systems.
Be responsive. ▪ Business cycles.
▪ To competition.
▪ Implementation intentions.
Think and decide rationally. ▪ Rational decision making.
▪ Cognitive biases in decision making.
V&D for example went bankrupt because they did not have a good strategy. They did not adapt their
strategy to the changing environment. and were really slow to go online. They did not respond well
to the recession. They did not create a culture and climate where organisational learning was
present.
Nature of organisational learning
The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive
advantage.
An example: a hospital surgery team learning to use a new technology to increase operation
efficiency and effectiveness.
There are multiple ways to learn how to use the machine. When they have a good doctor that knows
to use the machine, there is a step behind it. They have someone who can teach others how to use it,
which creates a competitive advantage. But it is not sustainable, because when competitors learn
how to use the machine, the advantage is gone.
Organisational learning = the process of improving organisational actions through better knowledge
and understanding or as the outcome of such a process.
Key concepts:
▪ Individual learning vs. organisational learning
▪ Explicit vs. tacit knowledge
▪ Single-loop learning vs. double-loop learning
Individual vs. organisational learning
Organisational knowledge = the accumulation of the knowledge bases of all the individuals within an
organisation and the social knowledge embedded in the relationships between those individuals.
Lots of people having knowledge is great, but sharing this knowledge is even more useful.
▪ Organisational learning assumes individual learning, but individual learning is an insufficient
condition for organisational learning.
o Without sharing or transferring the knowledge, the organisation will not learn.
Organisational knowledge is more than a sum of the parts, it is also about exchanging and sharing
individual assumptions, models, and knowledge across the organisations at various levels:
▪ Individual > group > organisation > inter organisational
Examples:
