Electronic Library of Scientific Literature
Electronic Library of Scientific Literature
Volume 44 / No. 7-8 / 1996
Jaroslav KITA
In the 1990s new generation of Slovak managers are being educated in
the educational economic institutions according to the marketing-management
principles. Many managers that are performing or are prepared to perform
significant economic activities are well equiped with knowledge gained
by studying textbooks written by famous authors such as Kotler, McCarthy
and others. This is the reason why the paper deals with the origin and
development of marketing in the USA, pays attention to specific contributions
of the French approach and presents some marketing-management questions
that are widely discussed in publications abroad, although some questions
of the field remain unclarified.
A University research should be devoted to the history aspects of marketing
primarily, to its development trends and to the integration of supply and
demand complex relations into the new expressional means of marketing.
In the last part of the paper some statements are made which may be used
in looking for new ways and possibilities of marketing under the Slovak
conditions.
Dagmar JAKUBÍKOVÁ
Franchising is a method of marketing goods and services which has proved
remarkably successful in something like eighty countries worldwide. The
term franchising encompasses a wide variety of business relationships and
is often used interchangeably with the term licensing.
The modern origins of franchising began in USA. Second generation franchising,
which is a term used interchangeably with business format franchising,
began also in USA in the late 1940.
Franchising has expanded over the past forty years as a prefered marketing
and distribution channel option over alternative business format due to
the advantages it offers to franchisor and franchisee, but it is not easy
concept to manage. The major components of a franchise system comprise:
the pilot operation, the franchise contract, franchise manual, franchisee
selection, and ongoing support. Although franchising is generally acknowledged
as being beneficial to the creation of small busi-nesses and employment,
it is not wide developed in the Czech Republic.
Anna VAŇOVÁ
Territorial marketing questions are, in Slovakia, a new element in resolving
the problems related to development and prosperity of the country.
The aim of the paper is to ellaborate basic notions and procedures used
in territorial marketing and to point out some possibilities of its use
within municipal and regional policy. Opposite to city-marketing and strategic
city-marketing the concept of territorial marketing is aimed at more general
relations in the sence of space, of understanding territory as a product
and of the problems to be resolved.
A territory represents a complex system of elements and interrelations
that assume a specific approach, and that is why territorial marketing
comprises some specific features in comparison to marketing of the firm.
In the first part of the paper the author focusses upon theoretical position
of territorial marketing, upon business units that may contribute to the
development of the territory using methods and instruments of territorial
marketing and upon the factors influencing development of the territory.
Further part of the paper outlines the questions of individual phases of
the territorial marketing process.
The last part of the paper deals with explaining the specific features
of individual territorial marketing instruments, such as product, price,
territorial accessibility, communication, and human factor. A special attention
is paid by the author to product and communication.
Dagmar LESÁKOVÁ
The environment in which the enterprises operate is characteristic of
a strong competition. It is increasingly stressed that future successes
can be based only upon a patient and systematic analysis and evaluation
of both domestic and foreign markets. Marketing planning and continual
marketing analysis has a character of a long-term investment.
Practically, marketing planning is a complicated process ranging from analysis
to setting the goals, strategies, programmes, budgets and vice versa up
to the consideration of the basic limitation that encounters every enterprise.
It is a logical sequence of activities that lead to defining the marketing
goals and formulating the plans ensuring to meet the set targets. It is
necessary to bear in mind that marketing planning is a managerial process.
As far as the formal side of marketing planning is concerned it is a structural
process that defines a variety of alternatives, expresses them verbally,
for-mulate the marketing goals in such way that they should be consistent
with general business tasks as well as with planning and calculations of
specific activities. The process of marketing planning is, therefore, clearly
arranged and universally applicable. The universal characteristic makes
it, however, extremely complex, just to consider such questions as the
size of an enterprise, the rate of internationalization of an enterprise,
management style, turbulence rate in external surroundings, competition
aggressiveness, marketing development level, market share, technological
changes and others.
The enterprises systematically analyzing the marketing milieu have two
important priorities. Firstly, the managerial decision-making is more objective
because the system enables to identify the enterprise competition priorities
as well as ensuring the compliance of business resources with market opportunities.
