Understanding the concept of marketing
Marketing is a process through which companies communicate, promote, exchange and deliver offerings which have value for its target clients, customers, and the society as a whole. In a business environment, Marketing is the tool used by marketers to reach out to consumers, make them knowledgeable of the various specifications, features and benefits of their product or service, appeal to the masses, and in this way, stay ahead of competitors. The purpose of marketing, on a very basic level, is to link two groups together: people who have a problem or a want i.e. consumers with people who have a solution to the problem or a product to satisfy the wants, i.e. producers.
In simple words, marketing can be described as a tool that is used for effective selling of a product or service. However, there is a lot more to marketing than just that. Marketing consists of a set of activities that are designed keeping the needs of the society in mind. These activities revolve around the four P’s of marketing: product, place, promotion, and price.
The primary marketing process includes:
- Thinking up of new and innovative product ideas
- Conducting surveys
- Selecting an appropriate target audience
- Planning a budget
- Developing effective promotion strategies
- Interacting with existing and potential consumers
Difference between marketing and sales
Often people confuse marketing with sales. They have the concept that marketing is only about advertising and selling of a company’s products. This concept is wrong. Marketing is not just about making consumers buy your products. In fact, marketing includes everything that businesses do (and ought to do) in order to acquire customers and maintain positive, long term relations with them. Marketing is about companies trying to make a place in the hearts of consumers, even after the buying-selling transaction has been completed.
Marketing goes a long way beyond sales. It is a very elaborate concept that includes very small things which hold a lot of significance. For example, writing a thank you letter to a client, promptly returning a customer’s call and apologizing to a consumer on a late delivery. The ultimate aim of marketing is to satisfy customers and fulfilling their needs.
Further Reading
- An empirical comparison of published replication research in accounting, economics, finance, management, and marketing – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
- Comparing the publication process in accounting, economics, finance, management, marketing, psychology, and the natural sciences – meridian.allenpress.com [PDF]
- Big data, computational science, economics, finance, marketing, management, and psychology: connections – www.mdpi.com [PDF]
- Use of online information resources by RMIT University economics, finance, and marketing students participating in a cooperative education program – www.tandfonline.com [PDF]
- The marketing/finance interface: two divergent and complementary views of the firm – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
- Financing, managing, and marketing recreation and park resources. – www.cabdirect.org [PDF]
- Austrian economics, neoclassical economics, marketing, and finance – link.springer.com [PDF]
- Data mining in economics, finance, and marketing – link.springer.com [PDF]
