The management of a business with the customer in mind. It aims to identify a market where a potential exists for profitable business, and to take the necessary steps to satisfy that market by careful planning of the marketing mix or the Four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion (including advertising).
| Marketing |
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Product / Price / Promotion |
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Advertising / Branding |
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Billboard / Broadcasting |
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Marketing is a social and managerial function that attempts to create, expand and maintain a collection of customers.
Definitions
Marketing, as suggested by the American Marketing Association, is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders". Philip Kotler, in his earlier books, defines marketing as: "human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes". Still another marketing definition, coined by Brian Norris: "The process of repeatedly moving people closer to making a decision to purchase, use, follow, refer, upload, download, obey, reject, conform, become complacent to another person's, society's or organization's value. The association's definition claims marketing to be the "management process of anticipating, identifying and satisfying customer requirements profitably". Thus, operative marketing involves the processes of market research, new product development, product life cycle management, pricing, channel management as well as promotion. At a macro level, marketing is the process of raising the standards of living, by identifying the existing problems and unsatisfied needs of people and then satisfying that need with a product/service that delivers value to the customer.History
The practice of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself. Whenever a person has an item or is capable of performing a service, and he or she seeks another person who might want that item or service, that person is involved in marketing. A Market was originally simply a gathering place where people with a supply of items or capacity to perform a service could meet with those who might desire the items or services, perhaps at a pre-arranged time.
Such meetings of yf embodied all the aspects of today's marketing methods, although in an informal way.
The rise of Agriculture undoubtedly influenced markets as the earliest means of 'mass production' of an item, namely foodstuffs.
Introduction
Prior to the advent of market research, most companies were product-focused, employing teams of salespeople to push their products into or onto the market, regardless of market desire. Marketing theory and practice is justified on the belief that customers use a product/service because they have a need, or because a product/service has a perceived benefit.
Two major factors of marketing are the recruitment of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management).
Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over.
Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics.
For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four "Ps" must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Marketers depend on marketing research, both formal and informal, to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage.
Skill Sets
Marketers have 4 main skill sets that they bring to an enterprise:
1. Opportunity Identification
True marketing begins before there is a product to sell. Before a business can make money there must be opportunities for money to be made and it's marketing's job to define what those opportunities are. Marketers analyze markets, market gaps, trends, products, competition, and distribution channels to come up with opportunities to make money. Competitive strategy/positioning
Markets consists of groups of competitors competing for a customer's business. The job of marketing is to decide how to create a defensible sustainable competitive advantage against competitors. Marketers conceive strategies, tactics, and business models to make it hard if not impossible for competition to take away customers from their business. Demand generation/management
It's the job of marketing to create and sustain demand for a company's products. Marketers manage demand for a company's products by influencing the probability and frequency of their customer's purchase behavior. Sales
The ultimate goal of marketing is to make money for a business. But in order for salespeople to have any long term success in a company they must be led by marketing.
Marketing is a Technology
Is Marketing an Art or Science?
The big debate in the marketing discipline is whether marketing is an art or a science.
The 3 Levels of Marketing Strategy
To understand what marketing is one must understand that marketing operates on 3 different levels.
Corporate Level Marketing
What is marketing?Marketing at the corporate levels asks this question as 'What business should we be in and what opportunities should we pursue?'.This is marketing before we even have a business,idea or product.This is what is known as entreprenuership.This level of marketing stategy is where the Ted Turners,Bill Gates' and Michael Dells of the world make market changing decisions.This level is also where corporate management of existing companies decide to branch off into new uncharted territories and opportunities.
Business Level Marketing
What is marketing? Marketing at the business level asks this question as 'How are we going to compete against the competition?'.When Jack Trout says that marketing is 'the war between competitors' and 'the conflict between companies' what he is really doing is defining marketing at the business level.Business level marketing deals with high level strategic marketing concerns.This level deals with long term sustainable advantages and business models.
