Marketing Strategy as a Competitive Tool for Performance A Study of Manufacturing and Service Industries in India

Abstract

Marketing strategy has been a part of the marketing discourse for quite some time newlinenow, and is an established part of marketing science. Lot of research has been done newlineon marketing strategy over this period of time. An area of particular interest is the newlineinfluence of marketing strategy on business performance. The results of these newlineresearches were mixed. Some studies proved a correlation between strategy and newlineperformance, while most remained inconclusive. This area has not been adequately newlineresearched in the Indian context. It is with the primary objective of researching this newlinecorrelation between strategy and performance in the Indian context, that this newlineresearch was undertaken. newlineThis research is done in three phases. In the first phase, the objective was to newlinedetermine whether there exists any pattern with reference to differences in newlineperformance among firms depending on their contextual factors. Accordingly newlineapproximately 200 firms were chosen from among 8 major industries/categories in newlineIndia. The first contextual factor chosen for determining significant differences in newlinethe pattern of business performance was ownership i.e. a comparison between newlinedomestic firms and foreign owned firms. The primary parameters chosen for newlinemeasuring performance was sales, profits, ROI etc. Statistical tools used were newlineregression analysis and T-tests. The tests did not throw up any significant difference newlinein performance between these two sets of firms domestic and foreign owned. newlineIn the second phase of this research, a questionnaire was designed and primary data newlinecollected from top company executives. The data collated pertained to overall newlinestrategy of different category of firms. Again, no significant difference was newlineobserved in strategies pursued by firms, depending on their contextual factors. So, newlineup to this stage, no correlation was observed between strategy and performance of newlinefirms depending on contextual factors such as size, age of the firm, ownership etc.