Concept
Marketing management is the organizational discipline which focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside enterprises and organizations and on the management of a firm's marketing resources and activities. Marketing management employs 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. In competitor analysis, marketers build detailed profiles of each competitor in the market, focusing on their relative competitive strengths and weaknesses using SWOT analysis. Marketing managers will examine each competitor's cost structure, sources of profits, resources and competencies, competitive positioning and product differentiation, degree of vertical integration, historical responses to industry developments, and other factors. Marketing management often implies market research and marketing research to perform a primary analysis. For this, a variety of techniques are implemented. Some of the most common ones 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 Marketing managers may also design and oversee various environmental scanning and competitive intelligence processes to identify trends and inform the company's marketing analysis. A brand audit is a thorough examination of a brand's current position in an industry compared to its competitors and the examination of its effectiveness.