Functions of Marketing

¶ … company's sales come from new customers and repeat customers. In order for you to fully understand the various market functions aside from advertising and selling is the importance of keeping these customers satisfied, especially repeat customers. As Kotler (2013), explains on page 13, in order to attract new customers, it costs 500% more than satisfying an existing one. Furthermore, it costs 16 times more to bring a new customer to the same level of spending than a repeat customer. "…creating customer value is a multilaned process consisting of two conceptually distinct subprocesses.

These are the supplier's process of providing resources for customer's use and the customer's process of turning service into value" (Gronroos & Ravald, 2011, p. 5). Therefore the actions of selling and advertising that are meant to attract new customers are not necessarily as important as other actions like integrated marketing that consist of several functions: customer service, marketing research, and product management. These functions serve to provide quality service and product to the customer while also helping to understand and meet the needs of the customer.

Integrated marketing is a process of functions that are coordinated together through the perspective of the customer. Through integrated marketing, a company or business can serve the customers' interests while also providing valuable insight to the company on what would generate profit. For instance, if you or someone you know has had issues with a product in relation to billing, this aspect of customer service can result in lost business for the company if the needs of the customer are not met.

Providing the customer with a smooth transaction and easy return policy can give the customers, especially repeat customers' incentive to keep buying, therefore generating more profit for the company. In order to achieve this, a common form of marketing organization, functional organization, enables delivering and implementing administrative simplicity. In this kind of organization, functional specialists like marketing research managers and sales managers, report to a marketing VP to coordinate activities.

"…entrepreneurial marketing as the organizational function of marketing by taking into account innovativeness, risk taking, pro-activeness and the pursuit of opportunities without regard for the resources currently controlled…not be restricted to young and small ventures…but applied to larger firms" (Kraus, Harms & Fink, 2010, p. 19). The employees then handle functions for status and budget and enable better delivery of customer service and resource management which are integral to business success and profitability. Another aspect important in understanding better marketing functions is geographic organization.

From a management perspective, it's important to keep employees within a close area or national area to avoid some of the pitfalls from outsourcing in foreign countries. "While CRM outsourcing may seem attractive at the management level considering investment cost and expertise, serious hazards are often encountered when they face serious losses in organizational learning for their markets and customers" (Park, Lee & Morgan, 2011, p. 471). Some of these pitfalls include lack of communication, training, and eventual mismanagement resulting in loss of repeat customers and decreased customer loyalty.

When looking at marketing functions, you also have to look at what other things can serve a company to promote and market its product or service. "Although on-premise signs have received scant attention in the academic literature, they serve important functions as marketing and promotional devices" (Taylor, Sarkees & Bang, 2012, p. 185). On-premise signs are a great way to advertise but can only be properly executed from conducting market research and knowing the target group or demographic.

As important as it is to advertise, it's also even more important to understand your audience and what they need from the company. Google is a great example of understanding and meeting customer needs. They have excellent customer service and work hard to truly understand their demographics and target audience. When conducting market research it's important to understand latest trends, economic concerns, and overall consumer consumption trends.

"…marketing scholars need to understand about economic growth, consumption, and quality of life, not as a problem of how to enhance marketing effectiveness and extend its reach, but rather one of how to focus (or limit) within the specific context of a better-not-more life goal and finite resource budget" (Varey, 2012, p. 424). Without this level of understanding, sales will decline and resources spent on advertisements would be squandered. In order to combine and categorize a suitable demonstration to the customers, evaluate and effectively predict what the customer wants and relates to.

Non-marketing employees need to recognize this side of marketing because it provides the framework for an effectively translated advertisement, one that customers can identify with, easily recognize, and justify spending money on or for. Without proper organization, management,.