Marketing Concepts and Internal Relations

Marketing can be described as a social and managerial process for obtaining the needs and wants by individuals and groups through creating and exchanging products and values with others. Strategy adopted by organizations for satisfying customers needs, increasing sales, maximizing profit and beating competition is termed as the marketing concept. Organizations adopt and execute five marketing concepts:

Production Concept emerges out of a firm’s production orientation and is based on the idea that more they make, more profitable they become. Easily available and affordable products  are expected by customers. Production efficiency, reducing costs and mass distribution are focused by businesses. 

Product Concept has the proposition that consumers will favor products offering attributes like quality, performance and other innovative features. Focus is on developing superior products.

Selling Concept asserts that customers, will not buy a firm’s products unless they are pushed through active promotion and selling effort. Focus is on creating sales transactions over building long-term and profitable customer relations.
Marketing Concept asserts that the achievement of success lies in ability of creating, delivering and communicating a better value proposition through its marketing offer compared to competitors for its chosen target segment. This concept is practiced by Barclays.

Societal Concept asserts that a firm’s such as Barclays emphasize on identifying their target markets needs, wants and intentions for effective and efficient delivery of the expected satisfaction than competitors in a way to protect or improve the well being of consumers and society (Pogodayev 2013).

1) Rise of Partner Marketing

According to Gurgu and Cociuban (2017) in performance marketing growth many factors play a key role and technology undeniably plays a big part giving a boost to the position of Partner marketing as a feasible business solution for corporates like Barclays. Marketing, which earlier was treated as a second class channel by the marketers are more powerfully managed by their partners  today besides recognizing the high value partner and rewarding them for on bringing new customers. Working closely with their partner derives best outcomes. 

2) Mobile Marketing 

Email templates and desktop applications were created earlier by most businesses. Changing trend today has increased focus on mobile marketing owing to bigger and brighter growth opportunities. Research reveals that corporates like Barclays for example has grown manifold in past few years, all thanks to mobile marketing, turning the focus more on mobile and lesser on desktop. Barclays is leveraging this trend by making their presence on social media for gaining desired growth.

3) Online Performance Marketing

Having a wider reach in advertising, the online marketing is based on performance based on cost per action influencing the brand awareness and effectiveness for Barclays and today they are more inclined in using online trends like social media for marketing over newspaper prints for establishing brand awareness in markets (Morgan, et al. 2018)
Future marketing trends:

1. With a greater impact on a business, engaging content will always be a future marketing trend.  Comprehending the consumers’ needs and requirements is significant for grabbing their pulse and become a problem solver. However, the format of the content is changing, which earlier used to  be advertising focused more on business promotions. Today websites of Barclays have also come into play for intriguing the consumers.

Current Marketing Trends

2. Having the potential of giving better user experiences, the growth of voice recognition technology will get bigger in future. Although the technology is not new, the role it will play in marketing is shocking. Half of the search queries by 2020 will be voice-based.  

3. With Virtual and augmented reality gaining momentum businesses  like Barclays will tap them into mainstream business.

4. For engaging with their audiences more and more brands and businesses like Barclays will adopt live video feature.

Identifying opportunities for satisfying the  unfulfilled needs of customers.
Barclays first comprehend own capabilities in their operating areas and analyze their external and internal environment ( macro and micro environment ) 

Past, present and future aspects are also included.

Frameworks adding structure to situation analysis are 

5Cs – Company, Customers, and Competitors. Collaborators and Climate)
PEST analysis – political, economic, social and technological
SWOT analysis – Strength, weaknesses, opportunity and threat

In this strategic approach Barclays focuses on identifying the best opportunity for satisfying unfulfilled customer needs, with development of marketing strategy or a strategic plan

It involves Segmentation, Targeting, Product positioning and Value proposition.

Decisions are made within four controlable categories namely Product, Price, Place and Promotion Implementation & Control

It is assumed that the marketing plan has been developed and product launched.

With change in market, marketing mix of Barclays is adjusted for accommodating them, either by changing the advertising message or product redesign.

Implementation is required to accommodate the changes and continuous monitoring for consistently fulfilling customer needs.

Also control in marketing process of Barclays ensures marketing program is moving in set direction (Gonzalez-Valiente and Pacheco-Mendoza 2017) .

