The marketing concept is a management philosophy stating that an organization should strive to satisfy the needs of consumers through a coordinated set of activities that also allows the organization to achieve its objectives. If we want to understand the marketing concept, we need to understand the following core set of concept.
We will know:
Needs, Wants, and Demands
Target Markets, Positioning, and Segmentation
Offerings and Brand
Value and Satisfaction
Marketing Channels
Supply Chain
Competition
Marketing Environment
Needs:
are the basic human requirements such as food, water, clothing, air, and shelter. Humans also have needs for recreation, education, and entertainment. These needs become wants, when they are directed to specific objects that might satisfy the need. Wants are shaped by our society.
Five types of needs:
- Stated needs (the customer wants an inexpensive bike)
- Real needs ( the customer wants a bike whose operating cost, not initial price, is low)
- Unstated needs ( the customer expects good service from the seller)
- Delight needs ( the customer wants the seller to include an onboard GPS navigation system)
- Secret needs ( the customer wants friends to him as a savvy consumer)
Demands: are wants for specific products backed by an ability to pay. Many people want a Mercedes; that only a few are able to buy one. Firms must measure not only how many people want their product, but also how many are willing and able to buy it.
Target Markets, Positioning, and Segmentation:
Firstly, segmentation is buyer class separate. Marketers start by dividing the market into segments. They identify of buyers who might prefer or require varying product and service mixes by examine demographic, psychographic, and behavioral differences among buyers.
Target market is, after identifying market segments, the marketers decides which present the greatest opportunities which are its target markets. The firm develops a market offering that it positions in the minds of the target buyers as delivering central benefit.
Offerings and Brands:
Companies address customer’s needs by putting a value proposition, a set of benefits that satisfy those needs. The intangible value proposition is made physical by an offering, which can be a combination of products, services, and information.
A brand is an offering from a known source in business. A brand name such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s carries many associations in people minds, that makeup its image. All companies strive to build a brand image.
Value and Satisfaction:
Value is a central marketing concept. Value is primarily a combination of quality, service, and price (qsp). Value perceptions increase with quality and service but decrease price. We can think of marketing, as the identification, creation, communication, delivery, and monitoring of customer value.
Satisfaction reflects a person’s judgment of a product’s perceived performance in relationship to expectation. The customer is disappointed, if the performance falls short of expectations. The customer is satisfied, when it matches expectations. If exceeds, the customer is delighted.
Marketing Channels:
The marketer uses three kinds of marketing channels, to reach target market. That’s communication channels, distribution channels, service channels.
Communication channels deliver and receive messages from target buyers. Where include newspaper, radio, magazine, television, mail, posters etc.
The marketer uses distribution channels to display, sell and service to the buyer. These channels may be direct via mail, internet, or mobile phone and indirect with distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and agent as intermediaries.
The marketer also uses service channels that include warehouse, transportation, banks etc. to carry out transactions with distributor buyers.
Supply Chain:
The supply chain is a longer channel stretching from raw materials to components to finished products carried to final buyers. When a company acquires competitors or expands upstream or downstream its aim is to capture a higher percentage of supply chain value.
Competition:
Competition includes all the actual and potential rival offerings and substitutes a buyer might consider.
Marketing Environment:
The marketing environment consists of the task environment and the broad environment. The task environment includes the actors engaged in producing, distributing, and promoting the offering; these are the company, suppliers, distributors, dealers, and target customers.
The broad environment consists of six components. These are demographic, economic, social culture, natural, technological, and political – legal environment.
