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Archives of Business Research – Vol. 9, No. 3

Publication Date: March, 03, 2021

DOI: 10.14738/abr.93.9844. Kwadade-Cudjoe, F. (2021). Organizational Strategic Marketing Management: Critical Analysis of the Marketing Strategies /

Practices Currently Employed By the Water Resources Commission, Ghana, Indicating Challenges and Opportunities. Archives of

Business Research, 9(3). 140-156.

Organizational Strategic Marketing Management: Critical

Analysis of the Marketing Strategies / Practices Currently

Employed By the Water Resources Commission, Ghana,

Indicating Challenges and Opportunities

Dr. Francis Kwadade-Cudjoe

FBCS, FIMIS, PhD, MBA, BSc (Hons)

Senior Lecturer, Knutsford University College and

Adjunct Lecturer, GIMPA Business School, Accra, Ghana.

ABSTRACT

Strategic marketing management is the implementation of an

organization’s marketing mission through focused processes to

get the most out of existing marketing plan and to identify

target customers. Again, it is to help the discovery of other

marketing opportunities for the organization to transform

plans into reality. The marketing plan should outline the

marketing strategy of the organization for the coming year,

quarter or month. A typical business marketing plan should

include: overview of the marketing and advertising goals,

description of the current marketing position, timeline of when

tasks within the strategy will be completed, key performance

indicators to be tracked, and description of the target market

and customer needs. When an organization adopts this

approach to market its products / services to customers /

consumers, there is a strong expectation of success for the

organization. The initial capital outlay pumped into businesses

is normally huge, and this should not be made to go waste.

However, most organizations gloss over this important point

and put out mediocre plans and strategies to managing their

businesses. Business wo/men should project their businesses

from a better marketing angle with good competitive strategy to

enable them achieve competitive advantage.

Key Words: Marketing, marketing plan, strategic marketing

management, performance indicators, target customers and

competitive advantage.

INTRODUCTION

Marketing is defined by Hornby (2001) as the activity of promoting, advertising, selling and

delivery of an organization’s products to consumers in the best possible way. Additionally,

the American Marketing Association in Kotler (2003) defines marketing as the process of

planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, selling and distribution of ideas,

goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational

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Archives of Business Research (ABR) Vol 9, Issue 3, March-2021

objectives. This definition takes care of the marketing tools / mix (5Ps), namely; ‘Product,

Price, Promotion, Place and People’, which are vital for any marketing system. These and

the additional 3Ps – Profit, Plans and Processes (which are more of service in nature),

would be used to explain and analyse the marketing practices currently employed by the

Water Resources Commission (WRC), Ghana (University of Leicester, 2002).

According to Kotler (2003), marketing management is the art and science of choosing

target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers / consumers through creating,

delivering and communicating superior customer value.

Furthermore, strategic marketing management as described by Aquino (2017) and

University of Leicester (2002) is the implementation of an organization’s marketing

mission through focused processes to get the most out of existing marketing plan and to

identify target customers / consumers. Strategic marketing management would also help

the discovery of other marketing opportunities for the organization to transform plans into

reality.

Regarding marketing plan, McGuire (2020) describes it as a report that outlines the

marketing strategy of an organization for the coming year, quarter or month. McGuire

(2020) and Kotler (2003) add that a typical business marketing plan would include:

• overview of the marketing and advertising goals,

• description of the current marketing position,

• timeline of when tasks within the strategy will be completed,

• key performance indicators (KPIs) to be tracked, and

• description of the target market and customer needs.

WATER RESOURCES COMMISSION, GHANA

The Water Resources Commission (WRC), has a mission to regulate and manage the

sustainable utilization of water resources of Ghana and to co-ordinate related policies for

socio-economic development of the country. The vision of the WRC is ‘Sustainable water

management by all for all’. The organization was established in 1996 by Act 522 of

Government of Ghana (Parliament of the Republic of Ghana, 1996; Wrc-gh.org, 2020a).

WRC started business in 1999 after presentation of a report by a study group in 1998 on

the ways of facilitating the WRC’s responsibility of regulating and managing Ghana’s water

resources on a sustainable basis (Water Resources Management Study, 1998).

Currently, WRC has completed the pilot-phase of its life-cycle, with the setting up of three

(3) pilot-basin-offices to regulate and manage the resource in the basins; a basin is an area

of land where rainfall collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river,

stream or other body of water. The first basin was created in the Year 2000 with the third

(the last) taking-off in early 2006. There are 14 river-basins in Ghana (Water Resources

Commission, 2006). See appendices 1 and 2 for the organization-chart and functions of the

WRC (as spelt out in the Act 522 of 1996), respectively.

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Kwadade-Cudjoe, F. (2021). Organizational Strategic Marketing Management: Critical Analysis of the Marketing Strategies / Practices Currently

Employed By the Water Resources Commission, Ghana, Indicating Challenges and Opportunities. Archives of Business Research, 9(3). 140-156.

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/abr.93.9844.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MARKETING PRACTICES EMPLOYED BY WRC

The marketing practices of the WRC would be described and analysed under the following

areas:

• value delivery service,

• marketing practices,

• product,

• price,

• promotion,

• place / distribution channel,

• people / labour market,

• sales,

• costs,

• profits, and

• suppliers / competitors.

WRC’s Value Delivery Process

According to Kotler (2003), the task of any business is to deliver customer value at a profit.

The two (2) views of the value delivery process are:

• traditional physical process, and

• value creation and delivery.

The WRC marketing approach at the start of work was traditional, where the organization

was selling water rights to users (consumers) for fees and, did not apply any value creation

before marketing the products. Currently, the WRC has embellished its marketing strategy

for its products by adding a lot of values to make the products of the organization attractive

to consumers. However, the activities of unlicensed / illegal ‘small-scale mining groups’,

known in the local parlance as ‘galamsey’, to wit ‘gather them and sell’, have been doing a

lot of damage to the resource. These unlicensed ‘small-scale miners’ pollute the river

bodies through digging for gold nuggets for sale, after the activities of the WRC to make the

resource good for users (Mantey, Nyarko & Owusu-Nimo, 2017).

The government of Ghana is seriously tackling the problems being caused by these illicit

miners. Examples of activities by the WRC to make the water good for the users are the

setting up of Basin Boards and Buffer Zone policy to protect the resource from

encroachment (Wrc-gh.org, 2020b). See appendices 3 and 4 for the diagrams of the

traditional and value creation processes of products of an organization.

Marketing practices of WRC

Kotler (2003) advocates that marketing practices of an organization should present

relevant background data on product, price, promotion, place, people / market, sales, costs,

profits, competitors, suppliers and the forces in the macro-environment. The information

to be gathered on the above from the WRC would therefore, be used to carry out a SWOT

(strength, weakness, opportunities and threats) analysis on products from the

organization.