What is Marketing? (Marketing Definition)

There are a lot of marketing definitions available but the right ones are focused upon the key to marketing success i.e. customers. Following are some of the marketing definitions available.

American Marketing Association defines marketing as:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (Approved October 2007)

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) says:

The management process responsible for identifying , anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitability.

Philip Kotler defines marketing as:

Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.

Palmer’s marketing definition is as:

Marketing is essentially about marshalling the resources of an organization so that they meet the changing needs of the customer on whom the organization depends.

Dennis Adcock defines marketing as

The right product, in the right place, at the right time, at the right price.

Dennis adcock, using McCarthy’s Four Ps, defines marketing in a short but realistic way.

The Marketing Concepts

The marketing concept is the philosophy that urges organization to focus on their customers’ needs. Analyzing their needs and making such decisions that satisfy those needs in a better way than competitors.

To have a better understanding of marketing concept, it’s worthwhile to review the other philosophies that once were dominated and are still being practiced by some of the firms.

The Production Concept (Industrial revolution – 1920’s)

The basic idea behind production concept was: The firms will produce what they can produce efficiently. This will ensure enough supply of the products at low-cost and demand will be created by itself.

Production concept prevailed into late 1920s because most of the products being produced were the basic necessities and there was a huge unfulfilled demand for them.

The Sales Concept (1930s)

By early 1930s, competition had increased in production and on the other hand there was less unfulfilled demand. So, all the firms turned towards sales concept. Now the companies were not only producing the product but also sell it to customers through personal selling and advertisement.

There was no concept of need identification, firms were just interested in beating competition by selling more but neglecting customers’ satisfaction. We can call it hard selling.

The Marketing Concept

After World War II, there was a variety of products available in the market and customers having discretionary income could make choices and purchase what really fulfill their needs. In that situation, firms were forced to think about what their customers need , when they need it and how to keep them satisfied which is the Marketing Concept.

The main focus of all the firms turned from hard selling towards Identification of customer needs, making decision to fulfill those need and maintaining long-term relation with customers by satisfying their changing needs. The Marketing concept resulted in a separate marketing department in organization and today we can see many organization have structured themselves as marketing organization where every employee is contributing towards customer satisfaction whether or not he’s a marketing person.

So, The marketing concept totally relies upon marketing research that helps in identification of segments, their sizes, needs, target market and then by using the right ‘Marketing Mix‘, marketing teams makes such decisions that results in customers satisfaction.

After going through the marketing definitions and concepts, the core ideas contained are as follows:

• The main focal point in marketing is customer needs.
• In order to maintain long-term relations with customers, future needs have to be identified and predicted.
• Marketing is not the duty of marketing department only but the everyone in the organization.