Defining Marketing For The 21st Century

Submitted By impala63
Words: 7637
Pages: 31

Part I - Understanding Marketing Management
Chapter 1 - Defining Marketing for the 21st Century
I. Chapter Overview/Objectives/Outline
A. Overview
Marketing is the organizational function charged with defining customer targets and the best way to satisfy needs and wants competitively and profitably. Since consumers and business buyers face an abundance of suppliers seeking to satisfy their every need, companies and nonprofit organizations cannot survive today by simply doing a good job. They must do an excellent job if they are to remain in the increasingly competitive global marketplace. Many studies have demonstrated that the key to profitable performance is to know and satisfy target customers with competitively superior offers. This process takes place today in an increasingly global, technical, and competitive environment.

Marketing management is the conscious effort to achieve desired exchange outcomes with target markets. The marketer’s basic skill lies in influencing the level, timing, and composition of demand for a product, service, organization, place, person, idea, or some form of information.
There are several alternative philosophies that can guide organizations in their efforts to carry out their marketing goal(s). The production concept holds that consumers will favor products that are affordable and available, and therefore management’s major task is to improve production and distribution efficiency and bring down prices. The product concept holds that consumers favor quality products that are reasonably priced, and therefore little promotional effort is required. The selling concept holds that consumers will not buy enough of the company’s products unless they are stimulated through a substantial selling and promotion effort.
The marketing concept moves toward a more enlightened view of the role of marketing. The marketing concept holds that the main task of the company is to determine the needs, wants, and preferences of a target group of customers and to deliver the desired satisfactions. The four principles of the marketing concept are: target market, customer needs, integrated marketing, and profitability. The marketing concept places primary focus on the needs and wants of customers who comprise the target market for a particular product.
Rather than coax customers into purchasing a product they may not find satisfying, the emphasis is on determining the types of markets to be satisfied, and creating the product that achieves this satisfaction objective. Choosing target markets and identifying customer needs is no small task; a marketer must dig beyond a customer’s stated needs. Once this is accomplished, a marketer can offer for sale the products that will lead to the highest satisfaction. This encourages customer retention and profit, which is best achieved when all areas/departments of a company become “customer-focused.” Beyond the marketing concept, the societal marketing concept holds that the main task of the company is to generate customer satisfaction and long-run consumer and societal well being as the key to satisfying organizational goals and responsibilities.
Interest in marketing continues to intensify as more organizations in the business sector, the nonprofit sector, and the global sector recognize how marketing contributes to improved performance in the marketplace. The result is that marketers are reevaluating various marketing concepts and tools that focus on relationships, databases, communications and channels of distribution, as well as marketing outside and inside the organization.
B. Learning Objectives
Know why marketing is important to contemporary organizations.
Understand the core concepts of marketing.
Know the basic tasks performed by marketing organizations and managers.
Understand the differences between the various orientations to the marketplace.
Know the components of the marketing concept and why they are critical to successful marketing