Question

What is the relationship between an organizations mission statement and marketing? Why do you believe this is important for organizations today. Please make sure to respond with at least one reference in your response.

Answer 1

Marketing activities of an Organization directly responds to the Organization’s mission statement and goals. In this regard, marketing activities have a definite aim that is a subset of the Organization’s mission statement. This could be explained better with the help of an example. Let the example be that of Amazon. Amazon.com is an American electronic commerce company that was one of the first to sell goods over the Internet. Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 with its headquarters at Seattle in U.S. Before going on to becoming one of the biggest retailers in United States, Amazon had originally ventured into online bookstore, selling textbooks for college students. However, the dot-com bubble burst, forced it to expand its business line to electronics, furniture and jewelry. As a result, Amazon has expanded its business into all possible retailer chain of products. In order to ensure that the customer satisfaction is achieved at all times, Amazon has various policies in place ranging from Business solutions Agreement to the seller’s policies, anti-counterfeiting policies and customer’s goods return policies. Further it also has Product availability policy for the manufacturers or selling policies in place too.

Mission and Vision:

The Mission Statement of Amazon.com is ‘Focused on the Customer’ while the Vision statement has been ‘Our vision is to be earth's most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online’. Right since its inception, the founder Jeff Bezoss had clarified Amazon’s one and clear mission and vision, that is to center all its business activities according to the requirements of customers in terms of their services and preferences.. Hence the statement has rightfully clarified the Company’s customer-centric approach which is an integral part of any Company’s growth and survival story.

It is because of this mission and vision that from Amazon’s modest beginning, Amazon could gradually expand its business globally and thereby being able to position itself into a major global Company. Its favorable approach towards the Customers, as described in its mission statement, has helped Amazon to penetrate into varied markets successfully.

Due to the application of mission and vision statements, their values in marketing strategies get reflected in the following ways:

•       Amazon is able to leverage the internet to significantly beat its competitors’ prices. Hence a marketing goal.

•       Amazon uses the internet as the sole method for selling goods to its consumers. Amazon’s competitors, such as Barnes and Noble, and Borders use brick and mortar as their main distribution channel. This method of using many store fronts is extremely costly. Marketing takes an advantage of this method to reduce their cost of promotion as well as sales.

•       Thus, Amazon’s competitors are at a disadvantage because their costs are significantly higher than Amazon’s costs, allowing Amazon to sell the same goods at a lower price. This is part of their marketing strategy as well.

•       Amazon's business model provides a competitive advantage because since there are no store fronts, the main distribution warehouse can be anywhere. In order to keep overhead low Amazon locates its central warehouse in an area where rent is cheap.

•       When a company has such an advantage, it is able to keep costs low and transfer the savings to its customers in the form of lower prices.

Marketing, in this organization, hence is customer-centric owing to its mission statement which makes my belief stronger that the relation between these two factors is direct and very important for today’s Organizations.