Marketing is a cross-functional discipline, relying heavily on, and developing links with other departments within the organization in order to be successful.

Marketing is a cross-functional discipline, relying heavily on, and developing links with other departments within the organization in order to be successful.

Historically, organisations have developed by dividing tasks into manageable working units, with individual departments taking on specific roles. In all of this, organisations tended to fall into one of two positions... Sales orientated, and marketing orientated, where marketing orientated was essentially all about branding. One then needed to consider how best to integrate the separated functional groups. Much literature has grown out of the debate to help achieve better cross-functional and more centralised roles. Lim & Reid (1992) note that the professional responsibilities of marketers, cross many functional areas, and the achievement of marketing objectives, would be dependent on such integration. While Gummesson (1991) believed everyone within an organisation should to one extent or another be in the business of marketing to further their organisations objectives.

But what do we mean when we talk about cross-functional marketing?

Cross-functional marketing may be described as being an integrated marketing approach, which involves the working together of all the departments of a company...

Market Street

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[St. Stephen's Green Park, Dublin. County Dublin, ...

-sales

-product

-management

-market research

-advertising etc.

...to serve the interests of the consumer.

In 1954 Peter Drucker suggested that to be truly customer-centric an organization must adapt a marketing concept, which entails that the key to achieving its organizational goals consists in the company being more effective in creating, delivering and communicating customer value to its chosen target markets than its competitors. In order to adopt this concept the following need to be considered:

An organization should look beyond their own profession to what is happening at the top of their organization, integrating their goals and activities to simultaneously deliver business and financial goals. This requires those in marketing to learn about the concerns of finance, sales...