This first week has been a tough one. As mentioned above, I have a science brain, not a business brain. It takes me a lot longer to pick up on the main concepts/relationships mentioned in business courses than science courses. Also, my Drucker book came in today (Friday July 5th) so my reading preparation is a little last minute. My questions earlier in the week were not from Drucker's book since I didn't have it yet, so instead of answering those questions I would like to instead focus on the chapters assigned from Drucker in my blog post this week.
Chapter 2.... WOW! The purpose of a business is not profit?! Now I knew I wasn't naturally good at anything business. But this was one thing I was pretty certain that I knew. I can admit, I was wrong.
Drucker makes a very important distinction between the importance of making a profit and shying away from profit maximization. This was the key point I was missing before reading this chapter. Yet half way through the reading I thought to myself "if businesses aren't maximizing their profit, then how do they become so successful?" It wasn't many pages later that Drucker brought the most important key to success into light: marketing over profit maximization. Sure the business needs enough profit to keep it going, but focusing on making the most profit won't get you any more customers (in fact as Drucker points out, it could lose you customers!). And loosing customers is just the opposite of what us marketing people are working so hard for!
As a pharmacy major, I was on Cloud 9 as they related profit maximization to oxygen supply for the body. Now THIS made sense to me!
Additionally, this next sentence was another beautiful piece I found to my delight:
"If the focus is solely on profit maximization, the customer can be ignored or given secondary consideration. This can lead to cutting corners on safety, service, or product performance. We have seen this recently in many industries, including pharmaceuticals...."
Surely most people reading this blog were made aware of the New England Compounding Center tragedy last summer when their pharmaceutical products were manufactured by cutting safety corners that resulted in multiple deaths from meningitis. The organization was so concerned about mass producing these products that the requirements for safety, sterility, and quality preparation were overlooked. Why would they overlook such important factors? Because the less quality work meant larger production numbers which meant maximizing as much profits as they possibly could. And what did they get for it? The lost every single customer they had... in addition to legal actions, ethical debates, patient death, etc.
Another very important difference that I learned in this first week of marketing is the difference between marketing and sales. While the text makes the distinction very clear that marketing is the adaptation of a product or a service to what customers want or value while sales is the action of turning inventory of a product into cash, I think there is also a very important similarity between the two. Since those individuals making the sales often have the most communication and contact with customers purchasing the good or service, they are the frontlines to marketing. They are the eyes and ears of marketing in my opinion. They can hear what the customers are saying as they browse the aisles, they can see customers reactions to one particular product over another. While Drucker points out that innovation is essential, innovation is made possible by feedback. The sales department of organizations certainly have a large role to play in this feedback system. Additionally, the marketing department has a huge impact on the sales department. The marketing department conducts their research to find, plan, design, and innovate new products and services to meet the customers' needs. These are the products and services which are then placed on the sales people to sell. With this relationship, its easy to see the different roles and tasks of each position but also how interdependent they are.
As I wrap up my first marketing blog, the major point that I learned from this week's readings, videos, discussions, etc. was this: I LEARNED WHAT MARKETING IS! And to be honest, I think that its the most important thing I could havetaken from this week's topics. You can't learn the do's and dont's of marketing until you know what marketing is. I certainly am no expert, but I'm happy to say that I've got one foot through the door. Here's to hoping that I have two feet by my next post! Have a great weekend :)
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