As a matter of fact, many disputes of functional managers among themselves
originate from a total absence of structural and segmentation approach
to market analysis. Secondly, the ability of the management to know the
problems of individual divisions and departments, and to react adequately,
is improved. It is a consequence of marketing information that offers the
possibility to evaluate all the marketing activities of the enterprise
and a reasonable resource allocation among them in a complex way.
Wherever marketing planning fails the reasons must be looked for in an
unadequate concentration on technical and administration side of planning
instead of providing useful information to management. The failure of planning
and the resistance to marketing planning may be expected also where enterprises
"delegate" the marketing planning to a single planner because
planning cannot be delegated to a third person in the case of a line management.
Planning activity of a marketing planner should be rooted in a coordinate,
supporting and service function aimed at helping those responsible of fulfilment
of plans.
Vojtech KOLLÁR
Present business sphere is characteristic of transformation changes
as well as of fight to survive in competition and to win in the market.
To reach the goal is not an easy sailing: it is also connected with the
entrepreneurs' efforts to find and to apply a proper way of management
and an adequate strategy in the sphere of quality.
Technical and socio-economic developments show that product-quality has
become a decisive phenomenon all over the world. It is necessary, therefore,
to manage and to control product quality in all the spheres of realization
and utilization of a complex market supply of products. Every systematic
approach promises success just in the case that it is clearly consumer-oriented.
And that is why it is necessary to pay attention to the relation of product
quality to marketing, namely from the point of view of its strategic and
operational activities market and customer oriented.
It seems to be necessary that the choice and the application of approaches,
models, methods and instruments are made clear, because their perfect knowledge
is a presumption of reaching positive economic results. The paper presents
product quality as an intrinsic element establishing value, productivity,
efficiency and competitiveness.
Systematic approaches to quality are presented: aimed at the economy of
a product-quality they are based on recording the costs incurred upon quality
of a product, "non-quality" losses and the recording of costs
incurred upon the quality of a process. The ways of quality management
and quality control are analyzed from the point of view of the application
of normative approaches to product quality, by means of complex management
of product quality and integral management of quality leading to obtaining
business success in the competitive market surroundings.
Hana LOÁKOVÁ
Transition to market mechanism of management raised a necessity to introduce
a system of strategic marketing management od Czech as well as Slovak enterprises
and to build a strategic marketing planning for all the spheres of business
activities. If the planning is to be effective and if the marketing strategies
and tactics chosen are to be adequate to market conditions, it is necessary
to create and develop a complex strategic marketing analysis of market
environment and the enterprise position in it, they forming a starting
point for marketing plans preparation. The paper points out the fact that
the present stage of market environment development is characterized by
an increase in competition. If an enterprise is to survive in a challenging
competition it is necessary for it to know how to identify its competitive
advantages and then to make a use of them in a struggle for customers'
interest. That is why the strategic marketing analysis should comprise
an analysis of strengths and weaknesses of industrial competitors and the
following identification of competitive advantages.
The paper is devoted to the analysis of strengths and weaknesses and consequent
identification of competitive advantages in the industrial market of chemical
products used in productive consumption. The outline of the basic theoretical
concepts, the experiences in identification of competitive advantages are
presented together with business prerequisites and weaknesses of a Czech
chemical enterprise producing a certain group of products designed to further
processing in the Czech, Slovak and Polish markets. The analysis formed
the basic study to strengthen the position of a Czech producer of a chemical
raw material in the Central-European market against the competitors from
Germany and France.
Júlia LIPIANSKA
Market transformation of the economy is a long and complicated process
that makes the enterprises to use new ways of thinking and market behaviour.
A great part of business units do not face the question of whether to communicate
or not but how to find a way how to communicate. These new approaches towards
the communication activities result in public relations and their special
branch of knowledge - sponsoring. Sponsoring serves the enterprises to
reach their communication goals.
Sponsoring is not used in the form of an isolated instrument but as an
instrument complimentary to other communication tools. A purposeful sponsoring
approach assumes to work out a good sponsoring strategy.
Ferdinand DAŇO
Distribution management as a function, activity or process is closely
related to basic problems of distribution and distribution systems and
penetrates into the operational side of distribution, i. e. into logistics,
as well as into acquisition which may be taken for strategic side of distribution.
