The Role of Marketing Strategies in Modern Business and Society

Background

Marketing strategy is a concept built on robust platform of segmentation, targeting, and positioning (Ferrell, Hartline, & Lucas, 2002; Kotler, 2005; Perreault & McCarthy, 2002). Marketing strategy requires decisions about the specific customers that the organization aims to target in a superior way (Kotler, 2005). The study of the effectiveness of the marketing tools is essential for an appropriate marketing strategy (Sengupta & Chattopadhyay, 2006). The appropriateness of the marketing strategy is judged by assessing the difference between the customers’ perception of the marketplace and the organization’s market offering (Perreault & McCarthy, 2002).

Porter (1980) proposed three marketing approaches to gaining competitive strategies (i.e., differentiation strategy, cost leadership strategy, and focus strategy). Cost leadership and differentiation are the basic strategies that offer an equally successful path to outperforming the competition (Porter, 1980). Cost leadership and differentiation can be combined to gain competitive advantage (Dess, Gupta, Hennart, & Hill, 1995). Marketing strategy needs to be carefully considered so that it is appropriate for a set of business conditions (Ward & Lewandowska, 2008). Chari et al. (2014) stated that dimensions of market uncertainty (i.e., dynamism and complexity) and strategic feedback systems effectively influence the formation of emergent marketing strategy.