Discuss and critically assess the assertion that the role of marketing Essay

Discuss and critically assess the assertion that the role of marketing - Essay Example The essay will go on to compare whether marketing has a more functional rather than strategic role in the era of modern marketing and how this is reflected in modern marketing strategies in the modern corporate world. The Marketing concept entails the philosophy that firms should be able to analyse consumer needs and then make any decisions to satisfy those needs (Nakata.C.2002). The concept is fairly new and only found its way into modern business philosophy after the Second World War. (Nakata.C.2002). However even in the 18th century economists like Adam Smith in his book the wealth of nations 1776 were of view that needs of the producers should only be viewed in sync with the needs of the consumers (Nakata.C.2002). There has been much academic consensus that the role of marketing is often viewed from too narrow a perspective. (Anttila 2002, Anderson 1982).This assertion then begs the question as to what is the comprehensive perspective of the marketing concept. Thus it would seem that the wider role of marketing synthesizes a variety of particular skills and practices learned as well as resources created "translating the philosophy into specific business strategies in order to achieve competitive advantages and superior performance".Antilla 2002). Strategic planning, is how an organisation defines its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. (Schultz 1994).The concept of marketing on the other hand has come a long way. As long back as 1910 there was "a period of conceptualization" for marketing and it was celebrated as "matter in motion". (Robert 1976) During the following decades the concept of marketing then integrated and developed and it was given agreed that the functional institutional commodity analysis of marketing was unsatisfactory and a definition of marketing evolved (Robert 1976). Marketing as a necessity for all stages of production Selling gets differentiated from marketing by the fact that selling is only done when a product is made available on the shelf within a retail outlet while marketing starts right at the beginning as early as the idea is conceived or being developed (Orpen, 1985).This contention above alone would demonstrate how marketing has penetrated the earlier stages of production and how it has become indispensable for making the strategies succeed. (Anderson 1982)All this however also entails that the narrow, specialist approach to marketing would weaken the strategic planning itself.(Anderson 1982,Shiner 1998) Marketing as an integral and strategic part of the general management orientation In the understanding of the role of marketing vis a vis strategic planning a much seasoned approach would be to assess the relationship between the two before passing a judgment on the role of modern marketing. As I have mentioned before strategic planning concerns the "direction of business"(Robert 1976) as regarding its production, output finance and operations. Where does marketing fit in then Marketing will fill in the gap and solidify the strategic