There are many different ways to define Marketing. Marketing is the process of organizing the sales force to sell the goods produced by the company. Marketing is the process of advertising and sales. Marketing is the process of understanding and satisfying market needs. Or Marketing is making the market, researching the market to satisfy it. We can also understand that Marketing is the economic and social mechanisms that organizations and individuals use to satisfy their needs and desires through the process of exchanging products in the market.
According to Philip Kotler, marketing is understood as follows: Marketing is a social management process, thanks to which individuals and groups get what they need and want through creating, offering and exchanging. exchange valuable products with others.
This concept of marketing is based on the core concepts: needs, wants and requirements, products, values, costs and satisfaction, exchanges, transactions and relationships, markets, marketing and marketers. These concepts are illustrated in the following figure:
Needs, wants and requests
Marketing thinking starts from actual human needs and desires. People need food, air, water, clothing and shelter. In addition, people are very eager for rest, education and other services. They also have preferences for specific designs and brands of basic goods and services.
Statistics show that in a year, 249 million Americans can consume or use 67 billion eggs, 2 billion chickens, 5 million hair dryers, and 133 billion kilometers of domestic air travel. and more than 4 million lectures by English university professors. These consumer goods and services required more than 150 million tons of steel, 4 billion tons of cotton, and many other capital goods.
It is necessary to clearly distinguish the concepts of needs, wants and requirements. A human need is a state of feeling deprived of some basic satisfaction. People need food, clothing, shelter, safety, possessions, esteem and a few other things to survive. These needs are not created by society or marketers. They exist as a part of the human body and human identity. Wants are the desire for specific things to satisfy those deeper needs. An American has a need for food and wants a hamburger, has a need for clothes and wants a Pierre Cardin suit, has a need for esteem and wants a Mercedes. In another society, these needs are satisfied in a different way: Australian Aborigines satisfy their hunger with penguins; The need for clothes made of loincloths; Appreciation is equal to a necklace of conch shells to wear around the neck. Although people's needs are few, their desires are many. Human desires are constantly evolving and are shaped by social forces and institutions, such as churches, schools, families, and businesses. Demands are desires for specific products backed by the ability and willingness to buy them. Wants become demands when there is purchasing power to support them. Many people want to own a Mercedes, but only a few people are able and willing to buy that model. So not only must the company quantify how many people want its product, but more importantly, it must quantify how many people are actually willing and able to buy it. The above differences shed light on the common criticisms of those who condemn marketing as “marketers create demand” or “marketers entice people to buy things they do not want to buy.” desire". Marketers do not create needs, needs existed before there were marketers. Along with other influencing factors in society, marketers influence desires. They promote the idea that the Mercedes car will satisfy people's need for social status. However, marketers do not create the need for social status. They influence demand by making products relevant, attractive, affordable and easily available to target consumers.
Product
People satisfy their needs and wants with goods and services. The term product here is understood as both goods and services. We define a product as anything that can be offered for sale to satisfy a need or want. The importance of physical products comes not from owning them, but from obtaining the services they provide. We buy a car not to look at it but because it provides transportation. We buy a kitchen not to admire it but because it guarantees cooking service. So physical products are actually means of ensuring our service. In fact, service is also guaranteed by other factors, such as people, places, activities, organizations and ideas. If we feel sad we can go to a comedy club to see a comedian perform, join a singles club (organization) or adopt a different philosophy of life (idea). Therefore, we will use the term product to refer to physical products, service products and other means capable of satisfying a want or need. Sometimes we will also use different terms instead of products, such as goods, satisfiers or resources. Manufacturers often make the mistake of focusing more on their physical products than on the services those products perform. They only think about consuming the product, not about ensuring a need is resolved. However, a woman did not buy a lip balm, but she bought "a hope" for her beauty. The carpenter doesn't buy a drill, he buys a "hole". A physical object is just a means of packaging a service. The marketer's job is to sell the benefits or services contained in physical products, not to describe their physical properties. Sellers who only focus on physical products and not consumer needs are suffering from "marketing myopia".
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