Meaning, concept and needs for marketing

MEANING, CONCEPT AND NEEDS FOR MARKETING

Meaning of Market

  • Market is a derivative of Latin word 'marcatus' meaning merchandise, wares, traffic, trade or place where business is conducted.
  • It may mean and include a place as an open space (in village) or a larger building where actual buying and selling takes place.
  • An assembly or a meeting together of people for their private purchases and sale of goods at a stated time and place e.g. village fairs or periodical markets.
  • An area of operation or geographical or economic extent of commercial demand for commodities. The course of commercial activity by which exchange of commodities is affected. It may mean all inhabitants of an area.

Marketing

  • American committee on marketing has defined marketing from the following three viewpoints
    • Legalistic view: Marketing includes all activities, which are concerned with effecting changes in ownership and possession of goods and services.
    • Economic view: Marketing is that part of economics, which deals with the creation of time, place and possession utilities.
    • Descriptive view: Marketing is the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from the producer to the final user or consumer.
  • Philip Kotler has defined, "Marketing, as the set of human activities directed at facilitating and consummating exchanges".
    • In simple words, it is defined that the marketing is the process of providing the right product in the right place at the right price and at the right time.

Concepts of marketing

  • Sales concept and marketing concept are clearly distinct from each other.

Sales concept

  • Starts with the firm's existing products and considers the task as one of using selling and promotion to stimulate a profitable sales.

Marketing concept

    • Starts with firm's existing and potential consumers and their needs; it plans a coordinated set of products and programmes to serve these needs; and it hopes to build its profits on creating meaningful value satisfactions.
    • In the words of Philip Kotler, the marketing concept is a customer orientation backed by integrated marketing aimed at generating customer satisfaction and long-run customer welfare as the key to satisfying organizational goals.
    • Integrated marketing means an intelligent adaptation and coordination of four P's viz., Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
      • Price should be made consistent with quality.
      • The channels of distribution made consistent with price and quality
      • The promotion made consistent with channels, price and product quality.
    • To achieve this type of integration, many companies have created product managers and market managers.

Based on the new concept of marketing, the marketing process can be illustrated below:

  • Here, the marketing process starts with the consumer and ends, with the consumer.
  • After knowing consumer needs and wants, appropriate products and services are developed and demand for these products and services is stimulated and created by implementing suitable promotional polices.
  • Then the said demand is satisfied through an optimum distribution strategy.
  • Finally, by organizing appropriate marketing information system, feedback is collected and in the light of this information, appropriate changes are initiated so as to adopt the marketing elements to the changing situation in the market place.

Needs for marketing

  • In developing countries, it is the least developed part of the economy probably, because of the strong, pervasive prejudice against the middleman.
  • Marketing would make the producers capable of producing marketable products by providing them with standards, with quality demands and with specifications for their products.
  • Marketing is the most easily accessible, "multiplier" of managers and entrepreneurs in an "underdeveloped" growth area and they are the critical needs of these countries.
  • Marketing can covert latent demand into effective demand. It cannot by itself, create purchasing power, but it can uncover and channel all the purchasing power that exists. So it can create conditions for higher level of economic activity in the developing countries.
  • Marketing in a developing country is the 'developer of standards' for product and services as well as of conduct, integrity, reliability, foresight and of concern for the basic long-range impact of decisions on the customer, supplier, economy and the society.
  • Whether the economy developed or developing is immaterial as far as marketing is concerned because the basic functions of marketing (buying, selling, transporting , storing, grading, financing, risk bearing and marketing information ) and the utilities (Time, Place and possession utilities) created by them are a necessity for any social system.
  • Marketing provides wide employment opportunity.
Last modified: Saturday, 2 June 2012, 7:00 AM