The marketing Strategies are changing rapidly. Today's strategy may be obsolete tomorrow as today's world or market place is different form that of tomorrow or day after tomorrow.
Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals
The shortest definition of Marketing is " Satisfying human social needs Profitably"
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Marketing is indeed an ancient art; it has been practiced in one form or the other, since the days of Adam and Eve. Today, it has become the most vital function in the world of business. Marketing is the business function that identifies unfulfilled needs and wants, define and measures their magnitude, determines which target market the organization can best serve, decides on appropriate products, services and programmes to serve these markets, and calls upon everyone in the organization to think and serve the customer. Marketing is the force that harnesses a nation's industrial capacity to meet the society's material wants. It uplifts the standard of living of people in society.
Marketing must not be seen narrowly as the task of finding clever ways to sell the company's products. Many people confuse marketing with some of its sub functions, such as advertising and selling. Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profit to the producers, and benefits for the stakeholders.
Needs, wants and demands
Marketing starts with the human needs and wants. People need food, air, water, clothing and shelter to survive. They also have a strong desire for recreation, health, education, and other services. They have strong performances for particular versions and brands of basic goods and services. A human need is a state of felt deprivation of some basic satisfaction. People require food, clothing, shelter, safety, belonging, esteem and a few other things for survival. These needs are not created by their society or by marketers; they exist in the very texture of human biology and the human condition. Wants are desires for specific satisfiers of these deeper needs.
For example, one needs food and wants a pizza, needs clothing and wants a Raymond shirt. These needs are satisfied in different manners in different societies. While people needs are few, their wants are unlimited. Human wants are continually shaped and reshaped by social forces and institutions.
Demands are wants for specific products that are backed up by an ability and willingness to buy them. For example, many people want to buy a luxury car but they lack in purchasing power. Companies must therefore measure not only how many people want their products, but, how many would actually be willing to buy and finally able to buy it. Marketers do not create need, they simply influence wants. They suggest to consumers that a particular product or brand would satisfy a person’s need for social status. They do not create the need for social status but try to point out that a particular product would satisfy that need. They try to influence demand by making the product attractive, affordable, and easily available.
Marketing concepts
Firms vary in their perceptions about business, and their orientations to the market place. This has led to the emergence of many different concepts of marketing. Marketing activities should be carried out under some well-thought out philosophy of efficient, effective, and responsible marketing.
There are six competing concepts under which organisations conduct their marketing activity.
1.Exchange concept
The exchange concept of marketing, holds that the exchange of a product between the seller and the buyer is the central idea of marketing. Marketing is much broader than exchange. Exchange, at best, covers the distribution aspect and the price mechanism. The other important aspects of marketing, such as, concern for the customer, generation of value satisfactions, creative selling and integrated action for serving customer, are completely overshadowed in exchange concept.
2.Production concept
It is one of the oldest concepts guiding sellers. The production concept holds that customers will favour those products that are widely available and low in cost. Managers of production-oriented organisations concentrate on achieving high production efficiency and wide distribution coverage. The assumption that consumers are primarily interested in product availability and low price holds in at least two types of situations. The first is where the demand for a product exceeds supply. Here consumers are more interested in obtaining the product than in its fine points. The suppliers will concentrate on finding ways to increase production. The second situation is where the product’s cost is high and has to be brought down through increased productivity to expand the market
3. The product concept
The product concept holds that consumers will favour those products that offer quality or performance. Managers in these product-oriented organisations focus their energy on making good products and improving them over time.
These managers assume that buyers admire well-made product and can appraise product quality and performance. . The product concept leads to “marketing myopia”, an undue concentration on the product rather than the need.
For example the scooter manufacturers concentrated only on their products without understanding the up coming developments in two wheeler industry.
4.The selling concept
The selling concept holds that consumers, if left alone, will ordinarily not buy enough of the organization’s products. The organization must therefore do an aggressive selling and promotion effort.
The selling concept is practiced most aggressively with “sought goods”, those goods that buyers normally do not think of buying, such as insurance, encyclopedias, and funeral plots. These industries have perfected various sales techniques to locate prospects and hard-sell them on the benefits of their product. Hard selling also occurs with sought goods, such as automobiles.
. Most firms practice the selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their aim is to sell what they make rather than make what they can sell..
Thus selling, to be effective, must be preceded by several marketing activities such as needs assessment, marketing research, product development, pricing, and distribution. If the marketer does a good job of identifying consumer needs, developing appropriate products, and pricing, distributing, and promoting them effectively, these products will sell very easily.
5.The marketing concept
The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists in determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors.
Theodore Levitt drew a perceptive contrast between the selling and marketing concepts. Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.
