After reading this blog post, you should be able to define marketing by understanding:
1. The definition of the word marketing
2. Need, Wants and Demands
3. Products and Services
4. Value and Satisfaktion
Introduktion
Many large and small organizations seek success in their business. Many factors contributes to making a business successful I could mention a clear strategy, fantastic product, empowered people, dedication just to mention some.
However, todays successful companies at all levels have one thing in common, no matter who they are and what they bring to the market, that is a strong customer focus and heavily committed to marketing, this means that the successfully companies in today’s market share an absolute dedication to sensing, serving and satisfying the needs of customers in well-defined target markets.
These companies know that if they take care of their customers, market share and profits will follow.
What does marketing mean?
Many companies fail because people think of marketing as only selling or advertising. But marketing combines many activities such as marketing research, strategy, product development, distribution, pricing, advertising, personal selling and many others.
But no matter which marketing activity you are working on the purpose is always about creating customer value and satisfaction, that is the very heart of modern marketing thinking and practice.
In business there is turnover which is nice, but that does not pay the bills so profit is much more important, so marketing is also about delivering customer satisfaction at a profit.
A way to do this is by having the following goals for your marketing.
1. Attract new customers by promising superior value.
2. Keep current customers by delivering satisfaction.
I will get back to value and satisfaction later in this blog post.
So marketing is not to be understood in the old sense of making a sale – selling – but in the new sense of satisfying customer needs.
This means that selling and advertising are only the tip of the marketing iceberg.
Peter Drucker, a leading management thinker, has put it this way:
” The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous”
The best way to make this happen is to understand the customer so well that the product or service fits and sells itself.
This bring us back to the marketing activities, I did mention market research was one of the marketing activities, so the purpose when performing the marketing research is to learn as much as possible about the customer’s needs, wants and demand.
The reason for this will I get more into in the following paragraph.
Need, Wants and Demand
The most basic concept underlying marketing is that of human needs, a human need is a state of felt deprivation.
These needs are not invented by marketers, they are basic part of the human make-up, the needs include physical needs (e.g. for food and cloths), social needs (e.g. belonging and affection) and individual needs (e.g. for knowledge)
When a need is not satisfied, a person will do one of two things:
1. look for an object or service that will satisfy it; or
2. try to reduce the need.
Human wants are the form taken by human needs as they are shaped by culture and individual personality, the need for food to take an example is based on which kind of food the person eat (culture)
So wants are described in terms of objects that will satisfy needs.
As people are exposed to more objects that arouse their interest and desire, producers try to provide more want-satisfying products and services.
People have narrow, basic needs (e.g. for food or shelter), but almost unlimited want. However, they also have limited resources. Which means that they will want to choose the products that provide the most satisfaction for the money?
Outstanding marketing companies go to great lengths to learn about and understand their customers needs, wants and demands.
Understanding customer needs, wants and demands in detail provides important input for designing the best marketing strategies, this makes it possible to deliverer satisfaction at a profit.
Products and Services
People satisfy their needs and wants with products. A product is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy need or want, which mean it is not only the physical product, anything capable of satisfying a need can be called a product (e.g. service in the form of a good support could be what makes people buy a specific product, because it is an important need)
Many sellers make the mistake of paying more attention to the physical products they offer than to the benefits produced by these products.
These sellers may suffer from marketing myopia, because they are so taken with their products that they focus only on existing wants and lose sight of understanding customer needs.
Value, Satisfaction and Quality
I did mention earlier in this post that the goal of your marketing should be the following two goals:
1. Attract new customers by promising superior value.
2. Keep current customers by delivering satisfaction.
However in order to do this you need to understand what the words value and satisfaction means.
Customer value means the consumer´s assessment of the product´s overall capacity to satisfy his or her needs.
In order to make it clear to the customer what they get from buying a specific product it is important that the seller makes the winnings or profit very clear to the customer; it is not enough just to talk about the properties and benefits.
Customer satisfaction means the extent to which a product´s perceived performances matches a buyer’s expectation. If the product´s performance falls short of expectation, the buyer is dissatisfied. If performance matches or exceeds expectations the buyer is satisfied or delighted.
To sum it all up marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.
Latest posts by Peter Junker (Posts)
- Understanding marketing - November 29, 2014