The Connotation Of Marketing Marketing Essay

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

Introduction

Nowadays, marketing activities influence people in both the roles as suppliers of products and services and as customers. Marketing plays a great part for companies in knowing their clients, the products and services to offer, the advertising means and so forth. As for individuals, marketing is important for them to choose a particular brand of fashionable dresses and even toothpaste. But marketing is much more than selling or advertising activities. In this essay, the concept of marketing will be introduced in the beginning, and then the essay places an emphasis on the full range of connotation for marketing including marketing strategies, the consumer behavior, environmental analysis, and marketing ethics. Finally, it is concluded that marketing is a comprehensive process that involves all of the activities of managing and satisfying demand through the exchange process.

Marketing is a Comprehensive Process

As to the definition of marketing, most people, even some entrepreneurs, would hold that marketing mean selling or advertising, however, marketing is an activity more complex than selling or advertising. A proper definition of marketing should not only consider economy, but also includes institutions, people, and new ideas. Marketing is a process of offering products and services, pricing, promotion and distribution to meet the individual and organizational demand through exchanges (AMA, 1985). A company achieves its goals by satisfying both the domestic and foreign customers, and marketing is concerned with the activities to enlarge the market share of the company by matching the demand. This definition indicates that marketing includes not only the enterprises and individuals, but also the activities of non-profitable institutions or the marketing of a great idea or a service as well as a product. All in all, marketing involves products, services, organizations, people and ideas.

Marketing Strategies

According to McCarthy (1960), marketing strategies include products, pricing, promotion and place. Products or services are the basic content in the marketing process, which can be classified as goods or services and as customer or industrial. Classification is significant because it concentrates on the disparities in the characteristics of products and the different marketing implications. A reasonable pricing also counts in the process of marketing which should be profitable to the company and beneficial to the consumers. In the process of marketing, promotion is necessary to make the products, services or ideas known to the consumers. Means of promotion includes personal selling, advertising and public relations, price discounts and so forth. Distribution planning exerts a significant impact on the marketing program used by a firm, because middlemen can play a wide variety of marketing roles, the firm’s marketing plan will be different if it sells its products direct rather than through intermediaries.

Environmental Analysis

Environmental influences consist of sociocultural and technological, economic and competitive as well as political and legal influences (Kotler, 2006). Individuals are easily influenced both by the trends of the whole society and by a need to comply with the rules of the different social groups to which they belong, and to improve their status in those groups. With the development of technology, consumers can receive more individually-oriented offerings, and thus their expectations are raised about the quality of the product and service. The flourish of products and services lead to brand changing or offer the consumers with the information to make more meticulous decisions. And regulation and legislation, whether they relate to the product introductions, customer rights or advertising means, also decrease the risk of decision-making. This reduces some pressure of the customer, leading to discerning and easier decisions and less risk of post-purchase disturbance.

Marketing Ethics

Marketing ethics are the marketer’s standards of behavior and moral values, as Homburg (2001) maintains. They are related to the decision to do what is morally right or what is morally wrong. Traditionally, the concept of business responsibility has cared about the relationship between the enterprise and consumers, the work staff, and the stockholders. The enterprise is responsible for providing the customers with high-quality product at a rational price, decent salaries and a comfortable working environment for the staff and an adequate profit level for stockholders.

Contemporary marketing decisions must regularly consider the external social environment. Decisions must also account for eventual, long-run effects. Socially responsible decisions must consider future generations as well as existing society.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in the process of marketing, selling or advertising is essential if a company want to attain its objectives, but more emphasis must be placed on the marketing strategies, and it is also of great importance to take environmental influences into consideration, which can exert impact on consumer’s decision-making. With people concern more about the ecology and healthy ways of consumption, marketers must care about environmentally-friendly marketing despite the high-quality products and services.