Strategic Marketing and the Planning Process (part A)
by
Charles Lamson
Introduction
The analysis of the consumer environment is a keystone of the functionalist approach to marketing. On this view the marketer who fails to adapt to changing environmental trends will fail to ensure the company's survival. The discussion starts by reflecting on the difficulties of determining what may happen in the future. Bearing this in mind, aspects of the current marketing environment are considered, focusing in particular on time - space compression, the body and globalization and fragmentation. Then the business organization in relation to the marketing environment is considered. this closely adheres to the cognitive explanation which is outlined and discussed in later posts. This frames organizational decision making as a form of problem solving. In simple terms it involves devising a goal state, an initial state and operators of how to get the goal state from the initial state and operators of how to get to the goal state from the initial state. In management jargon the goal state is discussed with reference to concepts such as the mission and objectives; initial state by marketing audit; and operators by strategies.
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The Marketing Environment
One of the key aspects of developing a functionalist explanation is to relate the organism to its environment. In this post environmental trends are examined together with the relationship of organizations and the environment.
General Environmental Trends
Some important aspects of the environment are considered. It is useful to point out that the environment is not simply 'seen', it is 'perceived'. This means what is happening 'out there' is seen through the cultural spectacles. It is difficult to see these 'cultural spectacles', but if looking at the past and, in particular, at the assumptions about what environmental changes were, it becomes more apparent. For example, during the 1960s people looked forward to the 1970s and 1980s as a time of leisure. Many articles appeared in the popular press to speculate about what people might do with this leisure time. It was only in the 1970s when the grim truth dawned: unemployment was certainly a form of 'leisure time' but not the sort that people had expected or found tolerable. The list in table 2-1 has been selected from a forecast of 100 technical innovations likely in the thirty-three years to 1990 as reported by Kahn and Wiener (1967). This should be examined to appreciate their success in spotting what actually happened.
Table 2.1 One Hundred Technical Innovations Likely in the Next Thirty Years
Source: adapted from Khan and Weiner (1967)
Note: numbers on left-hand side show actual rank position out of 100 in list.
It is noted that, ignoring the bad mistakes, e.g. nuclear energy, hibernation, etc., the authors were close in their predictions. Some of the predictions are so general that they were almost bound to have happened in some shape or form. In hindsight, it seems clear that Khan and Weiner's view of the future was influenced by the prevailing social attitude of their time, especially by science fiction. This featured people in individual flying machines which usually looked like smart sports cars that zoomed across highways in space; helpful robots which cleaned up around the home where almost all energy was provided by means of some form of fission or fusion. So, while the authors managed to get a glimpse of what actually happened, their views were distorted by the context of the times in which they were in. On the other hand, although the seeds of the Internet and bioengineering had been planted at that time, there is no mention of these innovations. That society is condemned to be trapped in a web consisting of the assumptions of the time and place is obvious. But what sort of environmental changes seem to be occurring at the present time? What effects may these changes have for consumption for organizations and households?
Consumer Society and the Physical Environment
One fragile certainty is that capitalism has triumphed across the world. Nowadays consumer societies are taking root in even the poorest African and South American countries. Just as the East Germans exchanged the 'Trabant' for the dream of a 'Mercedes' society, so Chinese consumers are facing their government with an expectation that they have a right to the same level of prosperity (indexed by access to consumer goods) as everyone else on the globe.
At the same time there is a growing awareness, reflected in the Earth Summit and its successors, that the consumer society has major environmental implications provoking a need to see limits to growth. The problem is that this is taken to mean that for each major country that 'everyone else' should be responsible and not develop too far but that 'we' should maintain 'our' level of development.
Here is a trend to consider.
Time-Space Compression
Time-space compression, perhaps the most pervasive trend in contemporary society refers to the idea that the logic of capitalism results in a speed-up of time and a reduction in the effects of distance to the extent that they are compressed into a smaller space than ever before. Harvey (1989) refers to the constantly accelerating turnover time of capital which is the time of production together with the time of the circulation of exchange. The logic is that the faster the capital launched into circulation can be recuperated the greater the profit will be. Capitalists, spurred on by the threat of competition and the demand to open up new markets and raw material sources, make continuous efforts to shorten turnover times. At the same time the 'friction of distance' is condensing. the effects of this speed-up are that goods travel faster, new spaces for distribution and consumption are created (in aviation, rail transport, the World Wide Web). As a result there is a paradox, with simultaneous trends towards globalization and fragmentation
*SOURCE: FUNDAMENTALS OF MARKETING, 2007, MARILYN A. STONE AND JOHN DRESMOND, PGS. 46-48*
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