                                     

1. Distribution is a key marketing function today for Barclays that is increasingly interconnected and is much more than just taking products or services to customers. 
2. An important function of marketing at  Barclays is to find money from investments, loans or personal capital to finance the creation and advertising of goods and services.     
3. Collecting information about target customers such as who are the people  Barclays wants to sell? Why should they buy from  Barclays opposed to a rival is important for comprehending the marketing trends and competitor products. 
4. Price setting is a challenging marketing function for  Barclays as higher price might dissuade customers while too lower pricing may reduce profits
5. Effectively managing a product or service is a marketing function at  Barclays that involves listening to customers, responding to their wants and needs, and keeping product offerings and services newfangled.
6. Advertising products and services to attract new customers and retaining existing customers by tailoring promotion messages using new social media besides by sticking with more conventional Barclays branches and using a mix of old and new means is a key function of marketing (Wirtz, et al. 2014)
7. Selling is the last function of marketing at  Barclays that occurs only after determining the customers’ needs and wants for responding with right products at right pricing and timeframe.
8. Setting marketing strategy such as increasing market share by entering new sector or opening a new distribution channel etc. by aligning with overall strategy and objectives of  Barclays is a key responsibility of their marketing function. 
9. It is also the responsibility of marketing at  Barclays to identify the market opportunities and better comprehend customer needs, recognize competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
10. Developing new or improving existing products is the responsibility of marketing at  Barclays which is done by evaluating the current sales and identifying the gaps in product offerings to seek business opportunities. 
11. Planning campaigns and developing communications material for products and services promotions depending on available budgets to customers and prospects is the responsibility of marketing at  Barclays
12. Providing high-quality information to sales teams is responsibility of marketing at  Barclays  which is done by running advertisements or by encouraging visitors to register their details on official website besides supplying the sales team with promotional materials for customers .
13. Organizing events like seminars, customer hospitality events is often responsibility of marketing teams followed by promoting them to customers.

Future Marketing Trends

According to Turner and Lecoeuvre (2017) the roles of Marketing Manager at Barclays are:

Working with Barclays top management is the primary role of marketing manager to identify the marketing plans and policies for eliminating the problems and formulating sound plans and policies may be formulated.

Establishing effective coordination amid the business activities like purchase, sale, packing, storage, transportation, advertisement, sales promotion, after sale-services etc. is also his/her responsibility.

Creating and increasing the financial products and services demand by identifying the new potential markets besides maintaining the relationships among the existing markets for Barclays and its products.

Occasionally studying the changes in customers needs and demands besides periodic product evaluation for making requisite modifications and alterations .

Launching new goods and services by studying the market needs and demands for attracting new and retaining old customers.

Creating a marketing plan for determining when, how, where and by whom the marketing activities like sales forecast, advertisement, sales promotion, distribution of products etc. will be carried for achieving marketing goals.

Studying Barclays economic, social and the political environment ensuring survival and success besides ensuring compliance to  government rules and regulations, social norms and cultural values, regional treaties and global alignment, economic rules and tax policies. Designing business strategies for customer satisfaction and profit maximization.

According to Glinkowska and Kaczmarek (2017) Marketing manager is responsible to oversee the allocation of resources to marketing activities determining the success or failure of Barclays. The responsibilities of marketing manager are:

• Responsibilities towards Enterprise
• Responsibilities towards Employees
• Responsibilities towards Society
• Responsibilities towards Customers

According to Krush, Sohi and Saini (2015) the marketing functions are closely interrelated with Barclays other functional units. Citing the relation of finance department with marketing department, economic resources are required for marketing functions to implement, plan, research and evaluate the marketing strategies and planning, provided by the finance team. In the absence of proper communication and sorting with financial team, marketing functions cannot work.

Likewise, accurate description from the production department about Barclay’s products and services are also required for marketing functions so that these can be included in marketing plan.

According to Human, Bick and Singh (2016) Marketing functions need to collaborate with financing teams so as to allocate funds required for market research and development and planning activities. Moreover, marketing functions needs human resources from HR department to oversee and implement the HR policies for increasing sales and also for conveying information about product and services to the production team and other operation functions teams for building an accurate marketing plan for Barclays.

The marketing function is very important for all organizations alike whether large or small as in today’s business scenario organizations compete for customers as customers are scarce; not products. Hence in real world today organizations needs to have suitable and robust marketing efforts that is broad, refined to respond to new challenges. Hence various organizations including Barclays value the significance of marketing as fundamental to their corporate approach to ensure continued development and delivery of extraordinary services and products that can add value to customers both within market and in market space. So marketing function is an important driver for Barclays that shapes innovation and proactive actions as well as helps to implement corporate goals and strategic plans to emerge as successful leader in marketplace. 

Conclusions

Hence it can be inferred that inter-relationship amid department helps to establish relation between customers and Barclays offerings to the market and helps to shape brand image and the manner people get connected with Barclays services, products and indeed their employees so as to meet their needs and establish a successful business association.