Active Vocabulary

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 685.

What is marketing?

Unit. Marketing

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Peter F. Drucker

What exactly is marketing and why is it important? Simply stated, marketing is everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers.

Marketing is a complex process and marketing experts often disagree on what marketing is and what it consists of. To avoid this controversy we will use the American Marketing Association official definition:

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

Marketing techniques include choosing target markets through market analysis and market segmentation, as well as understanding consumer behavior and advertising a product's value to the customer. From a societal point of view, marketing is the link between a society's material requirements and its economic patterns of response. Marketing satisfies these needs and wants through exchange processes and building long term relationships. Marketing blends art and applied science (such as behavioural sciences) and makes use of information technology.

The marketing orientation evolved from earlier orientations, namely, the production orientation, the product orientation and the selling orientation:

· Production. A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with a good certainly that consumer tastes will not rapidly alter (similar to the sales orientation).

· Product. A firm employing a product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of its own product. A firm would also assume that as long as its product was of a high standard, people would buy and consume the product.

· Selling. A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling and promotion of a particular product.

The main functions of marketing are:

1. Financing

2. Marketing-Information Management

3. Pricing

4. Product and Service Management

5. Promotion

6. Distribution

7. Selling

Financing. Budgeting for marketing activities, obtaining the necessary funds needed for operations, and providing financial assistance to customers so they can purchase the business products and service.

Marketing-Information Management.Managing marketing information helps you understand your customers' needs. You can gather information by reviewing published market research reports, asking your sales team for feedback or carrying out a survey using a market research firm. You should also monitor product review sites and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, where you can find information on consumers' needs and attitudes toward products.

Pricing. Setting the correct price for your product or service can be a challenge. If you price it too high, you might lose customers -- but if you price it too low you might be robbing yourself of profits. The "right" price normally comes through trial and error and doing some market research.

Product and Service Management.Once you've determined the target market and set the price of your product or service, the goal becomes to effectively manage the product or service. This involves listening to customers, responding to their wants and needs, and keeping your products and services fresh and up to date.

Promotion makes customers and prospects aware of your products and your company. Using promotional techniques, such as advertising, direct marketing, telemarketing or public relations, you can communicate product benefits and build preference for your company's products.

Distributionis about deciding how you'll get the goods or services you want to sell to the people who want to buy them. Having an idea for a product is great, but if you aren't able to get that product to the customers you aren't going to make money.

Selling.While we tend to think of selling and marketing as being closely linked, selling is last on the list of the seven functions of marketing. This is because selling can happen only after you've determined the wants and needs of your customer base and are able to respond with the right products at the right price point and time frame.

There are numerous types of marketing. Most used of them are:

§ Relationship marketing – a customer relationship management strategy designed to encourage strong, lasting customer connections to a brand. The goal is to generate repeat sales, encourage word-of-mouth promotion and gather customer information.

§ Internet-marketing, or online marketing, refers to advertising and marketing efforts that use the Web and email to drive direct sales via electronic commerce, in addition to sales leads from Web sites or emails.

§ Event marketing - a promotional strategy that involves face-to-face contact between companies and their customers at special events like concerts, fairs, and sporting events. Brands use event marketing entertainment (like shows, contests, or parties) to reach consumers through direct hand-to-hand sampling or interactive displays.

§ Global marketing – the process of adjusting a company's marketing strategies to adapt to conditions in other countries.

§ And many others.