It’s always good to touch base once in a while, to go back to the basics. A good grounding in the foundations of any subject, such as marketing, will make learning the more complex concepts easier. And so without further ado:
What is marketing? People in the general public might define it as that daily trip to the grocery store. A company executive would define it differently, as a business concept involving the management of company economics and public policy. It’s a combination of both and more. It’s the entire interplay between a producer and a consumer. Basically it’s the producer offering a product or service that they know a consumer wants and/or needs.
The concept of the market has been in existence as far back as the human race has been able to form societies. Every person is different, has different thoughts, has different skills and physical characteristics. If they are thrown together, they use different skills to do functions necessary to the society – a division of labor. And a market is born. Some will be producers, some primarily consumers, some politicians, etc. It’s inevitable that in the simplest form of society, there will exist a reason to trade and barter goods or services.
Marketing is a social interaction. Door-to-door salesmen offering encyclopedias and toasters, brokers advertising the best San Francisco furnished apartments, high school students offering to wash your car – contact with other people is unavoidable. Marketing, after all, is created to satisfy the requirements of the individual in society.
Within the last century, businesses and their practices have evolved significantly. Early in the 20th century businessmen were concerned primarily with increasing production and reducing costs, then next they put emphasis on how to get consumers to purchase more of their goods and services, then finally they focused on determining what is it exactly that consumers want. In marketing today, the consumer and the society as a whole is a major player in all phases of the marketing process.
Marketing is not limited to business interaction. You might say that the basics of marketing is ingrained in the individual of today. You convincing your classmate to go to a party with you by enumerating all the benefits he or she might acquire in doing so is one example of it. In any instance where a person or organization wants something and another is in a position to give it, marketing exists.