TOPIC 1 - INTRODUCTION
Marketing strategy
A thoughtful plan by a company to produce desired outcomes in the marketplace vis-a-vis
customers, channel members and competitors.
→ an organization’s integrated pattern of decision that specify 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 organization and thereby enables the organization to achieve specific objectives.
(Varadarajan 2010)
→ Can really differentiate one firm from another (why one firm is more known than the other)
What makes these firms (brand) different?
- Unique vs - Set of (uncoordinated) tactics
- Distinctive - Similar characteristics or decisions as competing firm
- Coherent - Poor implementation of activities
- Dynamic
→ Long-term focus is important
→ Wanting to create sustainable competitive advantage
→ Left is done well
→ Dynamic: stay responsive to dynamic environment, while staying coherent, distinctive, unique
(Apple: apple pay, apple watch)
→ Harley Davidson: not very good quality, but very good marketing which makes it unique,
coherent
1. Strategic marketing decisions (STRATEGY)
Long-term holistic decisions concerning the future directions for the organizations
Features (Varadarajan 2010):
- Entail major resources commitments spread over long periods
- Impact over long time periods
- Result in 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 of the organization
E.g. loyalty programs, strategic partnerships, launching new products, rebranding, promotional
policy changes, expanding distribution coverage.
2. Tactical marketing decisions (EXECUTION)
Short term (annual or quarterly) decisions to execute the strategic directions within the firm;
filling in the marketing mix of the individual product or brand to realize the company strategic
goals.
,TOPIC 2 - STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING
Why did V&D go bankrupt?
- not responsive to business cycles / competition
- not responsive to recession of 2008
- were middle class, where fast fashion became more popular, no response to that
How to make good strategic decisions
1. Organizational learning & knowledge management
2. Get help
3. Be responsive
4. Think and decide rationally
‘’The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive
advantage’’
→ being really adaptive is very hard to mimic by competitors
Organizational learning
Process of improving organizational actions through better knowledge and understanding or as
the outcome of such process.
→ Assumes individual learning but individual learning is an insufficient condition for
organizational learning - without sharing or transferring knowledge, the organization will not
Learn
→ Also about exchanging and sharing individual assumptions, models, knowledge across the
organization at various levels (individual, group, organization, inter organizational)
Key concepts:
1. Individual learning vs organizational learning
- Organizational knowledge
Accumulation of the knowledge bases of all the individuals within an organization
and the social knowledge embedded in the relationships between those
Individuals.
2. Explicit vs tacit knowledge
- Firms formalize their explicit or tangible knowledge through representations (manuals,
minutes, operating procedures)
- Tacit knowledge
Low codifiability (= how possible it is for the organization to structure the
knowledge into a set of identifiable rules and relationships that can easily be
communicated)
→ know-how = how to get things done
→ often high complexity
- Transfer of tacit knowledge requires frequent social interaction, education
training
, - Difficult to transfer, also difficult to imitate
3. Single-loop learning vs double-loop learning
- Single-loop learning (adaptive learning)
Occurs within a set of recognized and unrecognized constraints (e.g. the learning
boundary) that reflect the organization’s assumptions about its environment and
itself. This type of learning involves problems but ignores the question why the
problem arose in the first place.
- Double-loop learning (generative learning)
Occurs when the organization is willing to question long-held assumptions about
its mission, customers, capabilities, or strategy. It uses feedback from past
actions to question assumptions underlying the current view.
→ understanding the deeper cause of the problems
Organizational learning: process
1. Information acquisition
From experience, from others, formal market research, competitive intelligence, informal
collection of information, experiments, satisfaction surveys etc
→ Exploitation: learning from internal experience
→ Exploration: learning from external experience (asking leading) customers
2. Information dissemination
Sharing information - formally (trainings, presentations) or informally (social interaction)
→ Informal best for uncertain problems/opportunities
3. Information shared interpretation
Need agreement on meaning. Conflict resolution and information exchange by
organization formal meetings, discussing alternative options.
4. Information utilization
Behavioral change
→ Action oriented: direct application of knowledge to solve problems
→ Knowledge-enhancing: influences managerial perspectives on problems
→ Affective use: increases satisfaction with a change
Slater & Narver learning organization hele grafiek kennen: zie ander bestand