Marketing

Overview

Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or manufacturer. Products can be marketed to other businesses (B2B) or directly to consumers (B2C). Sometimes tasks are contracted to dedicated marketing firms, like a media, market research, or advertising agency. Sometimes, a trade association or government agency (such as the Agricultural Marketing Service) advertises on behalf of an entire industry or locality, often a specific type of food (e.g. Got Milk?), food from a specific area, or a city or region as a tourism destination. Market orientations are philosophies concerning the factors that should go into market planning. The marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold, including the channels that will be used to advertise the product, is affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market research, and the characteristics of the product's target market. Once these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods of promoting the product, including use of coupons and other price inducements.

Definition

Marketing is currently defined by the American Marketing Association (AMA) as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large". However, the definition of marketing has evolved over the years. The AMA reviews this definition and its definition for "marketing research" every three years. The interests of "society at large" were added into the definition in 2008. The development of the definition may be seen by comparing the 2008 definition with the AMA's 1935 version: "Marketing is the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods, and services from producers to consumers". The newer definition highlights the increased prominence of other stakeholders in the new conception of marketing.

Recent definitions of marketing place more emphasis on the consumer relationship, as opposed to a pure exchange process. For instance, prolific marketing author and educator, Philip Kotler has evolved his definition of marketing. In 1980, he defined marketing as "satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process", and in 2018 defined it as "the process by which companies engage customers, build strong customer relationships, and create customer value in order to capture value from customers in return". A related definition, from the sales process engineering perspective, defines marketing as "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction". Some definitions of marketing highlight marketing's ability to produce value to shareholders of the firm as well. In this context, marketing can be defined as "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage". For instance, the Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing from a customer-centric perspective, focusing on "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". In the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling, and even today many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve the use of the creative arts. However, because marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science. Marketing science has developed a concrete process that can be followed to create a marketing plan.

Concept

The "marketing concept" proposes that to complete its organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of potential consumers and satisfy them more effectively than its competitors. This concept originated from Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations but would not become widely used until nearly 200 years later. Marketing and Marketing Concepts are directly related. Given the centrality of customer needs, and wants in marketing, a rich understanding of these concepts is essential:

Needs: Something necessary for people to live a healthy, stable and safe life. When needs remain unfulfilled, there is a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as the need for food, water, and shelter; or subjective and psychological, such as the need to belong to a family or social group and the need for self-esteem. Wants: Something that is desired, wished for or aspired to. Wants are not essential for basic survival and are often shaped by culture or peer-groups. Demands: When needs and wants are backed by the ability to pay, they have the potential to become economic demands. Marketing research, conducted for the purpose of new product development or product improvement, is often concerned with identifying the consumer's unmet needs. Customer needs are central to market segmentation which is concerned with dividing markets into distinct groups of buyers on the basis of "distinct needs, characteristics, or behaviors who might require separate products or marketing mixes". Needs-based segmentation (also known as benefit segmentation) "places the customers' desires at the forefront of how a company designs and markets products or services". Although needs-based segmentation is difficult to do in practice, it has been proved to be one of the most effective ways to segment a market. In addition, a great deal of advertising and promotion is designed to show how a given product's benefits meet the customer's needs, wants or expectations in a unique way.

B2B and B2C marketing

The two major segments of marketing are business-to-business (B2B) marketing and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing.

B2B marketing

B2B (business-to-business) marketing refers to any marketing strategy or content that is geared towards a business or organization. Any company that sells products or services to other businesses or organizations (vs. consumers) typically uses B2B marketing strategies. The 7 P's of B2B marketing are product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence. Some of the trends in B2B marketing include content such as podcasts, videos, and social media marketing campaigns. Examples of products sold through B2B marketing include:

Major equipment Accessory equipment Raw materials Component parts Processed materials Supplies Venues Business services The four major categories of B2B product purchasers are:

Producers - use products sold by B2B marketing to make their own goods (e.g.: Mattel buying plastics to make toys) Resellers - buy B2B products to sell through retail or wholesale establishments (e.g.: Walmart buying vacuums to sell in stores) Governments - buy B2B products for use in government projects (e.g.: purchasing weather monitoring equipment for a wastewater treatment plant) Institutions - use B2B products to continue operation (e.g.: schools buying printers for office use)

B2C marketing

Business-to-consumer marketing, or B2C marketing, refers to the tactics and strategies in which a company promotes its products and services to individual people. Traditionally, this could refer to individuals shopping for personal products in a broad sense. More recently the term B2C refers to the online selling of consumer products. B2C marketing focuses on appealing directly to consumers. It often uses tailored emotional marketing strategies towards individuals.

