Supply Chain Management: A Critique
Supply chain management covers all progress and storage of unprocessed material, semi-processed stock and refined goods from origin to utilization (Blanchard, 2007). Blanchard (2007) also suggests that supply chain can also be defined in other words as the design setting up and implementation, manage and scrutinize of supply chain activities with the aim of generating net value, construction of a competitive communications, leveraging universal logistics, harmonizing supply with requirements and measuring presentation internationally. This paper is set to critique marketing in supply chain management topics.
Market oriented companies first distinguishes its intended customers, followed by put up their item for consumption or services in that market cluster. The two major roles of marketing in supply chain management are recruitment of new consumers or acquirement and keep hold of as well as enlarge the existing relationships with the current clients or base management. Marketing focuses on product, pricing, placement and promotions.In the recent years, one of the major criticisms of supply chain management is in its marketing. The main source of hostile criticism is promotions (Kurtz, Mackenzie and Snow 2009).
This is evident especially in discussions gyrating around traditional finances where contemporary promotion techniques are identified as refuting that supply and demand are autonomous measures and instead insisting on swaying customers demand using supply. Marketing today is based on exploration of the qualities of the products a company supplies to entice the audiences to buying and testing the new product even if they are used to an old similar product which they have for the longest time remained comfortable with. One fact is true, marketing hooks up consumers to goods and services they are in need of and that they may not have been previously aware of (Moore and Pareek 2009).
In this light some people feel that marketing abuse consumers and worker by treating them all like puppets whose only work is to consume whatever they are urged to despite the consequences hence the resultant of the famous insult of people being called fashion victimsAnother major criticism of marketing is that it is often employed by conglomerate, scandalous people, and politicians for uncertain ends. Take for example schemes that require the audience to send some message to put them in some funny database that will make them qualify to win worthwhile prizes. This schemes come in the name of the more one sends text messages, the higher their chances of winning. Despite these attractive advertisements, the cost of a single text message is so high that only a given group of people in the society manage to meet the cost.
At some points in the course of such promotions, some people are told to give false confessions of how they have benefited from such schemes in order to provide evidence that it is real and that one can be the next winner only if they continued to send more text messages. With millions of people attracted to these get rich quick schemes, only one person walks away as the winner with all the other participants going home empty handed and having lost a large sum of their money is sending those text messages.
Majority of the world’ people have therefore being made to believe that marketing is neither evil nor good, instead they believe it is neutral and that it is a part of the nature of the modern world. On the contrary, uncertain sides exist in these marketing strategies like the subscription to some unknown class in order to assist in losing weight without exercises, dieting and such like things which obviously are the main ways of losing weight. What the client ends up using is an expensive drug whose side effects are not worth the cost. Though the negative parts of promotion in marketing are so many and severe, there still are positive sides to marketing that have an overall good effect to the consumer.
For a company to reduce such negative effects of marketing, marketing foundational concepts-marketing segmentation, positioning and targeting-must be observed in the right manner in today’s world (Drummond and Ensor 2005). The supply chain specialist of such organizations must be well aware of these three concepts to ensure that they are correctly employed in all marketing strategies to be used by that organization. This is because, today marketing as a whole is continually evolving and only claims with enough evidence can refute a marketing concept as valid or invalid (Drummond and Ensor 2005).
It is therefore important to substantiate each marketing concept and approach according to the that particular product or service together with the segment, environment, time, political and economic stands as well as the company’s interior function. (Brown 2005) argues that despite the distribution of marketing in courses like sociology, psychology and anthropology, the discipline is undergoing a kind of recession with questions arising on what value it adds to postmodern world. He goes ahead to question what sort of marketing is available in what is currently called marketing.Amidst all criticism and challenges on marketing in the supply chain realm, it is worth realizing that marketing as a whole has awesomely contributed to both customers and businesses.
References
Blanchard D. (2007). Supply Chain Management: Best Practices. John Willey and Sons, Inc. Hoboken: New Jersey.
Brown S. (2005). Writing Marketing: Literary Lessons from Academic Authorities. Sage publications Ltd. London.
Drummond G. and Ensor J. (2005). Introduction to Marketing Concepts. Elsevier. Oxford: UK.
Kurtz L. D., Mackenzie H. F., and Snow K., (2009). Contemporary Marketing. Nelson Education Ltd. United States of America.
Moore K. and Pareek N., (2010). Marketing: The Basics. Routledge United States of America: USA.
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