Marketing is the process by which a firm or organization advertises its product or service and raises awareness of it to the potential customers. Marketing is often considered to be one of the most important marketing strategies because it serves as a tool to promote new products or services and also to establish or enhance existing client loyalty. Marketing also refers to the act by which an organization undertakes at least for the first stage to engage its prospective target market, develop meaningful relationships with these consumers to generate ongoing value for clients, and finally to extract value from consumer buying behaviour to maximize benefits for the firm. Marketing is not a one-time activity but rather a continuous process that has both an initial and an alternative aspect. Marketing is a creative process that seeks to inform the public about a product or service offered by a firm or organization.
One of the biggest problems facing organizations today is what is called marketing myopia. This is the phenomenon whereby marketers fail to distinguish between the concepts and characteristics of marketing. Some marketing concepts are simple while others can be complex. For example, a marketing concept such as’retail penetration’ might be very easy to understand and be a strong selling point, whereas ‘customer loyalty’ can be a more difficult concept to understand and therefore is often not properly used by marketers. The confusion is mostly caused by a failure to identify the exact purpose or the desired results of marketing.
A major challenge facing organizations today is in developing a unified marketing management approach that would help in aligning their advertising, selling, and buying activities. The main problem is that there are several competing perspectives on each of these aspects. At a broad level, the marketing management concept is related to business objectives and goals of a firm. Within this perspective, there are three primary areas of focus – the marketing strategy, the selling strategy, and the customer’s strategy. The latter involves issues such as societal marketing strategies, segmentation, measurement of the market, and analysis of customer behavior.
The marketing management concept includes three primary areas of focus – competitive positioning, which focuses on attaining the customers of the competitors, market share, and profitability. In competitive positioning, marketers use a variety of marketing strategies, including product innovation and positioning in the market, price and value comparison, brand name building, and advertising and selling. Market share involves assessing the market size, consumer spending patterns, and competitive prices.
Customer behavior is also another key area of marketing management concept. The analysis of this behavior helps in understanding and addressing the customer needs and in measuring their satisfaction levels. Measurement of customer satisfaction helps in improving services and products and in identifying customer preferences.
A key objective of all marketing activities is the creation of market share. There is a wide array of techniques used for achieving this goal, including product marketing, selling methods, advertising and promotions, price, promotion, and public relations. The effectiveness of each of these marketing activities is determined by the type of business, market, and customer. Marketing research and marketing management are interrelated and depend on each other.