Strategic Marketing Management 2020
Lecture 1 introduction
What makes firms (brands) different? Marketing strategy
A thoughtful plan by a company to produce desired outcomes in the marketplace vis-à-vis customers, channel
members and competitors
An organization’s integrated pattern of decisions that specify its crucial choices (No ‘correct’ decisions)
concerning products, markets, marketing activities and marketing resources in the creation, communication,
and/or delivery of products that offer value to customer in exchange with the organization and thereby enables
the organization to achieve specific objectives.
To create a sustainable competitive advantage
Strategic marketing decisions/ STRATEGY
Long-term holistic decisions concerning the future directions for the organization
Features:
- Entail major resources commitments spread over long periods
- Impact over longer time periods
- Result in a distinguishable competitive advantage
- Irreversible or difficult to reverse
- Entails tradeoffs (e.g., if strategy a strategy B&C foregone)
- Made in the context of other strategic decisions (interdependencies)
- Made at a higher level of the organization
Examples of strategic marketing decisions
- Launching a new product
- Rebranding: changing your brands’ position
- Entering a new product-market combination
- Introduce a loyalty program
- Catering to new market segments
- Developing product leadership
- Promotional policy changes
- …
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
Formulation Implementation
(figuring out what to do) (doing it)
= STRATEGY = EXECUTION
Goals Means Tactics actions
Inputs Content goal criteria Target Detailed Behaviors to
(resources) (decisions, and levels customers/ integrated enact tactical
resources, identifying segments marketing decisions
required required value program (realized
deployments,
outcomes proposition(s), decisions resource
and actions)
timing etc. allocations)
Process Performance Strategic Marketing mix Resource
(strategy review, planning, planning, deployment,
making and situation market budgeting, organization
assessment, analysis, communication design,
strategy
goal setting participation in alignment, etc. performance
realization)
etc. MSM, etc. monitoring
Environment (internal & external contingencies) =
competition & market turbulence
Table 1 The marketing strategy domain in 2020 ...
,Lecture 2 Strategic decision making How to make good strategic decisions:
1 Organizational learning & knowledge Nature of organizational knowledge
The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage
Organizational learning = the process of improving actions through better knowledge and understanding or as
the outcome of such a process.
a. Individual 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
o Organizational learning assumes individual learning, but individual learning is an insufficient
condition for organizational learning – without sharing or transferring the knowledge, the
organization will not learn;
o More than the sum of the parts
o Is also about exchanging and sharing individual assumptions, models, knowledge across the
organization at various levels: individual group organization inter organizational
b. Explicit vs. tacit knowledge
Explicit knowledge can be codified, systematic, formal, easy to transfer
Tacit knowledge context-specific, personal, subjective, not easy to transfer
Firms formalize their explicit or ‘tangible’ knowledge through representations like manuals, minutes,
operating, procedures, administrative forms, work routines…
Tacit knowledge
o Low codifiability (= to what extend is it possible for the organization to structure knowledge
into a set of identifiable rules and relationships that can easily be communicated).
o Know-how = how things get done
o Often high complexity (science-based)
Transfer of tacit knowledge requires frequent social interaction, education and training
Difficult to transfer, but therefore also difficult to imitate
c. Single-loop learning vs. double-loop learning
Single-loop learning (adaptive learning) occurs within a set of recognized and unrecognized constraints
(i.e., the learning boundary) that reflect the organization’s assumptions about its environment and
itself. This type of learning solves problems, but ignores the question of 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 current views.
1 Organizational learning & Knowledge the process
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
- Dissemination: formal (cross-functional teams, trainings, presentations, etc.) or informal (social
interaction). Informal best for uncertain problems/ opportunities
- Shared interpretation: Need agreement on meaning. Conflict resolution & information exchange by
organizing formal meetings, discussing alternative options.
- Utilization: behavioral change
o Action oriented: direct application of knowledge to solve problems
o Knowledge-enhancing: influences managerial perspectives on problems
o Affective use: increase satisfaction with a change
1 Organizational learning & Knowledge culture & climate
How to organize your firm to foster organizational learning? Organizational learning should led to lasting
competitive advantage
Culture = deeply rooted values and beliefs that provide norms. Necessary foundation for organization learning
,Climate = structure and processes that facilitate achievement of desired behavior
Need to be complementary!
Culture consists of:
- Market orientation must be the cultural foundation of the organization. The market is central and the
focus is on (1) collecting information about the target group and competitors and (2) superior
customer value can be generated from this. It is important to respond quickly to opportunities and
threats. For a company, taking risks, focusing only on the current market and only applying adaptive
learning can be a pitfall.
- Entrepreneurship in such cultures, new businesses are created within existing business or existing
businesses renewed through new products, strategies and technological developments. People are
proactive, risk takers and bureaucrats.
Create an environment in which cultural values can flourish:
- A facilitating leader. This is someone who doesn't push, doesn't make decisions on his own and
involves its employees in the decision-making process.
- An organic organization. There is informal communication in this decentralized organization.
communication, interdependence and willingness to cooperate and share information, resulting in
increased effectiveness in organizational performance.
- Decentralized strategic planning. The planning is steered by a stable vision and operationalized
through flexible and task-oriented planning. The shared vision provides a general strategy in which the
details are determined later. This allows the organization to adapt and learn.
Some useful skill-development toward organizational learning
- Individual learning effectiveness
Learning: acquiring, storing, and remembering information
Learning through elaboration works better than rehearsal
o Related the incoming information to information that already exists in your long-term
memory
o Make vivid, creative examples
- Social interaction and communication skills
Companies that foster social interaction enhance organizational learning and success
o Informal, unstructured interaction is often best for tacit knowledge and creativity
o Cross-functional teams, open office plans, cafeterias, encourage socializing
Individuals that are skilled at social interactions are more successful and happier and healthier
loneliness is as unhealthy as smoking, even worse than obesity!
Some tips for having other people like you:
o First impressions matter
, o Find common ground
o Give compliments, including when they are not around
o Ask for advice, ask good questions
o Say thank-you
- Conflict resolutions
Conflict is inevitable and positive, if managed correctly
Organizational learning requires skillful conflict resolution
What happens when two people disagree?
o Argumentation: trying to change others’ beliefs and values
o Even the best arguments lead to the other person being even more confident
Organizational solutions:
o Structured processes for surfacing and managing disagreement
o Dialectical inquiry, Devil’s advocate
Personal solutions:
o Argue better. Research persuasion
o Practice emotional intelligence, tolerance, empathy, helpfulness
o It’s not losing an argument, it’s learning
- Facilitation/ helpfulness
Organizational solution 1: create a climate of knowledge sharing incentive it
Organizational solution 2: creative a culture of knowledge sharing facilitation/ helpfulness
Psychological T-accounts: register the gives and takes of relationships, such as coworkers who
occasionally help each other.
Balance of accounts is the expected value, which determines motivation for continuing the exchange
(the relationship or the behavior)
The T-accounts end up even for both people (they both gave and received equally), so both are no
more or less motivated to continue the exchange