Strategic Marketing: Planning and Control, Third Edition

deployed in new ways to create additional advantages. There is a

range of organisational assets that may give advantages to market-

ing activities:

❍Cost structure: The organisation may be able to achieve lower costs

than competitors through, higher capacity utilisation, better

economies of scale or by applying newer or more innovatory tech-

nology. This could allow marketing to set lower prices for their

products and services than the competition. The asset is the manu-

facturing cost base; this can be deployed to give advantage to the

marketing activity of pricing.

❍Information systems: These can be applied to marketing research

activities to collect and analyse customer, competitor and market

information. These systems could also be used to create customer

databases that are a marketing asset that can be exploited.

There are also some organisational competencies that lie outside the

marketing function that can be used to create advantages in market-

ing activities such as:

• Innovatory culture: The ability to be able to create and maintain a
  culture for innovation is an important competence. This compe-
  tence facilitates activities such as new product development, cus-
  tomer service through empowering front-line staff to develop
  creative solutions to customers’ problems and advertising
  through a willingness to adopt creative ideas.


• Production skills: These may allow an organisation’s production to
  have more flexibility, higher quality or shorter lead times,
  all of which can be used to advantage by the marketing
  function.
  4 Alliance-based assets
  There are a number of areas where the asset is linked to a formal, or
  informal, external relationship. These agreements with third parties
  can allow an organisation to gain:
  ❍Access to markets: through local distributors that the organisation
  could not cover with its existing resource base.
  ❍Management expertise: from outside agencies not available within
  the company.
  ❍Access to technological developments or processes: through licensing
  or joint ventures.
  ❍Exclusive agreements: with third parties, such as Coca-Cola and
  McDonald’s already mentioned above, that effectively exclude
  competitors.

■ Organisational competencies

These are the abilities and skills available to the company to marshal the

effective exploitation of the company’s assets. The combination of assets and

these skills, allow an organisation to undertake specific activities. Activities

92 Strategic Marketing: Planning and Control