Marketing


'''Marketing''' is the craft of linking the producers (or potential producers) of a product or service with customers, both existing and potential. Some form of marketing arises naturally in all capitalist societies but is not limited to capitalist societies. Marketing techniques are also applied in politics, religion, personal affairs, and many other aspects of life. Marketing methods are informed by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology, and economics. Marketing research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it is also related to many of the creative arts.

Product, price, promotion, and placement

In popular usage, the term marketing refers to the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning. It can be divided into four sections, often called the "''four Ps''," only one of which is promotion. They are: These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix. A marketer will use these variables to craft a marketing plan. The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, and high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing 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 transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.

Technique

For a marketing plan to be successful, the mix of the four "p's" must reflect the wants and desires of the consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom successful. Marketers depend on marketing research to determine what consumers want and what they are willing to pay for. Marketers hope that this process will give them a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing management is the practical application of this process. Most companies today have a customer orientation (also called customer focus). This implys that the company focuses its activities and products on customer needs. Generally there are two ways of doing this: The customer driven approach 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 rational for this approach is that there is no point spending R and D dollars developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures inspite of being technological breakthroughs. In a product innovation approach the company pursues product innovation, then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and marketing research is conducted primarily to ensure that a profitable market segment(s) exists for the innovation. The rational 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. It is claimed that if Edison 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. A relatively new form of marketing uses the Internet and is called internet marketing or more generally e-marketing. It typically 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. Some aspects of marketing, especially promotion, are the subject of criticisms. See List of marketing topics for a list of the 300 marketing articles on Wikipedia. de:Marketing es:Marketing fa:بازاریابی fr:Mercatique gl:Mercadotecnia it:Marketing nl:Marketing ja:マーケティング pl:Marketing pt:Marketing ru:Маркетинг sv:Marknadsföring Category:Marketingcategory:Business

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