Karen Rees, director of marketing at Woodvale Products Limited, has called an urgent meeting with her fellow directors of the other func tional areas of the business. The over riding reason for calling this meeting is that Rees feels her efforts to improve the market ing standing of the com -

pany through improved customer orientation are being thwarted by other func tional managers. In addition, and as part of the overall problem, over the past twelve months since Rees was appointed there has been consider able conflict between members of her marketing team and other members of the company.

One of the first things that Rees organised when she was appointed marketing director was an update of the product range, including the introduction of several new products. In Rees’s view, the product range was badly out of date and this was directly affecting sales and market share. However, the battle that Rees had to fight in order to get the design team and the engineering and production staff in the com -

pany to go along with her ideas had been very bruising indeed. In short, they had vehemently resisted these innovations. Rees felt vindicated now because the new product range had been welcomed by the existing customer base.

However, this was not the only battle that Rees had to fight. Over the past twelve months she has had battles with finance over pricing and costs of delivery and distribution, complaints about customer service, battles with personnel over proposed customer awareness training for all company employees (which had been turned down on the grounds that such training would be too expensive), and even battles with the sales department, which was independent from marketing, over suggestions for increasing call rates by sales representatives on key accounts.

In short, Rees was not happy with the way things were in the company.

The company is currently organized on a functional basis, including her own marketing department. Most of the sales team come from engineering backgrounds and the company is strongly engineering and product oriented. At the moment, she feels that she does not even have the support of the senior management team regarding her views that the company needs to become more customer focused.

CASE STUDY QUESTION What problems and issues might Rees highlight to her follow directors at the forthcoming meeting as regards the marketing organization and culture in the company? She is also thinking of a move towards direct marketing which would allow control over sales. What proposals might Rees make in order to try and resolve some of these problems and issues?