Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association The American Marketing Association is a professional association for marketers. As of 2008 it had approximately 40,000 members. There are collegiate chapters on 250 campuses 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. ^[1] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing The Chartered Institute of Marketing UK is a professional marketing body based in UK with over 50,000 members worldwide. It is based in Cookham near Maidenhead, which is the world's largest marketing body, defines marketing as "The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably."^[2]

Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry in the past, which included advertising Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distribution Distribution is one of the four elements of marketing mix. An organization or set of organizations (go-betweens) involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user and selling A sale is the pinnacle activity involved in selling products or services in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity. However, because marketing makes extensive use of social sciences The social sciences comprise academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups, animals and individuals including anthropology, archeology, communication studies, cultural studies, demography, economics, human geography, history, linguistics, media studies, political science, psychology, social work, and sociology, psychology Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and often scientific, study of human/animal mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although it often does so less prominently than other, sociology Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that uses systematic methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, sometimes with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Its subject matter ranges from the micro level of face-, mathematics Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns.They formulate new conjectures and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions, economics Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία from οἶκος (oikos, "house") + νόμος (nomos, "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)". Current economic, anthropology Anthropology is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time. Anthropology has its intellectual origins in both the natural sciences, and the humanities. Its basic questions concern, "What defines Homo sapiens?" "Who are the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens?" "What are our physical traits?" "How do and neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Such studies span the structure, function, evolutionary history, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, informatics, computational neuroscience and pathology of the nervous system, the profession is now widely recognised a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programmes. The overall process starts with marketing research and goes through market segmentation A market segment is a group of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product and/or service needs. A true market segment meets all of the following criteria: it is distinct from other segments , it is homogeneous within the segment (exhibits common needs); it responds similarly to a market, business planning and execution, ending with pre and post-sales promotional activities. It is also related to many of the creative Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. Creativity is fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight. An alternative conception of creativeness is that it is simply the act of making something new arts. The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture.

Seen from a systems point of view, sales process engineering Sales process engineering has been described as “the systematic application of scientific and mathematical principles to achieve the practical goals of a particular sales process". Selden pointed out that in this context, sales referred to the output of a process involving a variety of functions across an organization, and not that of a “ views marketing as a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions^[3], whose methods can be improved using a variety of relatively new approaches.

The marketing concept

The term marketing concept pertains to the fundamental premise of modern marketing. This can be laid out as recognising consumer needs/wants, and making products that correlate with consumer desires.

Marketing orientations

An orientation, in the marketing context, relates to a perception or attitude a firm holds towards its product or service, essentially concerning consumers and end-users. There exist several common orientations:

Product orientation

A firm employing a product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of its own product, and not in necessarily ascertaining consumer Consumer is a broad label that refers to any individuals or households that use goods and services generated within the economy. The concept of a consumer is used in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary desires. A firm would also assume that as long as its product was of a high standard, persons would buy and consume the product.

However, utilising a product orientation has a prime disadvantage of making a firm lose out to competitors, who may produce technologically superior goods that engender higher consumer demand and thus market share. A product orientation may perhaps work best in a monopolistic market form The imperfectly competitive structure is quite identical to the realistic market conditions where some monopolistic competitors, monopolists, oligopolists, and duopolists exist and dominate the market conditions. The elements of Market Structure include the number and size distribution of firms, entry conditions, and the extent of differentiation, due to the inherent high barriers to entry The term refers to hindrances that an individual may face while trying to gain entrance into a profession or trade. It also, more commonly, refers to hindrances that a firm may face while trying to enter a market, industry or trade grouping. Barriers to entry restrict competition in a market within a monopoly In economics, a monopoly exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of.

Sales orientation

A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of a particular product, and not determining new consumer desires as such. Consequently, this entails simply selling an already existing product, and using promotion techniques to attain the highest sales possible.

