What Is Marketing? Marketing is the business function that identifies customer needs and wants, determines which target markets the organization can serve best, and designs appropriate products, services, and programs to serve these markets. The goal of marketing is to create customer satisfaction profitably by building value-laden relationships with important customers. The marketing department cannot accomplish this goal by itself. It must team up closely with other departments in the company and partner with other organizations throughout its entire value-delivery system to provide superior value to customers. «In a truly great marketing organization, you can't tell who's in the marketing department. Everyone in the organization has to make decisions based on the impact on the customer».
Although marketing is all around us and we all need to know something about it, most people are surprised to find out that marketing is so widely used. Marketing is used not only by manufacturing companies, wholesalers, and retailers but by all kinds of individuals and organizations. Lawyers, accountants, and doctors use marketing to manage demand for their services. So do hospitals, museums, and performing-arts groups. No politician can get the needed votes and no resort the needed tourists without developing and implementing marketing plans.
People at all levels of these organizations need to know how to define and segment a market and to develop need-satisfying products and services for chosen target markets. They must know how to price their offerings to make them attractive and affordable and how to choose middlemen to make their products available to customers. And they need to know how to advertise and promote products so that customers will know about and want them.
Because someone is always trying to sell us something, we need to recognize the methods they use. And when students enter the job market, they must conduct «marketing research» to find the best opportunities and develop the best ways to «market» themselves to prospective employers. Many students will start their careers with marketing jobs in salesforces, in retailing, in advertising, in research, or in one of a dozen other marketing areas.
What does the term marketing mean? Many people mistakenly think of marketing only as selling and promotion.
Therefore, many people are surprised to learn that selling is only one of several marketing functions — and often not the most important one. If the marketer does a good job of identifying consumer needs, developing good products, and pricing, distributing, and promoting them effectively, these goods will sell very easily.
Everyone knows something about «hot» products to which consumers have flocked in droves. «The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.»
This does not mean that selling and promotion are unimportant, but rather that they are part of a larger «marketing mix» — a set of marketing tools that work together to affect the marketplace. So marketing can be defined as a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.
The official American Marketing Association definition of marketing is:
Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.
First, marketing is vie as a process of planning and executing, which suggests that marker is a managerial process. Second, this managerial process involves conception (i. e., thinking of or deciding what idea, goods or service to market) and the pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services. Third, the managerial process is directed at creating exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.
Marketing is part of our society. Marketing has a cultural influence on society. As a cultural phenomenon it can help shape our wants and desires. Marketing is also important to an organization because it helps that organization create successful exchange relationships with potential buyers. For this to take place, the right products must first be produced and then correctly distributed, promoted, and priced. Note that these tasks relate to our definition of marketing.
Marketing is important to each of us because it allows us to specialize. To better appreciate this, imagine a society in which each person must hunt, cook, and make his or her own clothing, shelter, and tools. Predictably, not everyone in this society would be equally proficient at all these activities. In fact, if the best hunter concentrated on hunting, the best toolmaker on making tools, and soon, then the society could create a higher level of wealth. However, this system would only work if everyone could exchange their surpluses for the goods and services they needed. By establishing a marketing system, people are given the freedom to specialize.
