Best marketing practices. Benchmarking European marketing strategies

9.4 Best marketing practices

In this paragraph the findings of best marketing practices are presented. These best practices have been quantified by giving marketing executives of the participating companies the possibility to make a judgement about important issues for gaining better performance. In the following figures those issues which were valued very important and/or for which a significant difference was found between higher and lower performers are pointed out. Only figures of the consumer electronics industry are presented, because not enough data were available for the pharmaceutical industry.

Increasing standardization of brand name, packaging and product design is more important to the lower performers than to the higher performers

best marketing practices

Figure 9.7: Best practices with respect to the marketing program

Within the marketing program (see figure 9.7) issues of highest importance are increasing the standardization of product design and brand name and reducing the number of stock keeping units. Note that the lower performers value most issues of higher importance than do the higher performers. Especially for increasing the number of dealers/retailers and implementing Pan-European account management, as well as for increasing standardization of packaging and product design, the differences between the higher and lower performers are very large.

The relative low importance to the better performers of increasing standardization of brand name, packaging and product design is consistent with the outcomes of program standardization, because for these items a relative lower level of standardization was found at the higher performing companies (paragraph 9.2.1). This endorses the statement made in paragraph 9.2.2 that some adaptation in the product related items is necessary to achieve a higher customer appeal in the different countries.

The fact that the distribution issues, increasing the number of dealers/retailers and implementing Pan-European account management are more important to the lower performers is not surprising, since they have weaker distribution positions (see paragraph 9.2.2).

The relative high importance of decreasing European price differences and centralizing pricing decision making also seems to be consistent with the outcomes of marketing program standardization, where a high level of pricing (strategy) standardization was found. The explanation for this can be found in chapter 5, where was stated that centralization can enhance standardization.

When looking at the best practices of the strategic marketing planning process (figure 9.8), standardization of methods for data collection and analysis are very important. Also improving scenario planning and business modelling skills are of very high importance.

Again the lower performers estimate the importance of most issues higher than the higher performers. The gap for increasing preparation of contingency plans is extremely large: the better performers do not share the opinion of the lower performers that this practice should contribute to a higher performance. An explanation for these large gaps might be that the higher performers already implemented these items which are often part of more sophisticated planning processes and do not see them as best practices anymore, but as ‘normal’ elements of the strategic marketing planning process. Another explanation is that the lower performers focus more on individual items instead of on the whole process as the higher performers probably do. This latter is endorsed by the fact that standardizing methods used for the whole strategic marketing planning process is more important to the higher performers than to the lower performers.

Note that the lower performers value the standardization methods for data analysis and data collection of higher importance although they have a lower level (see appendix A).

Most issues concerning strategic marketing planning are much more important to the lower performing companies

Standardization European marketing strategies in Consumer Electronics Industry

9.4 Best marketing practices

Increasing standardization of brand name, packaging and product design is more important to the lower performers than to the higher performers