Unit 6: Market and Crisis Management

I. Orientation: Enterprise Adaptation and Continuity

Market management and crisis management are complementary entrepreneurial functions. Marketing connects an enterprise with customers and revenue, while crisis management protects its people, operations, assets, and reputation when serious disruption occurs. Both depend on timely information, coordinated decisions, and adaptation to changing conditions.

• Customer orientation: Business decisions begin with an identified need, such as affordable transport, faster delivery, or safer packaging, rather than merely with an available product.
• Value creation: An enterprise combines product benefits, price, availability, and service into a value proposition that gives customers a reason to buy.
• Exchange relationship: Marketing enables an exchange in which the customer receives utility and the enterprise receives revenue, information, loyalty, or another benefit.
• Environmental dependence: Demand, competition, technology, regulation, finance, suppliers, and natural conditions can alter business performance.
• Preparedness: Crisis management requires risk identification, preventive controls, contingency plans, assigned responsibilities, and tested communication channels.
• Continuity: The central objective during disruption is to maintain or restore critical activities such as procurement, production, payroll, order fulfilment, and customer support.
• Learning and control: Sales figures, complaints, inventory records, cash-flow statements, incident reports, and recovery times provide evidence for corrective action.

II. Marketing Management: Creating and Delivering Customer Value

Marketing management is the process of analysing market opportunities, selecting customers, designing an appropriate marketing mix, implementing plans, and controlling results. Its purpose is to satisfy customers profitably while building sustainable demand.

A. Marketing Management

Marketing management coordinates the enterprise's relationship with customers from need identification to post-sale service.

• Analysis: Managers study demand, customer behaviour, competitors, costs, and external trends; for example, a bakery may compare daily demand by product, location, and time.
• Planning: Objectives must be measurable, such as increasing monthly repeat purchases from 25% to 35% within six months.
• Marketing mix: The traditional 4Ps are product, price, place, and promotion.
  • Product: Quality, design, brand, packaging, warranty, and service.
  • Price: List price, discount, credit terms, and payment method.
  • Place: Shops, distributors, websites, delivery systems, and inventory locations.
  • Promotion: Advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity, and digital communication.
• Implementation: Budgets, staff duties, schedules, and channel arrangements convert the plan into action.
• Control: Actual sales, market share, conversion rate, and customer retention are compared with targets so that price, promotion, or distribution can be corrected.

B. Market

A market is a set of actual and potential buyers who share a need, possess purchasing ability, and are willing to exchange value for an offering.

• Essential elements: A market requires buyers, a need or want, purchasing power, willingness to buy, and a means of communication and exchange.
• Market boundary: It may be defined geographically, such as a city vegetable market, or by need, such as the market for online accounting software.
• Demand: Want becomes effective demand when supported by willingness and ability to pay; interest in a premium machine is not demand without the required budget.
• Segmentation: A broad market is divided into groups using geographic, demographic, psychographic, or behavioural variables; a clothing firm might segment by age, income, lifestyle, and purchase frequency.
• Target market: The enterprise selects one or more segments whose needs match its capabilities and resources.
• Market share: Competitive position can be expressed as:

Market share (%) = Enterprise sales / Total mar