What is Marketing? Essay

Many people think of marketing is only advertising and selling… although they are important they are only the tip of the marketing iceberg

There are many ways to define ‘marketing’. Kotler and Armstrong (2008) defined marketing as an exchange system which fulfill the needs and wants of individuals. While ( Lancaster and Withey, 2007) also stated that marketing is a management which foresees and satisfies the consumer needs timely. Nowadays, people tend to define marketing as the development along with the industrial revolution during 18th and 19th centuries, which was a period of rapid fundamental social change driven by scientific innovation and technology. According to (Pride and Ferrell, 2008; Cooper and Argyris, 1998), there are three orientation era cross between the 18th till 20th centuries, the production orientation era, which emphasise on distribution of production and cost; sales orientation era, which focuses on advertising, communication and branding, and lastly marketing orientation era, which  concentrates on competitors.

       Marketing is managing cost- effective consumer relationships. (Kotler and amstrong, 2009) Nowadays, marketing does not just focus on products, it is the satisfaction off customers matters the most. For instance, the most successful company rely on the returning purchase of the customer, and so the common goal for the company is to deliver long term satisfaction to the consumer but not ‘deceiving them’ in a short run. (Jobber, 2001; Kotler and amstrong, 2009)Besides that, creating an additional value to attract new customer is also very important in building a commercial customer relationships, as Drucker (2001) state that, the basic functions of the marketing is to hold and fascinate the consumer at profit. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to make researches on customer case studies so as to understand their needs, which is different from the old-traditional way of just selling and advertising. (Drucker, 2001) Hence, advertising has become the only part of tools for building customer relationships through marketing process.

        There are five steps in the marketing process. (Huber, 2006; Kotler and Armstrong, 2008) The first one is marketplace and customer needs understanding. This step focuses on human needs, market offering and customer satisfaction. According to Maslow (1954), hierarchy  of needs, it include basic needs of food and shelter, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs and the lastly self-actualisation. By understanding consumer needs and wants, marketer can offer a specific services and product into the market which is required by the consumer. By prioritising their needs, company will receive recognition from the public, as well as to help marketer in frame up their consumer relationships.

        Next is the customer-driven marketing strategic designed. In this section, marketer should be very clear that which group of customers are they serving, and what more they can do to serve them better.(Kotler and Armstrong, 2009) So the first thing that marketer need to do is market segmentation. (Huber, 2006) Dividing the market into several groups will make it easier for marketer to search target. After decided a target market, it is necessary to have a proposition value in the market, which is very important as it helps to differentiate yourself from other company, like Samsung anycall. (Berkowitz, et al., 2000)  On the other hand, there are five concepts from marketing management to help build a commercial relationship with target market. (Kotler and Armstrong, 2008; Sahaf, 2008) First is the production concept, which emphasise on large scale and lower cost. Second is the product concept, which focuses on product quality, selling concept, such as ideas to tempt the customers into buying by offering some discounts or promotion. The other concept is the marketing concept, which focuses on knowing the needs and wants of target consumer and delivering value to them. Lastly is the societal marketing concept, a concept which focuses on customer and society’s interest in long run apart from just considering the needs and wants of the customers.

        After deciding what the target customer is, according to (Kolter, P.et al., 2006, 2009; Lancaster and Reynolds, 2002), it is necessary to implement the marketing strategies by using 4ps. It includes product, price, place and promotion. (McDaniel and Darden, 1987) The company must combine all the 4ps into a comprehensive marketing program so as to deliver and communicate with the consumer timely. When all the processes have been gone through, it is time to manage the customer relationship effectively. The firm can understand their customers better through marketing research then inculcate them a superior customer value and delivered them customer satisfaction profitably. Under this management, company can produces highly satisfied consumers who stay loyal and willing to buy more, which means that, the company will gain return in a long-run and this will help them to expand their business as well. (Jobber, 2001, 2007)

        As a conclusion, marketing has been changed from ‘inward looking’ discipline era, which always focus on the organisation produced to the ‘outward looking’ discipline era, which bring a greater understanding of market and consumer into the organisation. (Middleton, V. T.C. et al., 2009)Although market orientation has become a very common knowledge in the oganisation nowadays, there are still some parts of oganisation- especially the small and medium enterprises remain in the period of production or sale orientation because of the lack of understanding of marketing. But cannot deny that, marketing is still going to be changed and as Kotler and Armstrong (2008, 2009) state that, marketing process will become the most important action before a product enter into the market whatever the companies is small or big.