1.2 Marketing Creates and Delivers Value
Marketing plays a critical role in a firm’s survival and growth. Specifically, marketing enables the firm to create and deliver value to its chosen customers. Certainly, if there is no value, customers leave. If there are no customers, companies fail. Meeting customers’ functional and emotional needs creates value. The importance of marketing’s role within the firm has been underscored by Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric:
“Marketing isn’t somebody’s responsibility; marketing is everybody’s responsibility.”
The Strategic Triangle
The strategic triangle, developed by Kenichi Ohmae, provides insight into value creation. The three Cs of the triangle include customer, company, and competition. The customer is the central point of the model and the central point for marketers. The company and the competition seek to sell products and services to the customer by creating value for the customer. The value equation is benefits minus costs. Of course, both the company and the competition incur costs when creating value.
Overall, it is better to focus on creating and delivering exceptional value to customers, rather than benchmarking and copying successful competitors. Creating and delivering exceptional value enables a firm to attract and keep customers. Attracting and keeping customers drives profitability for the firm.
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