March 7, 2011

What is Marketing?

Marketing, more than any business fonction, deals with customers. Although we will soon explore more-detailed definitions of marketing, perhaps, the simplest definition is this one: Marketing is managing profitable customer relationships. The twofold goal is to attract new customers by promising superior value and to keep and grow current customers by delivering satisfaction.
Wal-mart has become the world's largest retailer company, by delivering on its promise, "Always low prices. Always!" At Disney theme parks, "imagineers" work wonders in their quest to "make a dream come true today." Dell leads the personal computer industry by consistently making good on its promise to "be direct." Dell makes it easy for customers to custom-design their own computes and have them delivered quickly to their doorsteps or desktops. These and other highly succesful companies know that if they take care of their customers, market share and profits will follow.
Sound Marketing is critical to the success of every organization. Large for-profit firms such as Proctor & Gamble, Sony, Wal-mart, IBM, and Marriott use marketing. But so do not-for-profit organisations such as colleges, hospitals, museums, symphony orchestra, and even churches.
You already know a lot about marketing - It's all around you. You see the results of marketing in the abundance of products in your nearby shopping mall. You see marketing in the advertisements that fill your TV screen, spice up your magazines, stuff your mailbox, or enliven your webpages. At home, at school, where you work, and where you play, you see marketing in almost everything you do. Yet, there is much more to marketing than meets the customer's casual eye. Behing it all is a massive network of people and activities competing for your attention and purchases.
This site will give you a complete and formal introduction to the basic concepts and practices of today's marketing.

Marketing Defined
What is marketing? Many people think of marketing only as selling and advertising. And no wonder - every day we are bombarded with television commerials, direct mail offers, sales calls, and. internet pitches. However, selling and advertising are only the tip of the marketing iceberg.
Today, marketing must be understood not in the old sense of a sale - " telling and selling" - But in the new sense of satisfying customer needs. If the marketer does a good of understanding customer needs: develop products that provide superior value; and prices, distributes, and promotes them efectively, these products will sell very easily. Thus, selling and advertising are only part of a larger larger "marketing mix" - a set of tools that work together to satisfy customer needs and build customer relationships.
Broadly defined, Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others.  In a narrower business context, marketing involves building profitable, value-laden exchange relationships with customers. Hence, we define marketing as the process by which companies create alue or customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return.

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