Marketing Management: 1980\'s to Present This Paper

Marketing Management: 1980's To Present

This paper intends to explore the changes and shifts in the marketing environment from the 1980's to present in light of the changes and adaptations that management has been faced with in the past two decades.

The decade of the eighties witnessed shifting and shaping in the transitioning global market. There were "three-tier protectionist" system as follows:

Traditional self-reliance

Private consumer advocate groups and organizations

Pro-consumer government regulatory apparatus

An article entitled "Assessing Marketing Performance" written by Bonoma and Clark in 1988 is one that doesn't stop at efficiency and effectiveness in marketing assessment of performance. The article they wrote suggests the following:

The proper evaluation of marketing activities can be performed only at the level of the marketing programs. Forget overall "marketing audits" of your structures of low level looks at advertising or sales performance, if you want to understand marketing performance

2. Satisfaction is weighted by effort to measure marketing performance. Perversely, and in compete contravention of the Protestant ethic performance is maximized from gaining the greatest satisfaction with the least effort. Low effort means high performance.

3. Whether or not a marketing program is productive depends not only on management's satisfaction and efforts, but on factors in the external environment as well. As a rule, most managers do not examine these external factors enough. Further stated was that "management's satisfactions is based on a comparison of results with no prior expectations, after taking into account the level of effort and the impact of external (uncontrollable) factors.

I. Marketing Structure of the 1980's

The marketing plans of the 1980's was one that was focused on four strategic initiatives:

Segmenting Markets

Developing New Pricing

Changing the course mix

Assigning financial aid dollars to low-demand areas

There were two models of management that influenced the eighties as follows:

1. Traditional or the Legal Theory: Board of directors elected by stockholders. Top managers selected by Board of directors and answerable to board for companies performance.

2. The other non-traditional model: CEO and other top managers influence the board to nominate new directors who tend to give allegiance to policy of CEO.

The 1980's will be remembered as the decade for company mergers and takeovers. Mergers rose from $34.2 billion in 1979 to $125 billion in 1985.

In a 1986 survey of nearly 600 corporations it was found that:

"Board vacancies continue to be filled predominantly through recommendations by the chairman in 81% of companies and by other board members in 77% of companies."

The eighties will also be remembered for deregulation and consumerism, which propelled the U.S. toward "freer" markets but not completely free consumer markets. The corporations of the 1980's were large contributors to the community and civic organizations. In 1986 charitable contributions amounted to $4.5 billion.

The focus in the 1980's was on the customer. Retails expenditures in 1990 were as follows:

However by the year 2000 the following was reported:

(Adapted from Fleming, Martin, Retailer Report, August 2000)

The decade of the 1980's witnessed the world's garbage piling high needing better management and competition was heating up on a global basis as well. Ecology, previously unspoken in most households, quickly became a new household word.

Reaching the consumer was done through television as the media of the 1980's reported in a survey that the average American was watching thirty or more hours of television each week.

Globalism, spurred on by the expanding marketplace of the 1980's transformed into today's multinational enterprise or international business. Presently the U.S. is involved in several trade blocs and the marketplace itself has transformed. The "High Street" retailer is in vogue not only for the convenience but also for the productive streamlining provided in this type of marketing of consumer goods.

Spending patterns from 1999 to 2000 was varied with housing and food expenditures rising 2.8%. Spending on food at home rose 3.6% while eating out expenditures were reported at 1.0%. Apparel spending, services, transportation and health care expenditures rose 5.5 to 6.5%. Entertainment reported decreases of 1.5% and personal insurance and pensions expenditures reported a decrease of 2.1%.

With the cold war behind and the Iraq war on the forefront consumer spending is unpredictable. During the 2004 election year the high-technology market is feeling the squeeze. High -- technology spending is reported to have dropped drastically in the year 2004. Competition is fierce on the global market with many of the third world countries beginning to compete fiercely, most noticeably the Latin-American countries of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, the four member nations of the trading bloc for free trade in that area.