Functionally, a global manufacturer such as toy company Mattel Inc would view each country as a distribution point at which tactical marketing would be required. For a local service provider, for example British Midland, customer service is much more important and the marketing less tangible, but more strategic. So when we talk about marketing roles, there is a need to be very specific. CLASSICAL MARKETING In 1974, Peter Doyle of Warwick Business School stated: To many people, marketing represents the least respectable side of business. At the same time, it is the area which demands perhaps the maximum flexibility and individual commitment.
There was a good deal of confusion about the role of marketer and salesman, and indeed, where one started and the other finished. This was Lord Stokes' view in 1969, as Chairman of British Leyland: Marketing should be your strategic planning linked with the logistics of supply. Selling should be the tactical exercise, coupled with your front-line troops, the infantry as it were, of the industrial world, without whom nothing effective can be accomplished ... No matter whether it be motor cars, machine tools or baby foods, the methods of production and the equipment used in modern factories in most countries of the world today are remarkably similar. So this really leaves us with two variables - [labour relations] and secondly, the question of marketing which to my mind embraces planning the product strategy for the future.