Aligning marketing and manufacturing strategies with the market

In strategic marketing decisions substantial emphasis is placed on market s egmentation and product/service differentiation. This follows from separate , intensive analyses of customers and competitors. Based on these analyses, the resultant segmentation and differentiation schema, and an intensive re view of the firm's own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, th e firm makes one of its most important and critical decisions: which custom ers to serve and which products to emphasize, referred to as positioning. O n the other side of the same corporate coin, manufacturing makes decisions on process and infrastructure investments based upon the technologies requi red, and its perception of what it needs to do well in order to fulfil its role. In the same way as with marketing decisions, the firm now makes anoth er of its most critical decisions by committing itself to major investments in manufacturing that are characterized by high value and long time scales to change. On the one hand, these positioning decisions by marketing invar iably include little emphasis in determining the customer requirements that must be supported by manufacturing, and fail to investigate the ability of manufacturing to support these requirements. On the other hand, manufactur ing decisions do not reflect key insights on the needs of current and futur e markets. As a consequence, many businesses fail to achieve their strategi c business objectives, due: in part, to the inability of marketing and manu facturing to jointly develop consistent strategies. We call this a lack of alignment. The methodology outlined in this paper concerns how to align mar keting and manufacturing strategies by using markets as the center piece of both developments. Doing this highlights the recognition that markets need to form the common denominator of both marketing and manufacturing strateg y development. This methodology is illustrated by using an actual example d rawn from plant-based research. Several key questions are addressed in this methodology. How does marketing view customers and markets? What is manufa cturing's view of the same customers and markets? To what extent is manufac turing actually able to support the demands that these customers and market s are placing on a firm's capabilities? It is important to check with the u se of data, the actual operating performance against the required capabilit ies. In cases where substantial differences exist between customer and mark et requirements and manufacturing capabilities, strategic options (both in marketing and manufacturing) to resolve these differences need to be addres sed in making strategic business decisions.