Corporate Marketing

John M.T. Balmer
Stephen A. Greyser
European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 40 No. 7/8, 2006

The "Corporate Marketing" article gives a perspective by looking past and future of marketing in terms of corporate identity, branding, communications and reputation. Also this article introduces the 6Cs of corporate marketing.
A production orientation, a sales focus, marketing orientation and relationship marketing orientation are stated before with their key questions:
• Production and manufacturing orientation: "Can we make it?"
• Sales orientation: "Can we sell what we can make?"
• Marketing orientation: “Can we determine what consumers want that we make and sell profitably with in our zones of skills?”
• Relationship marketing orientation: “Can we generate continuing business via consumer satisfaction with that and how we make, sell, and service?”

To us corporate-level marketing represents a further stage of development, that of corporate-level marketing orientation: “Can we, as an institution, have meaningful, positive and profitable bilateral on-going relationships with customers and other stakeholder groups and communities?”. It’s main concern is present and prospective relationships between multiple stakeholders groups and networks. Corporate marketing is more of a philosophy rather than a function. In essence, the philosophy of corporate-level marketing should permeate how people in the organization think and behave on its behalf. It focuses value creation as well as profit orientation.

Six elements of corporate marketing are: character, culture, communication, conceptualism, constituencies, and covenant.

Character (corporate identity) “what we indubitably are” : Characteristic factors in their totality, make one entity distinct from another. These include key tangible and intangible assets of the organization as well as organizational activities, markets served, corporate ownership and structure, organizational type, corporate philosophy and corporate history.

Culture (organizational identity) “what we feel we are” : This refers to the collective feeling of employees as to what they feel they are in the setting of the entity. These beliefs are derived from the values, beliefs and assumptions about the organization and its historical roots and heritage. Culture is important since it provides the context in which staff engages with each other and with other groups as customers in other words employees are the front line of the organization.

Communication (corporate communication) “what we say we are” : Corporate communications relates to the various outbound communications channels deployed by organizations to communicate with customers and other constituencies.

Conceptualism (Corporate reputation) “what we are seen to be” : This refers to perceptions held of the corporate brand by customers other key stakeholder groups. The latent perception of the organization held by the above will affect their view of and their behavior towards the organization.

Constituencies (Marketing and Stakeholder management) “whom we seek to serve” : Corporate marketing recognizes takes that many customers also belong to one or indeed many organizational constituencies or stakeholder groups and also comes with a realization that the success of an organization is dependent on meeting the wants and needs of such groups.

Covenant (Corporate Brand management) “What is promised and expected” : A corporate brand is underpinned by an informal contract that are expects from customers and stakeholders.

In terms of management, corporate marketing is a boardroom and CEO concern, responsibility for corporate marketing should be institution wide and should not be assigned to a particular department or directorate. In short, all staff are corporate marketers.

www.emeraldinsight.com/0309-0566.htm

Faruk Mert Alcı
107604123