C2B marketing

Consumer-to-business marketing or C2B marketing is a business model where the end consumers create products and services which are consumed by businesses and organizations. It is diametrically opposed to the popular concept of B2C or business-to-consumer where the companies make goods and services available to the end consumers. In this type of business model, businesses profit from consumers' willingness to name their own price or contribute data or marketing to the company, while consumers benefit from flexibility, direct payment, or free or reduced-price products and services. One of the major benefit of this type of business model is that it offers a company a competitive advantage in the market.

C2C marketing

Customer to customer marketing or C2C marketing represents a market environment where one customer purchases goods from another customer using a third-party business or platform to facilitate the transaction. C2C companies are a new type of model that has emerged with e-commerce technology and the sharing economy.

Differences in B2B and B2C marketing

The different goals of B2B and B2C marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets. The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, number of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.

Demand: B2B demand is derived because businesses buy products based on how much demand there is for the final consumer product. Businesses buy products based on customer's wants and needs. B2C demand is primarily because customers buy products based on their own wants and needs. Purchasing volume: Businesses buy products in large volumes to distribute to consumers. Consumers buy products in smaller volumes suitable for personal use. Number of customers: There are relatively fewer businesses to market to than direct consumers. Customer concentration: Businesses that specialize in a particular market tend to be geographically concentrated while customers that buy products from these businesses are not concentrated. Distribution: B2B products pass directly from the producer of the product to the business while B2C products may additionally go through a wholesaler or retailer. Buying nature: B2B purchasing is a formal process done by professional buyers and sellers, while B2C purchasing is informal. Buying influences: B2B purchasing is influenced by multiple people in various departments such as quality control, accounting, and logistics while B2C marketing is only influenced by the person making the purchase and possibly a few others. Negotiations: In B2B marketing, negotiating for lower prices or added benefits is commonly accepted while in B2C marketing (particularly in Western cultures) prices are fixed. Reciprocity: Businesses tend to buy from businesses they sell to. For example, a business that sells printer ink is more likely to buy office chairs from a supplier that buys the business's printer ink. In B2C marketing, this does not occur because consumers are not also selling products. Leasing: Businesses tend to lease expensive items while consumers tend to save up to buy expensive items. Promotional methods: In B2B marketing, the most common promotional method is personal selling. B2C marketing mostly uses sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and social media.

Marketing management orientations

A marketing orientation has been defined as a "philosophy of business management", "a corporate state of mind", or an "organizational culture". Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific concepts that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:

Product concept: mainly concerned with the quality of its product. It has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, except for haute couture and arts marketing. Production concept: specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. It dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, yet can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations". Selling concept: focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants primarily through promotion and direct sales techniques, largely for "unsought goods" in industrial companies. A 2011 meta-analysis found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales-related knowledge (market segments, presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness, role clarity, cognitive aptitude, motivation and interest in a sales role). Marketing concept: This is the most common concept used in contemporary marketing, and is a customer-centric approach based on products that suit new consumer tastes. These firms engage in extensive market research, use R&D (Research & Development), and then use promotion techniques. The marketing orientation includes: Customer orientation: A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern. Organizational orientation: The marketing department is of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from the marketing department is used to guide the actions of a company's other departments. A marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires. The production department would then start to manufacture the product. The finance department may oppose required capital expenditures since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization. Societal marketing concept: Social responsibility that goes beyond satisfying customers and providing superior value embraces societal stakeholders such as employees, customers, and local communities. Companies that adopt this perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting and publish financial, social and environmental impact reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.

Marketing plan

The area of marketing planning involves forging a plan for a firm's marketing activities. A marketing plan can also pertain to a specific product, the introduction of a new product, the revision of current marketing strategies for existing products, as well as an organisation's overall marketing strategy. The plan is created to accomplish specific marketing objectives, outlining a company's advertising and marketing efforts for a given period, describing the current marketing position of a business, and discussing the target market and marketing mix to be used to achieve marketing goals. An organization's marketing planning process is derived from its overall business strategy. Marketing plans start by identifying customer needs through market research and how the business can satisfy these needs. The marketing plan also shows what actions will be taken and what resources will be used to achieve the planned objectives. Marketing objectives are typically broad-based in nature, and pertain to the general vision of the firm in the short, medium or long-term. As an example, if one pictures a group of companies (or a conglomerate), the objective might be to increase the group's sales by 25% over a ten-year period.

The marketing mix

A marketing mix is a foundational tool used to guide decision making in marketing. The marketing mix represents the basic tools that marketers can use to bring their products or services to the market. They are the foundation of managerial marketing and the marketing plan typically devotes a section to the marketing mix.