Marketing management is a business discipline which is focused on the practical application of marketing techniques and the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities. Rapidly emerging forces of globalization have led firms to market beyond the borders of their home countries, making international marketing highly significant and an integral part of a firm's marketing strategy.[1] Marketing managers are often responsible for influencing the level, timing, and composition of customer demand accepted definition of the term
Marketing management employs various tools from economics and competitive strategy to analyze the industry context in which the firm operates. These include Porter's five forces, analysis of strategic groups of competitors, value chain analysis and others.
Marketing management often finds it necessary to invest in research to collect the data required to perform accurate marketing analysis. As such, they often conduct market research (alternately marketing research) to obtain this information. Marketers employ a variety of techniques to conduct market research, but some of the more common include: * Qualitative marketing research, such as focus groups and various types of interviews * Quantitative marketing research, such as statistical surveys * Experimental techniques such as test markets * Observational techniques such as ethnographic (on-site) observation
No business exists and operates in a vacuum, but as a part and parcel of the environment in which it finds itself. Efficient and effective marketing strategy is a function of the marketing manager's ability to understand the environment in which the business operates.
The term micro-environment denotes those elements over which the marketing firm has control or which it can use in order to gain information that will better help it in its marketing operations. In other words,