Marketing From My View Point!

There are a lot of definitions of Marketing:

1/ American Marketing Association Definition :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.

2/ American Heritage Dictionary's Definition of Marketing :The commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer.

3/ Merriam Webster's Marketing Definition: the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or servicean aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer

4/ Marketing Definition From MSN Encarta Dictionary:the business activity of presenting products or services to potential customers in such a way as to make them eager to buy. Marketing includes such matters as the pricing and packaging of the product and the creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns.

So "The process", "functions involved", "process or technique", "an aggregate", "the business activity", these all get to the heart of the definition of marketing.

As a process, there are certain foundations of marketing that will never become obsolete. We still have products, services, and ideas to sell at some price. We deliver to our customers via some means of distribution. We promote and we advertise. Those are the basics. Those basics still exist and always will.

*The role of marketing* :

Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying consumer requirements profitably

1/ Identifying - This will involve answering questions such as 'How do we find out what the consumer's requirements are?' and 'How do we keep in touch with their thoughts and feelings and perceptions about our good or service. This is a key purpose of market research.

2/ Anticipating - Consumer requirements change all the time. For example, as people become richer they may seek a greater variety of goods and services. Anticipation involves looking at the future as well as at the present. What will be the Next Best Thing (NBT) that people will require tomorrow.

3/ Satisfying - Consumers want their requirements to be met. They seek particular benefits. They want the right goods, at the right price, at the right time in the right place.

4/ Profitability - Marketing also involves making a margin of profit. An organisation that fails to make a profit will have nothing to plough back into the future. Without the resources to put into ongoing marketing activities, it will not be able to identify, anticipate or satisfy

=>Marketing collects and analyses data on markets and consumers / customers, and then uses this information to guide business decisions as to which products they should produce and the best methods to promote them.

E.g:

[1] A customer will approach a manufacturer (or a number of manufacturers) with the requirements of a product. It is likely that the customer has a good idea of the requirements of the product so the role of marketing is likely to be reduced to the role of advertising your companies services.

[2] With no one particular customer to provide the requirements, an analysis of the existing marketplace and talking with potential customers can determine what the requirements of a product should be and try and find some niche or opening for a new product to occupy. This implies that the organisation must do extensive market research in order to determine what requirements the product must satisfy. There is no point developing a product, no matter how well engineered, if there is no market for it. The marketing department will therefore