Six Sigma principles in marketing: an application

The marketing process in any business plays a major role in attaining growth for a company. Adopting Six Sigma principles to business marketing can strengthen factual decision-making activities leading to customer satisfaction. This paper addresses the important issue of ensuring continuous availability of fresh consumer products at retail levels through a warehouse-retail distribution network operating under the marketing discipline of an Indian company. Defects, according to Six Sigma parlance, are defined here based on the declared norms of the company. These defects are measured, Sigma rating is evaluated and process performance target for improvement is set. Working through the DMAIC cycle, substantial improvement after implementation of the identified action plans, has been observed in terms of higher Sigma level and the market share of the company. An extension of this work can be considered in improving several process measures of marketing and related processes with the aim of cost reduction, productivity improvement and better customer retention.