Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Suppliers and distributors also have a stake in the business. Suppliers rely on the firms 
they serve to ensure the achievement of their goals. In working with customers, suppliers 
often seek security, predictability and a satisfactory margin, and some suppliers have 
tried to ensure these outcomes through embedded and close relationships. For example, 
Walmart and Proctor and Gamble (P&G) have a very close relationship whereby sales 
at Walmart are directly linked to order replenishment systems at P&G. Distributors, 
too, are stakeholders in the business. In the automobile industry, car distributors are 
normally closely allied to individual car makers through franchise agreements. The suc-
cess or otherwise of the manufacturer in developing and marketing the right cars for the 
market impacts directly on the distributor. Again, the distributor may seek predictability 
and continuity at satisfactory margins.
To these stakeholders identified by Doyle (2008) we would add the following:
● 
Society and the community in which a firm exists can be significantly affected by its 
actions. Plant closures are an obvious example. When the UK coal industry shrank 
significantly in the 1970s and ’80s the effect on local communities was vast. Mining 
towns in Yorkshire and the Midlands experienced high rates of unemployment, as job 
creation initiatives lagged behind jobs lost through pit closures. More recently, Nissan 
announced that it is likely to close car-making facilities at Swindon in the UK, with the 
loss of around 3,500 jobs. This announcement has fuelled a significant amount of media 
speculation about the negative impacts on the local and national economy.
● 
The natural (or physical) environment connects strongly to the earlier discussion about 
the ‘triple bottom line’, but has not traditionally been seen as a stakeholder in the con-
ventional use of the term. It is, however, a proxy for future society, as what we do 
to the environment and the natural resources today will affect future generations. It 
has been argued that while previous generations may not have completely understood 
the environmental impact of their actions (in particular the burning of fossil fuels), 
the implications today are quite clear. Action at national and supranational levels has 
been, until very recently, fairly elusive (such as the failure of the climate change talks 
in Copenhagen in December 2009 to result in significant commitment to limit carbon 

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ORGANISATIONAL STAKEHOLDERS
emissions). However, the European Union is leading the way: following the Paris Cli-
mate Conference (COP21), held in December 2015, a total of 195 countries agreed to 
adopt the first ever, universal, legally binding global climate deal. Unfortunately, at 
the time of writing, President Trump has indicated that the USA is likely to pull out of 
the Paris accord, dealing a potentially significant blow to the overall aims. On a more 
positive note, organisations in the private and public sectors are increasingly taking 
action to reduce emissions and energy consumption, and mitigate their environmental 
impacts. This makes good commercial sense too! Energy bills for many organisations 
are the second-highest controllable expense after staff, and customers are increasingly 
taking interest in the ‘green’ credentials and practices of the companies they purchase 
from – and changing consumption habits as a result.
For non-profit organisations, the identification of stakeholders and their requirements 
may be even more complex:
● 
Owners of the organisation may be hard to identify and their interests difficult to 
define. For example, who ‘owns’ the Catholic Church, or Greenpeace, or the Labour