Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. Marketing is used to create, keep and satisfy the customer. With the customer as the focus of its activities, it can be concluded that Marketing is one of the premier components of Business Management – the other being innovation.
History of marketing § Orientations or philosophies that inform marketing practice
A marketing orientation has been defined as a “philosophy of business management.” or “a corporate state of mind”or as an “organisation[al] culture” Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:
Concept
Marketing and Marketing Concepts are directly related.
*Needs: Something necessary for people to live a healthy, stable and safe life. When needs remain unfulfilled, there is a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as the need for food, water and shelter; or subjective and psychological, such as the need to belong to a family or social group and the need for self-esteem.
*Wants: Something that is desired, wished for or aspired to. Wants are not essential for basic survival and are often shaped by culture or peer-groups
*Demands: When needs and wants are backed by the ability to pay, they have the potential to become economic demands.
Product:-
A firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its own product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that, all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of a superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customers and their needs and desires derived from research and (or) intuition and understands consumers’ quality expectations and price they are willing to pay. For example, Sony Walkman and Apple iPod were innovative product designs that addressed consumers’ unmet needs. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practising a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and in arts marketing.
Sales:-
A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of the firm’s existing products, rather than determining new or unmet consumer needs or desires. Consequently, this entails simply selling existing products, using promotion and direct sales techniques to attain the highest sales possible. The sales orientation “is typically practised with unsought goods.” One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.
A 2011 meta analyses has found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson’s sales related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behaviour based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson’s role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).
Production
A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is “one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers… [and] is still useful in some situations.”
The marketing mix (the 4 Ps)
The four Ps, often referred to as the marketing mix or the marketing program, represent the basic tools which marketers can use to bring their products or services to market. They are the foundation of managerial marketing and the marketing plan typically devotes a section to each of these Ps.
The original marketing mix or the 4Ps
The traditional marketing mix refers to four broad levels of marketing decision, namely: product, price, promotion, and place.
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Product:-
- The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user’s needs and wants. The product element consists of product design, new product innovation, branding, packaging, labelling. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support. Branding, a key aspect of the product management, refers to the various methods of communicating a brand identity for the product, brand, or company.
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Pricing:-
- This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention or any sacrifices consumers make in order to acquire a product or service. The price is the cost that a consumer pays for a product—monetary or not. Methods of setting prices are in the domain of pricing science.
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Place (or distribution):-
- This refers to how the product gets to the customer; the distribution channels and intermediaries such as wholesalers and retailers who enable customers to access products or services in a convenient manner. This third P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.
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Promotion:-
- This includes all aspects of marketing communications; advertising, sales promotion, including promotional education, public relations, personal selling, product placement, branded entertainment, event marketing, trade shows and exhibition.
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Marketing environment:-