Kovach I.
Gavrilina E.I.
Donetsk National University of Economics and Trade
named after Mihailo Tugan-Baranovsky
Marketing
Strategy Implementation and Performance
The issues of what should happen and why it should
happen together make up marketing strategy. Implementation focuses on actions:
who is responsible for various activities, how the strategy should be carried
out, where things will happen and when action will take place.
Managers devise marketing strategies to meet new
opportunities, counter environmental threats and mach core competences. The
framework for strategy development was discussed in the previous chapter, which
examined marketing planning. Although implementation is a consequence of
strategy and should form part of the strategy development process. The
proposition is straightforward: people
are incapable of carrying out the necessary tasks to make the strategy work in
the marketplace. Implementation capability, then¸ is an integral part of
strategy formulation. Implementation affects marketing strategy choice. For
example, a company that traditionally has been a low-cost, low-price operator may
have a culture that finds it difficult to implement a value-added, high-price
strategy. And strategy determines implementation requirements – for example, a
value-added, high-price strategy may require the sales force to refrain from
price discounting.
It has been argued that combinations of
appropriate/inappropriate strategy and good/poor implementation will lead to
various business outcomes.
Appropriate strategy: good implementation.
This combination is one most likely to lead to
success. No guarantee of success can be made, however, because of the vagaries
of the marketplace, including competitor actions and reactions, new
technological breakthroughs and plain bad luck. But with strong implementation
backing sound strategy, those in marketing management have done all they can to
build success.
Appropriate strategy: bad implementation.
It is likely that this combination will lead to
trouble if substandard performance is attributed to poor strategy. The
consequence of management`s tendency to look for strategy change in response to
poor results will be a less appropriate strategy being grafted on to an already
wayward implementation system.
Inappropriate strategy: good implementation.
We can predict the two effects of this combination.
First, the effective implementation of a poor strategy can hasten failure. For
example, very effectively communicating a price rise (which is part of an
inappropriate repositioning strategy) to customers may accelerate a fall in
sales. Second, if good implementation takes the form of correcting a fault in
strategy then the outcome will be favorable. For examples, if strategy implies
an increase in sales effort to push a low margin dog product to the detriment
of a new star product in a growing market (perhaps for political reasons), modification
at the implementation level may correct the bias. The reality of marketing life
is that managers spend many hours supplementing, subverting, overcoming or
otherwise correcting shortcomings in strategic plans.
Inappropriate strategy: bad implementation.
This combination is certain to lead to failure, which
is difficult to correct because so much is wrong. An example might be a
situation where a product holds a differential. The situation is made worse by
an advertising campaign that is unbelievable, and a sales force who make
misleading claims leading to customers annoyance and confusion.
Implications.
So, when faced with poor performance, what should
managers do? First, strategic issues should be separated from implementation
activities and the problem diagnosed. Second, when in doubt about whether the
problem is rooted in strategy or implementation, implementation problems should
be addressed first so that strategic adequacy can more easily be assessed.