Theoretically, the problems of distribution management are closely linked
to the tasks and functions of distribution: their basis may be found in
considering a certain tension between production and consumption, these
being represented by people engaged in them who are able to ease the tension.
Distribution management seems to be one of the most important tasks of
the enterprise management: it is primarily involved in resolving the problems
of the organization, management, planning and control of a distribution
channel as a socio-economic system.
The role and significance of a distribution management are given by the
fact that a distribution system is one of the central potentials of the
firm's success, the decisions concerning distribution systems are of strategic
character, the performances of a distribution system are designed for final
consumers not only by the producers' performances but - in case of an indirect
distribution - by the services of distribution intermediators or distribution
helpers as well, between the distribution and other decisions there are
mutual cost and income connections. The distribution decisions must go
hand-in-hand with other decisions of the sales policy of the firm and must
not be seen separately.
Six main tasks of distribution management may be distinguished: 1. the
understan-ding of the existing situation and the firm's development and
the development of its surroundings; 2. analysis and evaluation of the
situation; 3. setting the distribution goals and strategies; 4. organization
of an distribution system; 5. planning, coordination and control of distribution
activities; 6. promotion and motivation of distribution bodies.
The theory of distribution channels may be categorized according to two
different orientations, namely according to economic evaluation of distribution
channels and according to the behaviour of individual participants of distribution
channels.
Economic evaluation is mostly used in distribution design formation and
is primarily oriented to the evaluation of distribution channels; microeconomic
theory and analysis is applied and it is mainly oriented to the effect,
and concentrates upon cost, functional differences and arrangement of distribution
channels. At the same time many and different criterions and methods are
used.
The behavioural evaluation is socio-economically oriented and comprises
such phenomena as mutual relations between the participants of the distribution
process which demonstrate themselves by means of power in channel, by means
of cooperation and according to conflicts which arise between them in realization
of distribution activity. To affect them, the participants use some motivation
means.
The successful and effective fulfilment of the goals of a distributional
system inevitably requires an appropriate management organization of a
distribution channel. Basic organizational concepts of a distribution channel
are known to be a concept of the distribution channel manager, the concept
of the product manager, the concept of the customers' manager.
The tasks discussed in the presented paper form just a part of all the
distribution management problems. The problems that were not mentioned
here more in detail deserve a special attention and full elaboration.
Kristína VIESTOVÁ
The author defines a retail network in compliance with the understanding
of retail trade as one of the elements of economic and social infrastructure
of national economy. She defines it from two viewpoints: from the standpoint
of retail trade as a systematically organized group of sales-points to
sell products to the final and individual consumer, and from the consumption
standpoint formed by a group of purchasing conditions among which time,
quality and choice of goods are dominant. The author presents a group of
twelve components of purchasing conditions and their consumer evaluation
in 1988 and 1996. The market survey in the field was realized by students
of the Faculty of Commerce, Economic University in Bratislava.
Following the results of a retail network research the author makes the
following conclusions:
Purchasing conditions are generaly appraised by consumers with a certain
portion of sympathy and they are negatively impressed by the lack of:
- stability, punctuality and discipline as a result of a retail-trade manager's
insuffi-cient professional ability that cause the waste of purchasing time
and the fact that the standards of purchasing conditions do not reach the
consumer's requirements. The outlasting feeling of the consumer to be powerless
against a work of low quality in shops, against a low quality of goods
purchased cannot be understood in the sense of an excessive criticism,
not reflecting the level of purchasing conditions but as a serious disturbance
of the complex of purchasing conditions.
Retail network as a complex of consumer purchasing conditions is, therefore,
a reflexion of abilities, possibilities and interest of businessman in
trade, shopmen, public representatives (public movements) in the given
period of time.
Marta KARKALÍKOVÁ
Quality of services has not yet been paid sufficient attention up till
now and that is why the paper analyzes the requirements to be satisfied
by quality of services from dif-ferent aspects. Consumers compare the standard
of services they expect with that they get and so they evaluate the quality
of services. This process results in the fact that quality of services
comprises more than only the end-services rendered, especially the way
how they were provided. The process is multidimensional: quality requirements
are different from the point of view of consumers, that of competitors
and of those providing services. This fact is closely related to different
methods of service-quality measurement by various objective and subjective
criteria.