Such an orientation may suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a good that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

Production orientation

A firm focusing on a production orientation specialises in producing as much as possible of a given good. Thus, this signifies a firm exploiting economies of scale Economies of scale, in microeconomics, are the cost advantages that a business obtains due to expansion. They are factors that cause a producer’s average cost per unit to fall as scale is increased. Economies of scale is a long run concept and refers to reductions in unit cost as the size of a facility, or scale, increases. Diseconomies of scale, until the minimum efficient scale is reached.

A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a good exists, coupled with a good certainty that consumer tastes do not rapidly alter (similar to the sales orientation).

Marketing orientation

The marketing orientation is perhaps the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It involves a firm essentially basing its marketing plans around the marketing concept, and thus forging products to suit new consumer tastes.

As an example, a firm would employ market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D to develop a good attuned to the revealed information, and then utilise promotion techniques to ensure persons know the good exists. The marketing orientation often has three prime facets, which are:

Customer orientation

A firm in the market economy A market economy is an economy based on the division of labor in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system set by supply and demand. This is often contrasted with a planned economy, in which a central government determines the price of goods and services using a fixed price system. Market economies are contrasted survives by producing goods that persons are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viabilty and even existence as a going concern A going concern is a business that functions without the intention or threat of liquidation for the foreseeable future, usually regarded as at least within 12 months.

Organizational orientation

All departments of a firm should be geared to satisfying consumer wants/needs.

Mutually beneficial exchange

In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits/market share/sales. A consumer on the other hand gains a need/want that is satisfied, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a good. As no one has to buy goods from any one supplier in the market economy, firms must entice consumers to buy goods, and thus seek to satisfy consumers' utility. If an exchange is not mutually beneficial in nature, it is not consistent with contemporary marketing ideals.

Four Ps

In the early 1960s, Professor Neil Borden at Harvard Business School Harvard Business School is a business school in the United States. It is one of the top graduate schools of Harvard University. The school offers a full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, as well as many executive education programs, but does not offer an 'Executive MBA'. The School owns Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, which identified a number of company performance actions that can influence the consumer decision to purchase goods or services. Borden suggested that all those actions of the company represented a “Marketing Mix The marketing mix is generally accepted as the use and specification of the 'four Ps' describing the strategic position of a product in the marketplace. One version of the marketing mix originated in 1948 when James Culliton said that a marketing decision should be a result of something similar to a recipe. This version was used in 1953 when Neil”. Professor E. Jerome McCarthy E. Jerome McCarthy was an American marketing professor at Michigan State University. He is one of the authors of the influential book Basic Marketing . Professor E. Jerome McCarthy, in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion, also at the Harvard Business School in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion.

• Product The noun product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce (prə doos' or -dyoos') from the Latin prōdūce(re), (to) lead or bring forth. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced. Since 1695, the word has: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user Economics and commerce define an end-user as the person who uses a product. The end-user or consumer may differ from the person who purchases the product. For instance, a zookeeper, the customer, might purchase elephant food for an end-user: the elephant's needs and wants. The scope of a product generally includes supporting elements such as warranties, guarantees, and support.
• Pricing Pricing is one of the four Ps of the marketing mix. The other three aspects are product, promotion, and place. It is also a key variable in microeconomic price allocation theory. Price is the only revenue generating element amongst the 4ps, the rest being cost centers. Pricing is the manual or automatic process of applying prices to purchase and: This refers to the process of setting a price Price in economics and business is the result of an exchange and from that trade we assign a numerical monetary value to a good, service or asset. If Alice trades Bob 4 apples for an orange, the price of an orange is 4 apples. Inversely, the price of an apple is 1/4 oranges for a product, including discounts. The price need not be monetary; it can simply be what is exchanged for the product or services, e.g. time, energy, or attention. Methods of setting prices optimally are in the domain of pricing science Pricing Science is the application of social and business science methods to the problem of setting prices. Methods include economic modeling, statistics, econometrics, mathematical programming. This discipline had its origins in the development of yield management in the airline industry in the 1980s, and has since spread to many other sectors.
• Placement (or distribution Distribution is one of the four elements of marketing mix. An organization or set of organizations (go-betweens) involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user): refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point-of-sale placement or retailing Retailing consists of the sale of goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by post, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be individuals or businesses. In commerce, a "retailer". This third P has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold (e.g. online vs. retail), which geographic region or industry, to which segment (young adults, families, business people), etc. also referring to how the environment in which the product is sold in can affect sales.
• Promotion Promotion involves disseminating information about a product, product line, brand, or company. It is one of the four key aspects of the marketing mix: This includes advertising Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, sales promotion Sales promotion is one of the four aspects of promotional mix. Media and non-media marketing communication are employed for a pre-determined, limited time to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability. Examples include:, publicity Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject. The subjects of publicity include people , goods and services, organizations of all kinds, and works of art or entertainment, and personal selling A sale is the pinnacle activity involved in selling products or services in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity. Branding refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand Some people distinguish the psychological aspect of a brand from the experiential aspect. The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the brand experience. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people and, or company.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix The marketing mix is generally accepted as the use and specification of the 'four Ps' describing the strategic position of a product in the marketplace. One version of the marketing mix originated in 1948 when James Culliton said that a marketing decision should be a result of something similar to a recipe. This version was used in 1953 when Neil,^[4] which a marketer can use to craft a marketing plan A marketing plan is a written document that details the necessary actions to achieve one or more marketing objectives. It can be for a product or service, a brand, or a product line. Marketing plans cover between one and five years.