Market focus: No company can operate in every market and satisfy every need. Nor can it even do a good job within one broad market:
Even mighty IBM cannot offer the best customer solution for every computer need. Companies do best when they define their target markets carefully. They do best when they prepare a tailored marketing program for each target market. Customer orientation: Thus a car buyer would like a high-performance car that never breaks down, that is safe, attractively styled, and cheap. Since all of these virtues cannot be combined in one car, the car designers must make hard choices not on what pleases them but rather on what customers prefer or expect. The aim, after all, is to make a sale through meeting the customer’s needs. Why is it supremely important to satisfy the customer? Basically because a company’s sales each period come from two groups: customers and repeat customers. It always costs more to attract new customers than to retain current customers. Therefore customer retention is more critical than customer attraction. Coordinated marketing: Unfortunately, not all the employees in a company are trained or motivated to pull together for the customer. Coordinated marketing means two things.
First, the various marketing functions-sales-force, advertising, product management, marketing research, and so on- must be coordinated among themselves. Too often the sales-force is mad at the product managers for setting “too high a price” or “too high a volume target”, or the advertising director and a brand manager cannot agree on the best advertising campaign for the brand. These marketing functions must be coordinated from the customer point of view.
Second, marketing must be well coordinated with the other departments. Marketing does not work when it is merely a department; it only works when all employees appreciate the effect they have on customer satisfaction.
Profitability:
The purpose of the marketing concept is to help organizations achieve their goals. In the case of private firms, the major goal is profit; in the case of non-profit and public organizations, it is surviving and attracting enough funds to perform their work. Now the key is not to aim for profits as such but to achieve them as a byproduct of doing the job well. This is not to say that marketers are unconcerned with profits.
Salespeople focus on achieving sales-volume goals, marketing people focus on identifying profit-making opportunities.
The societal marketing concept
In recent years, some people have questioned whether the marketing concept is appropriate organizational philosophy in an age of environmental deterioration, resource shortages, explosive population growth, world hunger and poverty, and neglected social services. The question is whether companies that do an excellent job of sensing, serving, and satisfying individual consumer wants are necessarily acting in then best long-run interests of consumers and society. The societal marketing concept holds that the organization’s task is to determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets and to deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves or enhances the consumer’s and the society’s well-being. The societal marketing concept calls upon marketers to balance three considerations in setting their marketing policies, namely, company profits, consumer want satisfaction, and public interest. Originally, companies based their marketing decisions largely on immediate company profit calculations. Then they began to recognize the long-run importance of satisfying consumer wants, and this introduced the marketing concept. Now they are beginning to factor in society’s interests in their decision-making. The societal marketing concept calls for balancing all three considerations. A number of companies have achieved notable sales and profit gains through adopting and practicing the societal marketing concept.
Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals
The shortest definition of Marketing is " Satisfying human social needs Profitably"
.
Marketing is indeed an ancient art; it has been practiced in one form or the other, since the days of Adam and Eve. Today, it has become the most vital function in the world of business. Marketing is the business function that identifies unfulfilled needs and wants, define and measures their magnitude, determines which target market the organization can best serve, decides on appropriate products, services and programmes to serve these markets, and calls upon everyone in the organization to think and serve the customer. Marketing is the force that harnesses a nation's industrial capacity to meet the society's material wants. It uplifts the standard of living of people in society.
Marketing must not be seen narrowly as the task of finding clever ways to sell the company's products. Many people confuse marketing with some of its sub functions, such as advertising and selling. Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profit to the producers, and benefits for the stakeholders.
Needs, wants and demands
Marketing starts with the human needs and wants. People need food, air, water, clothing and shelter to survive. They also have a strong desire for recreation, health, education, and other services. They have strong performances for particular versions and brands of basic goods and services. A human need is a state of felt deprivation of some basic satisfaction. People require food, clothing, shelter, safety, belonging, esteem and a few other things for survival. These needs are not created by their society or by marketers; they exist in the very texture of human biology and the human condition. Wants are desires for specific satisfiers of these deeper needs.
For example, one needs food and wants a pizza, needs clothing and wants a Raymond shirt. These needs are satisfied in different manners in different societies. While people needs are few, their wants are unlimited. Human wants are continually shaped and reshaped by social forces and institutions.
Demands are wants for specific products that are backed up by an ability and willingness to buy them. For example, many people want to buy a luxury car but they lack in purchasing power. Companies must therefore measure not only how many people want their products, but, how many would actually be willing to buy and finally able to buy it. Marketers do not create need, they simply influence wants. They suggest to consumers that a particular product or brand would satisfy a person’s need for social status. They do not create the need for social status but try to point out that a particular product would satisfy that need. They try to influence demand by making the product attractive, affordable, and easily available.
Marketing concepts
Firms vary in their perceptions about business, and their orientations to the market place. This has led to the emergence of many different concepts of marketing. Marketing activities should be carried out under some well-thought out philosophy of efficient, effective, and responsible marketing.
There are six competing concepts under which organisations conduct their marketing activity.
