Business Marketing
A market-focused, or customer-focused,
organization first determines what its potential customers desire, and
then builds the product or service. Marketing theory and practice is
justified in the belief that customers use a product or service because
they have a need, or because it provides a perceived benefit.
Marketing is a social process
which satisfies consumers' wants. This may include advertising, distribution
and selling of a product or service. It may also include anticipating
the customers' future needs and wants, often through market research.
Two major
factors of marketing are the recruitment of new customers (acquisition)
and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers.
Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management
marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts the marketer
to building a relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits
that sold the buyer in the first place, and improving the product/service
continuously to protect the business from competitive encroachments.
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For a
marketing plan to be successful,
the mix of the four "Ps" must reflect the wants and desires of the
consumers in the target market. Trying to convince a market segment
to buy something they don't want is extremely expensive and seldom
successful. Marketers depend on
marketing research, both formal
and informal, to determine what consumers want and what they are
willing to pay for it. Marketers hope that this process will give
them a sustainable competitive advantage.
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Marketing
management is the practical application of this process. The offer
is also an important addition to the 4P's theory. The American Marketing
Association (AMA) states the process of planning and executing the conception,
pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to
create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives".
Marketing methods are informed
by many of the social sciences, particularly psychology, sociology,
and economics. Anthropology is also a small, but growing, influence.
Market research underpins these activities. Through advertising, it
is also related to many of the creative arts. Marketing is a wide and
heavily interconnected subject with extensive publications. It is also
an area of activity infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary
according to the times and the culture.