A part of the paper also deals with application of marketing in the sphere
of services because the increase of competition in services requires a
better utilization of marketing instruments, namely in the case when the
firms providing services want to make themselves felt in the markets.
Quality marketing is essential because in ensures the customers' satisfaction,
as the employed are highly motivated which enhance performances of the
firms providing services they being able to apply one of many different
quality strategies.
The firms providing services must enforce, generate, introduce and maintain
such a quality standard of services rendered to recruit as many customers
as possible.
Eva HANULÁKOVÁ - Adriana PROČKOVÁ
There is no doubt that compliance with ethical standards in all the
business activities belong to the very important atributes of business
success. Nowadays the question of ethical relations and requirements becomes
not only actual but even more important. The reason why business entities
are required and act ethically present a wide spectrum of questions ranging
from an insufficient confidence in institutions, corruption, cause of damage
to customers and living environment, to the critics or even rejection of
the existing economic order.
Business activities are closely related to society and its activities and
values. It is necessary to point out that not only a good or a service
but an enterprise as a whole (with its internal and external image) determines
the attitude of customers and their will to buy. Common denominator of
the indicated arguments is the rejection of the attitude which is separating
ethics from business.
Ethical aspects should be considered at all the levels of decision-making,
the process of business strategy formation not excluding. Business ethics
are, therefore aimed at the development of strategy capable of consensus.
At the same time they should work as a regulator of the tension between
different economic and social interests of business entities and the society.
To the actual problems which are motivating public discussion on business
ethics belong environmental questions primarily. These problems are enormously
significant: in creation of business strategies it is, therefore, inevitable
to have a special regard for ecological consequences that the business
activities or products might influence negatively the living environment.
A significant instrument to be used to prevent negative impacts may be
represented by environmental audit. The environmental audit determines
and control whether the enterprise and its technical system works in compliance
with legislation, the firm's policy and a "good practice" behaviour.
Alica LACKOVÁ
Used broadly, innovation is every change in production process (material,
capacity, technology, organization etc.) that may but need not influence
quality of the final product. In any case the basic economic impact lead
to an economic effect such as profit, turnover increase or strenthening
of market position.
New product development and its introduction into production must closely
follow the tendency of the development of needs regardless of the fact
if the idea to produce a new sort of a product arose in consumption research,
i. e. in the sphere of market or originated in the sphere of technical
research and development. In both cases it is necessary that a further
development of the product should be supported by both of them. Just a
product originated in the closest connection with market and the expected
consumers' demand may succeed.
From the point of view of the conception of business development the contribution
of a new product should be known, considering strenthening the business
position of the enterprise in market, the influence of a new technology
upon conceptual intentions and specialization of production programme of
the enterprise and its own research, opportunities to widen up the cooperation
with research and production enterprises in the country and abroad. In
connection with what was indicated above the paper characterizes different
innovation strategies as well as present trends in managing product innovations.
A part of the paper deals with ecological aspects of innovation process
and with different types of ecological innovations.
The ability to create and to use innovation is one of the most significant
characteristics of economic efficiency. Innovation dynamics, at the same
time, is an important factor of international competitiveness. Only the
country capable of transforming the scientific and technical outcomes in
new or in improved products and technologies succeed in the ferocity of
competition in the world markets.
Mária DZUROVÁ
Reclamation problems form one of the ways of communication of a firm
with its customers. By means of reclamation process the firms check quality
of their products and the marketing strategy chosen for the given region.
It is suitable for the firms to set a uniform system of claim records that
concentrate and settle claims in different departments of the firms. The
uniform system of claim records may help the management of the firms to
pursue the development trend of product quality sold, to watch the attitude
of buyers towards the purchased goods, to follow the consumers' wishes,
and other information that the firm can get from different local markets.
The findings may indicate the purchasers' taste and influence the firm's
strategy.
Applying the claim analysis the firm seeks the reason of origin of claims,
settles them and finds and narrows the limits of the origin of claims.
The final goal of the firm's efforts is a highly satisfied consumer, high
quality product with no claims, because claims make the customer to be
just a looser.