Evaluating the Relative Efficacy of the Marketing Function in the Construction Complex of Ukraine

Abstract

The break up of the USSR pushed 15 constituent states into a transition phase from a regulated economy to a free market style one. Partially, this involved the wholesale importation of a variety of theories, strategies, and operational plans. This paper seeks to examine the efficiency of the use of the marketing communications mix in medium and large firms in the Ukraine’s construction complex during the transition period to a market oriented economy. In order to do so, a survey of the most significant, privately owned firms in the industry was conducted. A variety of quantitative measures were employed, including econometric estimates and certain elasticity coefficients that allowed us to asses existing tendencies in the industry, identify problems, and to make tentative recommendations. Copyright International Atlantic Economic Society 2006C50, F20, L10,

Importance of Marketing Activities in a Company: the Management Perspective

“…Many of them discuss the relationship between marketing and finance, or model financial outcomes of some specific marketing activities (Sheth, Sharma, 2001;Uzelac, Sudarevic, 2006;Rust et al, 2004;Weinzimmer et al, 2003). In other cases, the marketing function is related with some other functions within a company that are perceived as being 'closer' to it, typically with sales (Rouzies et al, 2005), Dewsnap, Jobber, 2000), with public relations (Grunig, Grunig, 1998), new product development (Song et al, 1997) or with the function of operations (Piercy, Rich, 2004) and purchasing (Hawes et al, 2006). One more group of researchers analyse the linkage between a specific marketing activity and some either internal or external factors: pricing and revenue (Garrow et al, 2006); cooperation in product innovation (De Luca, Atuahene-Gima, 2007), the aspect of human resources in marketing (Chimhanzi, 2004), etc.…”

“…However, studies that would directly measure the managerial evaluations of jrnportance of marketing activities are very rare and typically touch this aspect just indirectly (Spillard, Moriarty, 1994;Homburg et al, 1999;Valentin, 1992). Research on this issue in Eastern European countries is minimal, and probably the closest examples are studies in Czech Republic (Pribova, Savitt, 1995), Ukraine (Skliarenko, Bartel, 2006) and one exploratory study of authors of this article in Lithuania (Urbonavicius et al, 2007).…”