Management vs Marketing
Marketing is a big concept, which entails many activities. The process starts with identifying customer needs for a particular service or product, then continues by producing the product with the appropriately defined qualities, determining the pricing based on market dynamics, promoting the product and finally stocking the product for sale. Of course, the marketing processes cannot be accomplished without making sure that the specific activities involved are efficiently completed, which involves the concept of management. Management deals with the functions of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting. Management is quite broad, and some aspect of it will be employed within each marketing activity.
Some very vital components in management include planning, organizing and monitoring. Planning for future tasks and producing action plans is a managerial task, as is organizing, which involves setting up resources to be used in executing the plans and ensuring their optimization. Monitoring and control involve overseeing the progress of the plan’s execution, and ensuring that the plan’s scope is maintained.
There is a tendency to restrict the definition of management to business and commerce, thus regarding management as the same as business administration. In a corporate setting, management is primarily concerned with meeting the needs of stakeholders, which basically involves realizing profit for stakeholders, producing products of value at reasonable costs for the customers, and rewarding employment opportunities and benefits for employees. In a non-profit organization, the importance of keeping donor faith is added.
Management is split into branches, namely HR management, Operations management, Strategic and Marketing management, and Financial and Information technology management. This means that ‘marketing‘ is a branch within management. Marketing’s role in management is very profound, as it is through marketing that the company creates relationships with its customers. Marketing activities aim to focus on customer needs, in order to create valuable products. Marketing aims to invent products that consumers will be willing to buy, and find affordable. It’s a very vital aspect to ensue a company’s survival. As a result, a company must ascertain consumer demand for its own future viability. Contemporary marketing in companies is customer focused, and customer demands are the focus of a company’s marketing strategy.
Summary
1. Marketing is a branch within management concerned specifically with meeting consumer demands.
2. Marketing relates directly to consumers, while management does not involve customer interaction.
3. Marketing activities are planned by management, and their execution is monitored through managerial functions.