1.Exchange concept
The exchange concept of marketing, holds that the exchange of a product between the seller and the buyer is the central idea of marketing. Marketing is much broader than exchange. Exchange, at best, covers the distribution aspect and the price mechanism. The other important aspects of marketing, such as, concern for the customer, generation of value satisfactions, creative selling and integrated action for serving customer, are completely overshadowed in exchange concept.
2.Production concept
It is one of the oldest concepts guiding sellers. The production concept holds that customers will favour those products that are widely available and low in cost. Managers of production-oriented organisations concentrate on achieving high production efficiency and wide distribution coverage. The assumption that consumers are primarily interested in product availability and low price holds in at least two types of situations. The first is where the demand for a product exceeds supply. Here consumers are more interested in obtaining the product than in its fine points. The suppliers will concentrate on finding ways to increase production. The second situation is where the product’s cost is high and has to be brought down through increased productivity to expand the market
3. The product concept
The product concept holds that consumers will favour those products that offer quality or performance. Managers in these product-oriented organisations focus their energy on making good products and improving them over time.
These managers assume that buyers admire well-made product and can appraise product quality and performance. . The product concept leads to “marketing myopia”, an undue concentration on the product rather than the need.
For example the scooter manufacturers concentrated only on their products without understanding the up coming developments in two wheeler industry.
4.The selling concept
The selling concept holds that consumers, if left alone, will ordinarily not buy enough of the organization’s products. The organization must therefore do an aggressive selling and promotion effort.
The selling concept is practiced most aggressively with “sought goods”, those goods that buyers normally do not think of buying, such as insurance, encyclopedias, and funeral plots. These industries have perfected various sales techniques to locate prospects and hard-sell them on the benefits of their product. Hard selling also occurs with sought goods, such as automobiles.
. Most firms practice the selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their aim is to sell what they make rather than make what they can sell..
Thus selling, to be effective, must be preceded by several marketing activities such as needs assessment, marketing research, product development, pricing, and distribution. If the marketer does a good job of identifying consumer needs, developing appropriate products, and pricing, distributing, and promoting them effectively, these products will sell very easily.
5.The marketing concept
The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists in determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors.
Theodore Levitt drew a perceptive contrast between the selling and marketing concepts. Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.
Market focus: No company can operate in every market and satisfy every need. Nor can it even do a good job within one broad market:
Even mighty IBM cannot offer the best customer solution for every computer need. Companies do best when they define their target markets carefully. They do best when they prepare a tailored marketing program for each target market. Customer orientation: Thus a car buyer would like a high-performance car that never breaks down, that is safe, attractively styled, and cheap. Since all of these virtues cannot be combined in one car, the car designers must make hard choices not on what pleases them but rather on what customers prefer or expect. The aim, after all, is to make a sale through meeting the customer’s needs. Why is it supremely important to satisfy the customer? Basically because a company’s sales each period come from two groups: customers and repeat customers. It always costs more to attract new customers than to retain current customers. Therefore customer retention is more critical than customer attraction. Coordinated marketing: Unfortunately, not all the employees in a company are trained or motivated to pull together for the customer. Coordinated marketing means two things.
First, the various marketing functions-sales-force, advertising, product management, marketing research, and so on- must be coordinated among themselves. Too often the sales-force is mad at the product managers for setting “too high a price” or “too high a volume target”, or the advertising director and a brand manager cannot agree on the best advertising campaign for the brand. These marketing functions must be coordinated from the customer point of view.
Second, marketing must be well coordinated with the other departments. Marketing does not work when it is merely a department; it only works when all employees appreciate the effect they have on customer satisfaction.
Profitability:
The purpose of the marketing concept is to help organizations achieve their goals. In the case of private firms, the major goal is profit; in the case of non-profit and public organizations, it is surviving and attracting enough funds to perform their work. Now the key is not to aim for profits as such but to achieve them as a byproduct of doing the job well. This is not to say that marketers are unconcerned with profits.
Salespeople focus on achieving sales-volume goals, marketing people focus on identifying profit-making opportunities.
The societal marketing concept
In recent years, some people have questioned whether the marketing concept is appropriate organizational philosophy in an age of environmental deterioration, resource shortages, explosive population growth, world hunger and poverty, and neglected social services. The question is whether companies that do an excellent job of sensing, serving, and satisfying individual consumer wants are necessarily acting in then best long-run interests of consumers and society. The societal marketing concept holds that the organization’s task is to determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets and to deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves or enhances the consumer’s and the society’s well-being. The societal marketing concept calls upon marketers to balance three considerations in setting their marketing policies, namely, company profits, consumer want satisfaction, and public interest. Originally, companies based their marketing decisions largely on immediate company profit calculations. Then they began to recognize the long-run importance of satisfying consumer wants, and this introduced the marketing concept. Now they are beginning to factor in society’s interests in their decision-making. The societal marketing concept calls for balancing all three considerations. A number of companies have achieved notable sales and profit gains through adopting and practicing the societal marketing concept.