The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing Services marketing is marketing based on relationship and value. It may be used to market a service or a product must account for the unique nature of services.

Industrial or B2B marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain A supply chain is the system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to the end customer. In sophisticated supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing Relationship marketing is a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns conducted in the 1970s and 1980s which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on point-of-sale transactions attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.

As a counter to this, Morgan, in Riding the Waves of Change (Jossey-Bass, 1988), suggests that one of the greatest limitations of the 4 Ps approach "is that it unconsciously emphasizes the inside–out view (looking from the company outwards), whereas the essence of marketing should be the outside–in approach".

Product

Branding

A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or other feature that distinguishes products and services from competitive offerings. A brand represents the consumers' experience with an organization, product, or service. A brand is more than a name, design or symbol. Brand reflects personality of the company which is organizational culture.

A brand has also been defined as an identifiable entity that makes a specific value based on promises made and kept either actively or passively.

Branding means creating reference of certain products in mind.

Co-branding Co-branding is when two companies form an alliance to work together, creating marketing synergy. As described in Co-Branding: The Science of Alliance: involves marketing activity involving two or more products.

Marketing communications

Marketing communications breaks down the strategies involved with marketing messages into categories based on the goals of each message. There are distinct stages in converting strangers to customers that govern the communication medium that should be used.

Personal sales

Oral presentation given by a salesperson who approaches individuals or a group of potential customers:

• Live, interactive relationship
• Personal interest
• Attention and response
• Interesting presentation
• Clear and thorough.

Sales promotion

Short-term incentives to encourage buying of products:

• Instant appeal
• Anxiety to sell

An example is coupons or a sale. People are given an incentive to buy, but this does not build customer loyalty or encourage future repeat buys. A major drawback of sales promotion is that it is easily copied by competition. It cannot be used as a sustainable source of differentiation.

Customer focus

Many companies today have a customer focus (or market orientation). This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally there are three ways of doing this: the customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.

In the consumer-driven approach, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of consumer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential consumers. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.^[5]

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA^[6] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus.

The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing management.

The four elements of the SIVA model are:

1. Solution: How appropriate is the solution to the customer's problem/need?
2. Information: Does the customer know about the solution? If so, how and from whom do they know enough to let them make a buying decision?
3. Value: Does the customer know the value of the transaction, what it will cost, what are the benefits, what might they have to sacrifice, what will be their reward?
4. Access: Where can the customer find the solution? How easily/locally/remotely can they buy it and take delivery?

This model was proposed by Chekitan Dev and Don Schultz in the Marketing Management Journal of the American Marketing Association, and presented by them in Market Leader, the journal of the Marketing Society in the UK.

