The Marketing Concept - Kotler

Marketing Article Series

The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists of being more effective than competitors in integrating marketing activities toward determining and satisfying the needs and wants of target markets.
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Marketing - Definition

Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and exchanging products of value with others.

A human need is a state of deprivation of some basic satisfaction. People require food, clothing, shelter, safety, belonging, and esteem. These needs are not created by society or by marketers. They exist in the very texture of human biology and the human condition.

Wants are desires for specific satisfiers of needs. Although people’s needs are few, their wants are many. They are continually shaped and reshaped by social forces and institutions, including churches, schools, families and business corporations.

Demands are wants for specific products that are backed by an ability and willingness to buy them. Companies must measure not only how many people want their product but, more importantly, how many would actually be willing and able to buy it.


Market

A market consists of all the potential customers sharing a particular need or want who might be willing and able to engage in exchange to satisfy that need or want.

Marketers

When one party is more actively seeking an exchange than the other party, we call the first party a marketer and the second party a prospect. A marketer is some one seeking one or more prospects who might engage in an exchange of values. A prospect is someone whom the marketer identifies as potentially willing and able to engage in an exchange of values.


Marketers do not create needs. Marketers influence wants. Marketers influence demand by making the product appropriate, attractive, affordable, and easily available to target consumers. They also communicate their offering to prospects. Society influences wants. People living in different societies prefer different types of food items, different types of apparel and even different types of jewellery.

A product is anything that can be offered to satisfy a need or want. Offering and solution are synonyms to the product in marketing context.

A product or offering can consist of as many as three components: physical good(s), service(s), and idea(s).

Value is the consumer’s estimate of the product’s overall capacity to satisfy his or her needs.

Marketers offer value to a consumer when the satisfaction of customer's requirements takes place at the lowest possible cost of acquisition, ownership, and use.


Marketing management

Marketing management takes place when at least one party to a potential exchange thinks about the means of achieving desired responses from other parties.

Definition of American Marketing Association

Marketing (Management) is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.


Marketing management has the task of influencing the level, timing, and composition of demand in a way that help the organization achieve its objectives. Marketing management is essentially demand management.
Marketing managers manage demand by carrying out marketing research, planning, implementation and control.
Within marketing planning, marketers must make decisions on target markets, market positioning, product development, pricing, distribution channels, physical distribution, communication, and promotion.
Marketing work in the customer market is formally carried out by sales managers, salespeople, advertising and promotion manages, marketing researchers, customer service managers, product and brand managers, market and industry managers, and the marketing vice-president.

The Marketing Concept

The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists of being more effective than competitors in integrating marketing activities toward determining and satisfying the needs and wants of target markets.

The marketing concept rests on four pillars: target market, customer needs, integrated marketing, and profitability.

Target market

No company can operate in every market and satisfy every need. Nor can it always do a good job within one broad market.


Customer needs



Marketing is about meeting needs of target markets profitably.

The key to professional marketing is to understand their customers’ real needs and meet them better than any competitor can.



Some marketers draw a distinction between responsive marketing and creative marketing. A responsive marketer finds a stated need and fills it. A creative marketer discovers and produces solutions that customer did not ask for but to which they enthusiastically respond.

Integrated Marketing

When all the company’s departments work together to serve the customer’s interests, the result is integrated marketing.
Integrated marketing takes on two levels. First, the various marketing functions-sales force, advertising, product management, marketing research, and so on – must work together.


Second must be well coordinated with other company departments.

The company is doing proper marketing only when all employees appreciate their impact on customer satisfaction. To foster teamwork among all departments, the company carries out internal marketing as well as external marketing. External marketing is marketing directed at people outside the company. Internal marketing is the task of successfully hiring, training, and motivating employees who want to serve the customers well. In fact internal marketing must precede external marketing. It makes no sense to promise excellent service before the company’s staff is ready to provide excellent service.

Profitability

The ultimate purpose of the marketing concept is to help organizations achieve their goals. In the case of private firms, the major goal is profit. Marketing managers have to provide value to the customer and profits to the organization. Marketing managers have to evaluate the profitability of all alternative marketing strategies and decisions and choose most profitable decisions for long-term survival and growth of the firm.



Kotler, Philip (1997), Marketing Management, 9th Ed., Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

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