The application of market share objectives In directing, planning and monitoring marketing activity at corporate, divisional and brand levels

The main criterion of measuring the success of a marketing orientedcompany is the market share that it can achieve over its competitiverivals. The main objective of this study is to investigate the applicationof market share in the direction and control of the marketing activityfor a brand or a product. To understand such applications.it is therefore necessary toconsider the managerial use of this objective in the strategy formulationand control function at different managerial levels of an organisation.The differences of objectives, responsibilities, and type of decisions undertakenby managers at various levels require different definitions of a product'smarket. A higher level of market aggregation can be expected to take placeat the higher managerial level to match the longer time span of the decision,and a greater responsibility. At the other end, segmenting the market bydifferent criteria implies identifying these segments employed for measuringthe share level of product. In addition, the constraints of a company'sultimate long term objective (Rol) over strategy formulation may affect the level ofcommitment of various marketing managers towards market shareobjective. A larger market share may not always produce higher profitability,and the product life cycle concept is used to identify conditions under whichdifferent results may be obtained. Finally, the study investigates the effects offactors"such as product characteristics and inflation rates on a manager'schoice in selecting the marketing sales figure (sales value, or volume) forassessing the share level of a product.All the above factors generate the study hypotheses that will be tested by thepostal questionnaire approach. The product/brand managers of heavily advertised fastmoving consumer goods or of durable consumer products marketed by Britishor foreign companies in ttie UK market, will be surveyed. Since thecollected data will tnko a number of forms, both non-parametric statistics, suchas chi-square test, and mrametric statistics, such as Student's t-test,will be used for the purpose of analysis. In addition, to test ttr. practicai.application and validity of the stu y findings, some ->f the senior marketing managerswho responded to the questionnaire survey will be interviewed