Marketing Philosophy
Marketing management represents marketing concept in action i.e. pre-planned demand management under customer-oriented marketing philosophy. Marketing management may be defined as the process of management of marketing programmes for accomplishing organisational goals and objectives. It is the management of the crucial and creative tasks of delivering consumer satisfaction and thereby earning profits through consumer demand.
The definition given by American Marketing Association (AMA) in 1985 is: “Marketing (management) is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of goods, services, and ideas to create exchange with target groups that satisfy customer and organisational objectives.” This definition recognises that marketing management is a process involving, analysis, planning, implementation and control, that it covers goods, services and ideas that it rests on the notion of exchange and that the goods is to produce satisfaction for the parties involved.
Marketing management is directly in charge of
●the setting of marketing goals,
●developing the marketing plans,
●organising the marketing functions,
●putting the marketing plan into action and
●controlling the marketing programmes.
Objectives of Marketing Management
Marketing management is mainly concerned with those activities which lead towards to achieve long term profits by satisfying customer needs and wants. However, the main objectives of marketing management are:
1. To create new customers and attract them to wards firm’s goods and services, through promotion-mix.
2. Every marketing activities revolve around the preferences of consumers in the modern marketing. Therefore, selling goods and services are not only sufficient but satisfaction of consumers is more important.
3.Marketing-mix i.e., 4P’s of the marketing
should be planned in such a manner so as to meet the different requirements of all customers.
4. To generate sufficient profits for the growth of business and to survive in the market.
5. To built goodwill of the business by initiating image building activities such as sales promotion, publicity and advertisement, high quality product, reasonable price etc. It also helps to raise the living standard of the people.
Nature of Marketing
In the words of Stanton, “Marketing is the creation and delivery of a standard of living; it is finding out what customers want, then planning and developing a product or service that will satisfy those wants; and then determining the best way to price, promote and distribute that product or service.” Effective marketing management requires the ability and the skill of higher order. The main aim of the marketing management is to know the consumer so well that the firm is able to offer goods & services to which the consumers remain loyal and the new consumers keep on coming at increasing level.
The important characteristics of marketing management are as under:
Marketing is a specialised business function. In the early days, the selling function did not call for anyspecialised skills as the sales could have been effected on production-basis. But now the business environment has undergone tremendous changes in social, economic, political and cultural aspects. The management of a firm, therefore, has to develop a particular organisation with a view to absorbing new ideas, new approaches and new market demands.
●Marketing is a social function. It requires constant interaction with the various strata of society. It is instrumental in manipulating the factors of production, distribution, promotion and price, and also in influencing the patterns of consumption and consumer attitudes.
●Marketing is an integrative function. It inte-
grates and combines the other business functions like production, finance, personnel, R & D, etc. with a view to accomplishing the organisational objectives.
●Marketing reflects the business mission of a firm before the public and society.
It is said that change is the only basic law of
economics. Marketing, which is the art of distributing the products and services among the various claimants, has also only one basic law, change.
●Marketing is a universal function. It has a universality in the sense that it can be applied to both profitmotive and non-profit motive organisations. A profit-seeking business unit is dependant on marketing. The institutions like hospital, school, university, or political association also practise marketing in popularising the services offered by them.
●Marketing is a management function like the management of other functions such as production, finance, personnel, etc. The business policies, strategies and programmes related to marketing are mostly of managerial functions.
●Marketing through Research & Development, determines for the engineer, designer and the manufacturer that what the customer wants in a given product, what pricing he is willing to pay, and when and when it will be wanted.
●Marketing have an authority over product innovation and planning, production scheduling as well as over the sales, distribution and servicing of the product.
●Marketing is a science as well as an art. It is a complex phenomenon as a human nature itself. The rules of both art as well as science are applied to marketing in order to obtain the best results.
●Marketing is a system consisting of several inter-dependent and inter-acting sub-systems. It comprises a series of functions which are inter-related. It obtains inputs from the environment and transforms these into output in the shape of profits through customer satisfaction. It keeps on adjusting to the changes in the environment of business.
