The Role of Marketing

As marketing gains increasing prominence as an orientation that everyone in the organization shares and as a process that all functions participate in deploying, a critical issue that arises is the role of the marketing function. Specifically, what role should the marketing function play, and what value does the marketing function have, if any, in an organization that has a strong market orientation? The authors take the view that though a firm's market orientation is undeniably important, the marketing function should play a key role in managing several important connections between the customer and critical firm elements, including connecting the customer to (1) the product, (2) service delivery, and (3) financial accountability. The authors collect data from managers across six business functions and two time periods with respect to marketing's role, market orientation, the value of the marketing function, and perceived firm performance. The results show that the marketing function contributes to perceptions of firm financial performance, customer relationship performance, and new product performance beyond that explained by a firm's market orientation. Marketing's value, in turn, is found to be a function of the degree to which it develops knowledge and skills in connecting the customer to the product and to financial accountability. For service firms, the value of the marketing function also is related positively to marketing's ability to connect the customer to service delivery.