Research Project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words - 1

Research Project - Essay Example ’s tangible resources, such as cash reserves and information technologies, managers utilize marketing promotions as an intangible resource that either makes a firm attractive to existing or prospective customers. Marketing promotions consist of efforts to communicate the total value of a service or a product for customers with the intention of increasing sales through these communications (Kotler and Keller 2009). Marketing promotions consist of advertising and publicity to achieve the objective of properly positioning a firm against competition, increasing sales, building a corporate identity and generally increase customer demand (Solomon, et al. 2006). For some managers, the problem faced in achieving competitive advantage is that their respective firms produce and distribute products that are comparable to competition. Such products have homogenous features and benefits to competitive offerings, hence when attempting to communicate product value, it becomes increasingly difficult to build incentive with customers to select one firm’s products over that of competitors. As a result, managers exploit the marketing function in operations as a means of differentiating a product from that of comparable competitor products. Differentiation is a strategic effort to create a distinguished identity for a product which makes a product appear more interesting and desirable for a company’s most sought-after customer target segments (Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson 2014). Nandan (2005) asserts that in today’s competitive business environment, it is becoming more simplistic for competing firms to imitate and reproduce the features and benefits of a competitor’s product. With the ability of a firm to procure similar production technologies whilst also building a competent research and development team, companies that once offered unique products for consumers are being threatened with a shortened product life cycle as a result of replicated competing products being