1.2. Basic roles

Interpersonal: roles that involve coordination and interaction with employees.

Informational: roles that involve handling, sharing, and analyzing information.

Decisional: roles that require decision-making.

1.3. Management skills

Political: used to build a power base and establish connections

Conceptual: used to analyze complex situations.

Interpersonal: used to communicate, motivate and mentor.

Diagnostic: ability to visualize most appropriate response to a situation

Technical: Expertise in one's particular functional area.

2. Marketing

Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. Marketing might sometimes be interpreted as the art of selling products, but sales is only one part of marketing. As the term "Marketing" may replace "Advertising" it is the overall strategy and function of promoting a product or service to the customer.

Marketing is the science of choosing target markets through market analysis and market segmentation, as well as understanding consumer buying behavior.

There are five competing concepts under which organizations can choose to operate their business; the production concept, the product concept, the selling concept, the marketing concept, and the holistic marketing concept. The four components of holistic marketing are relationship marketing, internal marketing, integrated marketing, and socially responsive marketing. The set of engagements necessary for successful marketing management includes, capturing marketing insights, connecting with customers, building strong brands, shaping the market offerings, creating long-term growth, and developing marketing strategies and plans.

2.1. Contemporary approaches

Recent approaches in marketing include relationship marketing with focus on the customer, business marketing or industrial marketing with focus on an organization or institution and social marketing with focus on benefits to society. New forms of marketing also use the internet and are therefore called internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, "digital marketing", search engine marketing. It attempts to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing.

2.2. Customer orientation

A firm in the market economy survives by producing goods that persons are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern. Many companies today have a customer focus. This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally, there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the market change identification approach and the product innovation approach.

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is called the four P. The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer-centric alternative to the well-known 4P.

Product → Solution

Promotion → Information

Price → Value

Place (Distribution) → Access

If any of the 4Ps were problematic or were not in the marketing factor of the business, the business could be in trouble and so other companies may appear in the surroundings of the company, so the consumer demand on its products will decrease.

Some qualifications or caveats for customer focus exist. They do not invalidate or contradict the principle of customer focus; rather, they simply add extra dimensions of awareness and caution to it.