CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Companies develop, plan, and implement diverse strategies to meet a set of organizational goals and objectives. Corporate, business, and functional strategies are all possible. Marketing strategies are one of the functional strategies that may be used by modern businesses to improve their performance. Depending on the author’s background, interests, and education, marketing has been described and theorized in a variety of ways. Marketing, for example, can be thought of as a collection of commercial activities structured to plan, manufacture, price, advertise, distribute, and sell goods, services, and ideas in order to satisfy relevant customers and clients. Any organization’s marketing strategy is critical to its success. The firm’s limited resources are focused on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, which begins with market research. Needs, attitudes, and competitor’s products are assessed, and the firm concentrates its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage (Nymous, 2006). Although evaluating the return on investment from marketing expenditure on activities such as advertising, promotion, and distribution is one of the most difficult issues facing decision makers, marketing strategy must focus on delivering higher value to customers and the firm at a lower cost. In today’s fast-paced competitive marketplaces, marketing performance is crucial to success, and assessing marketing performance is critical to effective management (Chiliya, 2009). To assess the efficiency of a marketing plan, a company must break down its marketing function into constituent elements and develop a mechanism for analyzing the interactions between those parts. Decision-makers will be able to link marketing expenses to shareholder value and understand how to link marketing initiatives back to the value created for the firm as a result of this. Decision-makers will be able to comprehend the internal motivations that drive the company’s marketing value. Price variation and price promotion, research, advertising, product differentiation, quality, packaging, and location are among marketing elements that can be manipulated to increase returns for businesses. Commercial bank marketing strategies are an important part of marketing plans that are meant to meet market needs and achieve marketing objectives. Marketing strategy necessitates a thorough examination of both the internal and external contexts. Marketing mix, as well as performance analysis and strategy restrictions, are examples of internal environmental elements. Customer analysis, competition analysis, target market analysis, and examination of the element of technological, economic, cultural, or political/legal environment likely to effect success are all examples of external environmental elements. In Nigerian commercial banks, marketing strategy is primarily intended to profitably direct the flow of banking services to target clients.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Marketing tactics are participatory and dynamic. As a result of the influence of micro and micro environmental elements, most organizations do not strictly stick to their organization’s established strategy. As a result, the majority of marketing strategy’s organizational components are out of sync with the company’s main objective, making marketing strategy hazy and difficult to comprehend. As a result, adopting a strategic marketing plan in most businesses becomes a major challenge. This is evidenced by the difficulties in quantifying marketing tactics in terms of productivity, which various marketing literatures and journals have failed to address. Indeed, according to some academics, there is a chasm in this area (okoh, 2009). The researcher considers the topic matter to be worthy of inquiry because of this. As a result, the study examines the issues of gauging marketing strategy in connection to productivity, which have not been addressed in prior Nigerian research and marketing book.
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