Product focus

In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. A distinction is typically made between invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully. In many fields, something new must be substantially, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that profitable market segment(s) exist for the innovation. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. However, marketers can aggressively over-pursue product innovation and try to overcapitalize on a niche. When pursuing a product innovation approach, marketers must ensure that they have a varied and multi-tiered approach to product innovation. It is claimed that if Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first depended on marketing research he would have produced larger candles rather than inventing light bulbs. Many firms, such as research and development focused companies, successfully focus on product innovation. Many purists doubt whether this is really a form of marketing orientation at all, because of the ex post status of consumer research. Some even question whether it is marketing.

• An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing Internal marketing is an ongoing process that occurs strictly within a company or organization whereby the functional process aligns, motivates and empowers employees at all management levels to consistently deliver a satisfying customer experience. According to Burkitt and Zealley, "the challenge for internal marketing is not only to get the, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers (employer branding).
• Diffusion of innovations research explores how and why people adopt new products, services and ideas.
• A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called Internet marketing or more generally e-marketing, affiliate marketing, desktop advertising or online marketing. It tries to perfect the segmentation strategy used in traditional marketing. It targets its audience more precisely, and is sometimes called personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing.
• With consumers' eroding attention span and willingness to give time to advertising messages, marketers are turning to forms of permission marketing such as branded content, custom media and reality marketing.
• The use of herd behavior in marketing.

The Economist reported a recent conference in Rome on the subject of the simulation of adaptive human behavior.^[7] It shared mechanisms to increase impulse buying and get people "to buy more by playing on the herd instinct." The basic idea is that people will buy more of products that are seen to be popular, and several feedback mechanisms to get product popularity information to consumers are mentioned, including smart-cart technology and the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tag technology. A "swarm-moves" model was introduced by a Florida Institute of Technology researcher, which is appealing to supermarkets because it can "increase sales without the need to give people discounts."

Marketing is also used to promote business' products and is a great way to promote the business.

Other recent studies on the "power of social influence" include an "artificial music market in which some 14,000 people downloaded previously unknown songs" (Columbia University, New York); a Japanese chain of convenience stores which orders its products based on "sales data from department stores and research companies;" a Massachusetts company exploiting knowledge of social networking to improve sales; and online retailers who are increasingly informing consumers about "which products are popular with like-minded consumers" (e.g., Amazon, eBay).

Areas of marketing specialization

• agricultural marketing
• advertising and branding
• communications
• CRM, Customer Relationship Management
• database marketing
• professional selling
• direct marketing
• event organization
• experiential marketing
• field marketing
• global marketing
• guerilla marketing
• international marketing
• internet marketing
• industrial marketing
• market research
• marketing strategy
• marketing plan
• political marketing
• product marketing
• proximity marketing
• public marketing
• retailing
• search engine marketing
• segmentation
• social media marketing
• sponsorship
• strategic management
• wholesale marketing

See also

Related lists

See List of marketing topics for an extensive list of the marketing articles.

• List of management topics
• List of human resource management topics
• List of economics topics
• List of finance topics
• List of accounting topics
• List of information technology management topics
• List of production topics
• List of business law topics
• List of international trade topics
• List of business ethics, political economy, and philosophy of business topics
• List of business theorists

References

1. ^ Marketing definition approved in October 2007 by the American Marketing Association: [1].
2. ^ Definition of marketing, Chartered Institute of Marketing
3. ^ Paul H. Selden (1997). Sales Process Engineering: A Personal Workshop. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press. p. 23.
4. ^ "The Concept of the Marketing Mix" from the Journal of Advertising Research, June 1964 pp 2-7
5. ^ "Marketing Management: Strategies and Programs", Guiltinan et al., McGraw Hill/Irwin, 1996
6. ^ "In the Mix: A Customer-Focused Approach Can Bring the Current Marketing Mix into the 21st Century". Chekitan S. Dev and Don E. Schultz, Marketing Management v.14 n.1 January/February 2005
7. ^ "Swarming the shelves: How shops can exploit people's herd mentality to increase sales?". The Economist. 2006-11-11. p. 90.

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