Logistics and marketing management is an expression of the integration of logistics, as a management concept oriented towards flows, and marketing. Both mentioned management concepts are verified on the market, determining the company’s operational strategy in terms of supply and sales.
“In this approach, marketing encompasses the entirety of activities and instruments whose direct goal is to recognize, define, and create market potentials for the company’s effects and successes. Logistics, on the other hand, focuses on creating and utilizing the company’s potential for efficiency and success, oriented towards increasing services for customers”.
Logistics and marketing management provides opportunities for the effective use of a company’s potential and capabilities. To achieve the highest level of need satisfaction and customer satisfaction, it utilizes instruments of the marketing-mix (product, price, promotion, distribution) and logistics-mix (transport, warehousing, inventory management, packaging, order fulfillment, service process).
The effects of logistics and marketing management can be captured in the “4C” and “7W” formulas, which is presented in Fig. 2. Agritourism activity – understood as the provision of tourism services by farmers on their farms – can also be managed using marketing-mix and logistics-mix instruments.
Owners of agritourism farms in the Gniezno district successfully, though often unknowingly, manage their family business within the framework of a logistics and marketing strategy. By ensuring that the offered agritourism product is appropriate and satisfies customer needs, they apply product strategies. A tourism product, including an agritourism one, should be considered at 3 levels:
1. core product – being a service providing basic benefits, the goal of which is to satisfy specific consumer needs
2. actual product – being a concrete sales offer
3. augmented product – including all forms of additional benefits that producers can build into the actual product to increase the attractiveness of the offer.
The core of the agritourism product created by agritourism farms in the Gniezno district is providing satisfaction from rural recreation by ensuring silence, peace, contact with nature, and folklore. A core product built in this way largely satisfies the guests’ expectations. Agritourism farms operating in the Gniezno district use natural advantages resulting from the proximity of forests and lakes when constructing the core product. All farms are located no more than 10 km from a forest, and only 23% of them are situated at a distance of more than 5 km from a lake.
The actual product intended for purchase includes basic services with a specific minimum of guest expectations that must be met. These include, among others: accommodation services, catering, and services related to passive and active recreation. The agritourism accommodation base in the Gniezno district mainly consists of guest rooms (57.0%) and holiday homes (31.0%). Seasonal rooms (8.0%) and holiday apartments (4.0%) are used much less frequently. Most farms allow the use of a kitchen and bathroom shared by guests. Unfortunately, according to guests, only 57.1% of agritourism farms in the Gniezno district provide accommodation services at a very good level.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 4/2003.