Functional Level Marketing
What is marketing?Marketing at the functional level(also known as the operating level)ask this question as 'How do we create and keep customers?'.This level deals with marketing tactics and the '4ps' of the marketing mix.This level of marketing defines and develops products,prices them,promotes them and then distributes them in a way that helps a company create and sustain demand for their products.
Four Ps (marketing mix)
In popular usage, "marketing" is the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding.
The four Ps are:
Product: The Product management and Product marketing aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix. The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.
As a counter to this, Morgan, in Riding the Waves of Change (Jossey-Bass, 1988), adds "Perhaps the most significant criticism of the 4 Ps approach, which you should be aware of, is that it unconsciously emphasizes the inside–out view (looking from the company outwards), whereas the essence of marketing should be the outside–in approach". Even so, having made this important caveat, the 4 Ps offer a memorable and quite workable guide to the major categories of marketing activity, as well as a framework within which these can be used.
Seven Ps
As well as the standard four Ps (Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place), services marketing calls upon an extra three, totalling seven and known together as the extended marketing mix.
"PHILOSOPHY" is the potential 9th P of marketing. It also applies to other products and services
Beyond the 4 Ps
Resources, Relationships, Offerings and Business Models
Marketing in the past focused mainly on basic concepts like the 4 Ps, and primarily on the psychological and sociological aspects of marketing. Marketing in the future will be based on a more strategic approach to competitive marketing success. Marketers will consciously build and allocate resources, relationships, offerings and business models that other companies find hard to match. Marketers must aggressively build relationships with consumers, customers, distributors, partners and even competitors if they want to have success in today's competitive marketplace. product in competitive marketing is dying.
In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers.
The next big thing is a concept in marketing that refers to a product or idea that will allow for a high amount of sales for that product and related products. Marketers believe that by finding or creating the next big thing they will spark a cultural revolution that results in this sales increase.
Product focus
In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that a profitable market segment(s) exists for the innovation. However, marketers can aggressively over pursue product innovation and try to overcapitalize on a niche. When pursuing a product innovation approach, marketers must ensure that they have a varied and multi-tiered approach to product innovation.
Other aspects
An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers (employer branding). A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, affiliate marketing or online marketing. With consumers' eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising messages, marketers are turning to forms of Permission marketing such as Branded content and Reality marketing.Newspapers and Magazines
Advantages - A lot of information is known about the people who read certain papers Disadvantages - Often not in color and are static and silentPosters and Billboards
Advantages - High visual impact for a long time and will be seen by a lot of different people Disadvantages - Are only seen for a few seconds by drivers and are vulnerable to weather and graffitiYellow Pages
Advantages - Anyone looking in the Yellow Pages wants to buy Disadvantages - A lot of your competitors are on the same page you areMedia
Television
Advantages - Can reach millions of people all over the country Disadvantages - Very expensiveRadio
Advantages - Cheaper than T.V, can be used to reach certain listeners Disadvantages - Sound only, smaller audiencesCinemas
Advantages - Very high visual and sound effect, higher brand recall, captive audience Disadvantages - Are relatively expensiveCommunications
Leaflets and direct mail and email
Advantages - Cheap to produce and distribute Disadvantages - Are easy to ignoreTelephone
Advantages - Direct to customer, interactive, receive instant feedback.Websites
Advantages - High visual impact, interactive and can link directly to buying the product, is relatively cheap Disadvantages - There is a lot of competition so getting people's attention may be difficult, needs to be continually updated, can become expensiveCriticism of marketing
Some aspects of marketing, especially promotion, are the subject of criticism. In this way producer market power is attained as measured by profits that would not be realized under a free market. Then the argument follows that non-free markets are imperfect and lead to production and consumption of suboptimal amounts of the product.
Critics acknowledge that marketing has legitimate uses in connecting goods and services to the consumers who want them. Critics also point out that marketing techniques have been used to achieve morally dubious ends by businesses, governments and criminals. Marketing is accused of creating ruthless exploitation of both consumers and workers by treating people as commodities whose purpose is to consume.
Most marketers believe that marketing, like any other technology, is amoral.
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