What Is Marketing?
Marketing deals with identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest definitions of marketing is “meeting needs profitably.” When eBay recognized that people were unable to locate some of the items they desired most and created an online auction clearinghouse or when IKEA noticed that people wanted good furniture at a substantially lower price and created knock-down furniture, they demonstrated marketing savvy and turned a private or social need into a profitable business opportunity.
The American Marketing Association offers the following formal definition: Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stake holders. Coping with exchange processes calls for a considerable amount of work and skill. Marketing management takes place when at least one party to a potential exchange thinks about the means of achieving desired responses from other parties. We see marketing management as the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value.
We can distinguish between a social and a managerial definition of marketing. A social definition shows the role marketing plays in society. One marketer said that marketing’s role is to “deliver a higher standard of living.” Here is a social definition that serves our purpose: Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and freely exchanging products and services of value with others. For a managerial definition, marketing has often been described as “the art of selling products,” but people are surprised when they hear that the most important part of marketing is not selling! Selling is only the tip of the marketing iceberg. Peter Drucker, a leading management theorist, puts it this way:
There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available.
When Sony designed its Play Station, when Gillette launched its Mach III razor, and when Toyota introduced its Lexus automobile, these manufacturers were swamped with orders because they had designed the “right” product based on careful marketing homework.
Written by: Mike Selvon
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