Dissertation Writing Help on Value Creation through Integration of Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Marketing Strategy
Following are the major drivers for Supply Chain Management (SCM) and marketing integration:
• Increased needs and requirements of the customers;
• Globalization of world economy;
• Increased competition, leading to higher thrust to lower prices;
• Standardized products and services; and
• Shorter product life cycles.
In today’s business environment, customer retention has become very difficult in the face of fluctuating market demand. Expectations of consumers about quality, innovation, prices, 24 × 7 services, etc., also have increased manifold. It is necessary that organizations think again about how front-end marketing should work alongside back-end operations of supply chain and how marketing data should flow from the marketing department to these departments and back for enhancing customer value proposition. For products with short product life cycles, such as fashion apparel, electronic gadgets, personal computers and automobiles, effective integration of SCM (including production, inventory and logistics) and marketing is very important. Increased level of competition and shorter product life cycles make the link between SCM and marketing more critical.
The Need for Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Marketing Integration
Enhancing cross-functional integration and collaboration of SCM and marketing aligns demand and supply management processes. However, research suggests that such integration is not prevalent and that collaboration between SCM and marketing areas primarily responsible for serving the firm’s customers is inadequate (Esper et al., 2010). The deleterious results of not integrating the SCM and marketing efforts are becoming increasingly evident.
A firm cannot reach its full potential in terms of developing, refining, supporting, or delivering products and services without using marketing insights to shape and refine the SCM. For example, unnecessary quarterly variability in dispatch of products in the market causes either sluggish sales for the most of the quarter followed by the end of the quarter surge or brisk sales for the most of the quarter followed by slack sales in the quarter end. These phenomena are caused by SCM that is misaligned with marketing strategy (Slone et al., 2007).
Similarly, it is difficult to execute a marketing strategy that meets the unique needs of customers—cost, quality, variety, delivery, and service—if the underlying support capabilities of SCM cannot deliver. SCM should be the core component of sales and marketing promotions.
SCM and marketing not effectively tied to each other results in:
• Under Delivering: Marketing processes increase customer interactions and raise customer expectations. But if the SCM cannot deliver on marketing promises, customer satisfaction declines.
• Over Delivering: Marketing initiative that does not provide information sharing on cost transparency with SCM results in delivering products or services that are unprofitable.
• Lost Share of Customer Opportunities: Without SCM and marketing integration, the SCM cannot capitalize on the customer needs information that marketing uncovers, and marketing cannot implement new product or market development strategy that profitably increase the scope of its offerings.
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