Role of Marketing Staff
The Role of the
Marketing Staff
DONALD R. LONGMAN
Business management [S increasingly dependent upon marketing to gain enduring competitive advantage.
This article describes the rich opportunities for success presented by a change rn the approach to marketing stafF work and acquisition of professional personnel for it.
GREAT DEAL has been written in recent years about the marketing concept. We may expect to see much more; for competition in American industry is increasingly centered in marketing-. This is a substantial change from the situation only a few decades ago. Success then hung on creative skill in evolving substantially new types of products, new production processes, new efficiency systems. Each step forward in these areas produced relatively strong and enduring competitive advantages.
This is much less true today. Mass training of skilled research and development men and of production engineers, increased mobility of manpower, and mass communication at the professional level have all served to spread technological know-how with amazing speed. Competitors employ research men and engineers of parallel training, professional contact, and skill. If one company's team seems relatively inept in the competitive battle, it is still possible to call upon a superior group of consulting engineers for help while a new team is being built.
Under these conditions, competitors quickly identify and match successful innovations made by any company in their field. They may even improve on the original innovator's ideas. It would be vain to suppose that even such corporate giants as Esso, U. S.
Steel, or^ General Motors could gain and hold for long a major competitive advantage in product or manufacturing process. Indeed, it has become common practice to grant licenses to competitors on a royalty basis, thus removing technical innovations as a basis of competitive advantage in the market.
Competitive Opportunities
It^ is this
Marketing Staff
DONALD R. LONGMAN
Business management [S increasingly dependent upon marketing to gain enduring competitive advantage.
This article describes the rich opportunities for success presented by a change rn the approach to marketing stafF work and acquisition of professional personnel for it.
GREAT DEAL has been written in recent years about the marketing concept. We may expect to see much more; for competition in American industry is increasingly centered in marketing-. This is a substantial change from the situation only a few decades ago. Success then hung on creative skill in evolving substantially new types of products, new production processes, new efficiency systems. Each step forward in these areas produced relatively strong and enduring competitive advantages.
This is much less true today. Mass training of skilled research and development men and of production engineers, increased mobility of manpower, and mass communication at the professional level have all served to spread technological know-how with amazing speed. Competitors employ research men and engineers of parallel training, professional contact, and skill. If one company's team seems relatively inept in the competitive battle, it is still possible to call upon a superior group of consulting engineers for help while a new team is being built.
Under these conditions, competitors quickly identify and match successful innovations made by any company in their field. They may even improve on the original innovator's ideas. It would be vain to suppose that even such corporate giants as Esso, U. S.
Steel, or^ General Motors could gain and hold for long a major competitive advantage in product or manufacturing process. Indeed, it has become common practice to grant licenses to competitors on a royalty basis, thus removing technical innovations as a basis of competitive advantage in the market.
Competitive Opportunities
It^ is this