What is marketing?

Extracts from:  Principles of Marketing  by Dr. Philip Kotler

Marketing is not solely advertising or selling.

Real marketing is less about selling and more about knowing what to make!

No amount of advertising or selling can compensate for a lack of customer satisfaction.

Marketing is the business activity that identifies an organization's customer needs and wants, determines which target markets it can serve best and designs appropriate products, services and programmes to serve these markets.

However, marketing is much more than an isolated business function - it is a philosophy that guides the entire organization.

The goal of marketing is to create customer satisfaction profitably by building valued relationships with customers.Marketing is all around us.

Marketing is not only for manufacturing companies, wholesalers and retailers, but for all kinds of individuals and organizations. Lawyers, accountants and doctors use marketing to manage demand for their services. So do hospitals, museums and performing arts groups. No politician can get the needed votes, and no resort the needed tourists, without developing and carrying out marketing plans.

Organizations need to know how to define and segment markets and how to position themselves by developing need-satisfying products and services for their chosen target segments. They must know how to price their offerings attractively and affordably, and how to choose and manage the marketing channel that delivers these products and services to customers. They need to know how to advertise and promote their products and services, so that customers will know about and want them. All of these demand a broad range of skills to sense, serve and satisfy consumers.

People need to understand marketing from the point of view of consumers and citizens. When they are seeking jobs, people have to market themselves.

Marketing occurs when people decide to satisfy needs and wants through exchange.

Markets is the set of actual and potential buyers of a product. Thus, the size of a market depends on the number of people who exhibit the need, have resources to engage in exchange, and are willing to offer these resources in exchange for what they want.

Marketing means managing markets to bring about exchanges for the purpose of satisfying human needs and wants.

Exchange processes involve work. Sellers must search for buyers, identify their needs, design good products and services, promote them, and store and deliver them. Activities such as product development, research, communication, distribution, pricing and service are core marketing activities. Although we normally think of marketing as being carried on by sellers, buyers also carry out marketing activities.

Consumers do 'marketing' when they search for the goods they need at prices they can afford.

Marketing Management The analysis, planning, implementation and control of programmes designed to create, build and maintain beneficial exchanges with target buyer a for the purpose of achieving organisational objectives.

Aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous, to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits ... and sells itself.

This does not mean that selling and advertising are unimportant. Rather, it means that they are part of a larger marketing mix - a set of marketing tools that work together to affect the marketplace.

Strategic Marketing Planning

involves developing a strategy for long-run survival and growth.

It consists of developing the company's mission, understanding a company's strengths and weaknesses, its environment, business portfolio, objectives and goals, and functional plans.  All companies need strategies to meet changing markets. No one strategy is best for all companies.

Stages of strategic market planning: 1. strategic plan and its implications for marketing;  2 the marketing process; 3, ways of putting the plan into action.

Many companies operate without formal plans. In new companies, managers are sometimes too busy for planning. In small companies, managers may think that only large corporations need planning. In mature companies, many managers argue that they have done well without formal planning, so it cannot be very important. They may resist taking the time to prepare a written plan. They may argue that the marketplace changes too fast for a plan to be useful - that it would end up collecting dust.

Yet formal planning can yield many benefits for all types of company, large and small, new and mature. It encourages systematic thinking. It forces the company to sharpen its objectives and policies, leads to better co-ordination of company efforts, and provides clearer performance standards for control. The argument that planning is less useful in a fast-changing environment makes little sense. The opposite is true: sound planning helps the company to anticipate and respond quickly to environmental changes, and to prepare better for sudden developments. The best-performing companies plan

• The annual plan a short-term plan that describes the company's current situation, its objectives, the strategy, action programme and budgets for the year ahead and controls.

• The long-term plan describes the primary factors and forces affecting the

organization during the next several years. It includes the long-term objectives, the main marketing strategies used to attain them and the resources required. This long-term plan is reviewed and updated each year so that the company always has a current long-range plan. The company's annual and long-range plans deal with current businesses and how to keep them going.

• The strategic plan  involves adapting the firm to take advantage of opportunities in its constantly changing environment. It is the process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organization's goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities.

starts with its overall purpose and mission. These guide the formation of measurable corporate objectives. A corporate audit then gathers information on the company, its competitors, its market and the general environment in which the firm competes.