Marketing Management Is An Art Or Science

Meaning of Marketing Management:

The term ‘marketing management, refers to the planning, organizing, directing and controlling of the persons and activities engaged in the marketing division of a business enterprise. In the words of Philip Kotler, “marketing management is the analysis, planning, implementation and control of programmes designed to create, build and maintain mutually beneficial exchanges and relationships with target markets for the purpose of achieving organizational objectives. It relies on disciplined analysis of the needs, wants, perceptions and preferences of target and intermediary markets as the basis for effective product design, pricing, communication and distribution.”

Based on the above ideas, management can be regarded as a process of identifying and assessing the consumer needs with a view to first converting them into products or services and then moving the same to the final consumers so as to satisfy their wants with the aim of making optimum use of resources available to the enterprise.

Objectives of Marketing Management:

The aims or objectives of marketing management include:

(i)                 Achieving higher productivity in its marketing operations;

(ii)               Making optimum use of the available resources;

(iii)             Enhancing the profitability of the enterprise;

(iv)             Providing maximum consumer satisfaction;

(v)               Raising of standard of living of the people; and

(vi)             Satisfaction of consumer wants.

Having examined the meaning and objective of marketing management I am of the opinion that marketing management is more of science than art.

Marketing Management As A Science:

The word science literally means knowledge. It is a systematic body of knowledge acquired by mankind through observation and experimentation and which is capable of verification. In the words of Keynes, “science is a systematized body of knowledge which establishes relationship between cause and effect.”

Science has three basic features:

(i)                 It is a systematized body of knowledge that uses scientific methods for observation,

(ii)               The principles are evolved on the basis of continued observation, and

(iii)             The principles are exact and have universal applicability without any limitation.

Marketing management is viewed as a science as it is an organized body of knowledge built up by management practitioners, thinkers and philosophers over a period of years. It has certain principles and rules developed after continued observation. But it must be noted that marketing is science but unlike Physics, Chemistry and Biology, it is not an exact or accurate science.

The principles of marketing management cannot be considered results and may not have universal applicability. The main reason for the inexactness of science of marketing management is that it deals with human beings whose behaviour cannot be predicted. Thus, we can say that marketing management is a ‘soft science’ or ‘behavioural science’.

Marketing is a science because marketing is about satisfying customers needs. To understand customer needs we need to develop scientific methods to learn about our customers and the needs they have. Also, the market and consumers generally behave in certain manners and deal with known variables. Porter’s five forces is a good example of this. These five forces determine the profitability and behaviors within a market. The five forces being: competition within the industry, customers bargaining power, suppliers bargaining power, threat of entry of new competitors, threat of substitute products. These forces shape the strategy of the company.

Though creativity plays a large role in marketing, there’s no denying data is what drives results. A study of the people most likely to use products and services is the only way to develop an accurate buyer persona. After some testing, the buyer personas are tweaked and polished. Without the data from that testing, that fluidity wouldn’t be possible.

Analytics are also important when deploying marketing campaigns. As marketers, we often use A/B testing to determine what changes should be made to achieve better results. Those changes are recommended to the writers and designers, who then use art to create new versions of the same campaign. Without that data, we would have no way to improve upon what we’ve already done.

Conclusively, from the above analysis of marketing management it is clearly seen that marketing management is more of Science than Art.

REFERENCES

David B. Montgomery 2001. “Management Science in Marketing: Prehistory, Origin, and Early Years of the INFORMS Marketing College.” Marketing Science 20 (4): 337–348.

Robert C. Blattberg, Rashi Glazer, and John D.C. Little, eds. 1994. The Marketing Information Revolution. Boston Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.

Dick R. Wittink 2001. “Market Measurement and Analysis: The First ‘Marketing Science’ Conference.” Marketing Science 20 (4): 349–356.

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