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The marketing concept

The term marketing concept pertains to the fundamental premise of modern marketing. This can be laid out as recognising consumer needs/wants, and making products that correlate with consumer desires.

Marketing orientations

An orientation, in the marketing context, relates to a perception or attitude a firm holds towards its product or service, essentially concerning consumers and end-users. There exist several common orientations:

Product orientation

A firm employing a product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of its own product, and not in necessarily ascertaining consumer desires. A firm would also assume that as long as its product was of a high standard, persons would buy and consume the product.

However, utilising a product orientation has a prime disadvantage of making a firm lose out to competitors, who may produce technologically superior goods that engender higher consumer demand and thus market share. A product orientation may perhaps work best in a monopolistic market form, due to the inherent high barriers to entry within a monopoly.

Sales orientation

A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of a particular product, and not determining new consumer desires as such. Consequently, this entails simply selling an already existing product, and using promotion techniques to attain the highest sales possible.

Such an orientation may suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a good that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

Production orientation

A firm focusing on a production orientation specialises in producing as much as possible of a given good. Thus, this signifies a firm exploiting economies of scale, until the is reached.

A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a good exists, coupled with a good certainty that consumer tastes do not rapidly alter (similar to the sales orientation).

Marketing orientation

The marketing orientation is perhaps the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It involves a firm essentially basing its marketing plans around the marketing concept, and thus forging products to suit new consumer tastes.

As an example, a firm would employ market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D to develop a good attuned to the revealed information, and then utilise promotion techniques to ensure persons know the good exists.

Four Ps

In the early 1960s, Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School identified a number of company performance actions that can influence the consumer decision to purchase goods or services. Borden suggested that all those actions of the company represented a “Marketing Mix”. Professor E. Jerome McCarthy, also at the Harvard Business School in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion.

• 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 scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.
• 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. Methods of setting prices optimally are in the domain of pricing science.
• Placement (or distribution): refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point-of-sale placement or retailing. 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.
• Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling. Branding refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix,^[4] which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan.

The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services.

Industrial or B2B marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. 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), suggests that one of the greatest limitations of the 4 Ps approach "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".

Product

Branding

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes products and services from competitive offerings. A brand represents the consumers' experience with an organization, product, or service. A brand is more than a name, design or symbol. Brand reflects personality of the company which is organizational culture.

A brand has also been defined as an identifiable entity that makes a specific value based on promises made and kept either actively or passively.

Branding means creating reference of certain products in mind.

Co-branding involves marketing activity involving two or more products.

Marketing communications

Marketing communications breaks down the strategies involved with marketing messages into categories based on the goals of each message. There are distinct stages in converting strangers to customers that govern the communication medium that should be used.

Advertising

• Paid form of public presentation and expressive promotion of ideas
• Aimed at masses
• Manufacturer may determine what goes into advertisement
• Pervasive and impersonal medium

Functions and advantages of successful advertising

• Task of the salesman made easier
• Maximize sales
• Publicity
• Brand building
• Create awareness
• Persuade buyers
• Introduction of new product
• Enable market leadership
• To face competition
• To inform changes
• To counteract to competitors advertisement
• To enhance goodwill

Objectives

• Maintain demand for well-known goods
• Introduce new and unknown goods
• Increase demand for well-known goods/products/services

Requirements of a good advertisement

The AIDA principle. Attention, Interest, Desire and Action

• Attract attention (awareness)
• Stimulate interest
• Create a desire
• Bring about action (to buy the product)

Eight steps in an advertising campaign

• Market research
• Setting out aims
• Budgeting
• Choice of media (television, newspaper/magazines, radio, web, outdoor)
• Choice of actors and players (New Trend)
• Design and wording
• Co-ordination
• Test results

Personal sales

Oral presentation given by a salesperson who approaches individuals or a group of potential customers:

• Live, interactive relationship
• Personal interest
• Attention and response
• Interesting presentation
• Clear and thorough.

Sales promotion

Short-term incentives to encourage buying of products:

• Instant appeal
• Anxiety to sell

An example is coupons or a sale. People are given an incentive to buy, but this does not build customer loyalty or encourage future repeat buys. A major drawback of sales promotion is that it is easily copied by competition. It cannot be used as a sustainable source of differentiation.

Marketing Public Relations (MPR)

• Stimulation of demand through press release giving a favourable report to a product
• Higher degree of credibility
• Effectively news
• Boosts enterprise's image

Customer focus

Many companies today have a customer focus (or market orientation). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.^[5]

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA^[6] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus.

The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.

The four elements of the SIVA model are:

1. Solution: How appropriate is the solution to the customer's problem/need?
2. Information: Does the customer know about the solution? If so, how and from whom do they know enough to let them make a buying decision?
3. Value: Does the customer know the value of the transaction, what it will cost, what are the benefits, what might they have to sacrifice, what will be their reward?
4. Access: Where can the customer find the solution? How easily/locally/remotely can they buy it and take delivery?

This model was proposed by Chekitan Dev and Don Schultz in the Marketing Management Journal of the American Marketing Association, and presented by them in Market Leader, the journal of the Marketing Society in the UK.

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 profitable market segment(s) exist for the innovation. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. 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. It is claimed that if Thomas Edison depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs. Many firms, such as research and development focused companies, successfully focus on product innovation. Many purists doubt whether this is really a form of marketing orientation at all, because of the ex post status of consumer research. Some even question whether it is marketing.

• 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).
• Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.
• A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called Internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, affiliate marketing, or online marketing. It tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one 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, custom media and reality marketing.
• The use of herd behavior in marketing.

The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior.^[7] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts."

Marketing is also used to promote business' products and is a great way to promote the business.

Other recent studies on the "power of social influence" include an "artificial music market in which some 14,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs" (Columbia University, New York); a Japanese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on "sales data from department stores and research companies;" a Massachusetts company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about "which products are popular with like-minded consumers" (e.g., Amazon, eBay).

Areas of marketing specialization

• agricultural marketing
• advertising and branding
• communications
• CRM, Customer Relationship Management
• database marketing
• professional selling
• direct marketing
• event organization
• experiential marketing
• global marketing
• guerilla marketing
• international marketing
• internet marketing
• industrial marketing
• market research
• marketing strategy
• marketing plan
• political marketing
• product marketing
• proximity marketing
• public marketing
• public relations
• retailing
• search engine marketing
• segmentation
• social media marketing
• sponsorship
• strategic management
• wholesale marketing

See also

Advertising Research AIDA Article marketing Borderless Selling Brand Brand orientation Branded content Cause marketing Copywriting Customer relationship management Customer Segmentation Digital marketing Demand generation Early adopter Engagement marketing Evangelism marketing

Fear, uncertainty, doubt Integrated Marketing Communications LGBT marketing Macromarketing Market Segmentation Marketeer Marketing collateral Marketing co-operation Marketing Mix Marketing effectiveness Merchandising Mobile Marketing Multichannel Marketing Predictive analytics

Product marketing Reality marketing Referral marketing Return on marketing investment Sales techniques SEO Copywriting Services Sex in advertising Senior media creative Technical marketing* Trade marketing Value Visual brand language Wikipedia:Books has a book on: Marketing

Related lists

See List of marketing topics for an extensive list of the marketing articles.

• List of management topics
• List of human resource management topics
• List of economics topics
• List of finance topics
• List of accounting topics
• List of information technology management topics
• List of production topics
• List of business law topics
• List of international trade topics
• List of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
• List of business theorists

References

External links

Look up marketing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Marketing