Introduction to Marketing Management
The marketing definition As a student of marketing, one will ask a question sooner or later. ¡°What is marketing? ... The problem is that most people believe they know what marketing is when they don¡¯t. The reason for this is that we are all involved in marketing, but we cannot feel and touch it. Therefore, how can we clearly define Marketing? This essay will define the marketing, discuss the marketing concept and trace its emergence as a key business function, and then show you what implications does its adoption have with regard to the successful integration of other organizational functions. There is not only one definition for marketing, because marketing have many expressions. To exemplify, the Charrered Institute of Marketing defines that ¡°Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. ... 3) Also, the American Marketing Association gives a more technical definition, which is that ¡°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. ... 3) The second definition is more correct although it is longer than the first one, because the first definition highlights ¡®profit¡¯, whereas marketing principles are useful in not-for-profit organizations. ... The development of marketing The evolution process of marketing has a long history, when people began to produce crops or goods surplus to their own needs and then to barter them for other things they wanted, it is the earliest marketing, particularly selling and advertising, was around as long as trade itself, but since the industrial revolution, the mass production came out, the situation changed a little, but it was still different from the marketing today. Because in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, goods were sufficiently scarce and competition underdeveloped, the producers did not really need marketing. ... But it did not last for long, when in the 1960s and 1970s, the marketing turned up and gradually instead of the selling, which referred to the ¡®marketing orientation¡¯. This meant that organizations began to move away from a ¡®sell what we can make¡¯ type of thinking, in which ¡®marketing¡¯ was at best a peripheral activity, towards a ¡®find out what the customer wants and then we will make it¡¯ type of market driven philosophy. ... 1940-1950s 1950-1960s Early1990s Marketing Defining what customers want-buyer¡¯s needs Integrated marketingDefining needs in advance of production Profit through customer satisfaction and loyalty Let¡¯s find out if they want it in black, and if they would pay a bit more for it 1960sonwards 1970sonwards mid-1990sonwards Table1 (Frances Brassington&Stephen Pettitt, 2000) The figure above shows the summary of Marketing development history and all the four business orientations. Contrast the four business concepts and emphasis the marketing concept The production concept, which is one of the oldest concepts in business, is the philosophy that consumers will favor products that are available and highly affordable and that management should therefore focus on improving production and distribution efficiency.