Marketing As Strategy

EIGHT

From Strategic Business Unit Marketing to Corporate Marketing

Marketing is strategy.

IN GENERAL, THE LITERATURE on marketing strategy focuses on business units and ignores the role of marketing at the corporate level. This has probably reinforced the traditional belief that all marketing is local—a belief that has resulted in the placement of the marketing function in SBUs or in country organizations, rather than at headquarters. Relatively few companies have a chief marketing officer (CMO) alongside a chief financial officer (CFO) or a chief operating officer (COO) to influence the CEO and corporate strategy.

While most of the marketing functions and almost all marketing activities in an organization have historically fallen to the divisional ...