2 Marketing Defined
According to the American Marketing Association: Permalink above is “unknown.” Could chapter be called What Is Marketing? I deleted “Marketing Defined” which also appeared as a subhead right before the content started
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
Marketing Is Composed of Activities
Marketing is composed of four activities centered on customer value: creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging value as shown in the figure below: Label the Figure?
What is Value?
When we use the term value, we mean the benefits buyers receive that meet their needs. In other words, value is what the customer gets by purchasing and consuming a company’s offering. So, although the offering is created by the company, the value is determined by the customer.
Furthermore, our goal as marketers is to create a profitable exchange for consumers. By profitable, we mean that the consumer’s personal value equation is positive. The personal value equation is
value = benefits received – [price + hassle]
Hassle is the time and effort the consumer puts into the shopping process. The equation is a personal one because how each consumer judges the benefits of a product will vary, as will the time and effort he or she puts into shopping. Value, then, varies for each consumer.
Value varies from customer to customer based on each customer’s needs. The marketing concept, a philosophy underlying all that marketers do, requires that marketers seek to satisfy customer wants and needs. Firms operating with that philosophy are said to be market oriented. At the same time, market-oriented firms recognize that exchange must be profitable for the company to be successful. A marketing orientation is not an excuse to fail to make profit.
Marketing creates those goods and services that the company offers at a price to its customers or clients.
That entire bundle consisting of a tangible good, and intangible service, and the price is the company’s offering. When you compare one car to another, for example, you can evaluate each of these dimensions—the tangible, the intangible, and the price—separately. However, you can’t buy one manufacturer’s car, another manufacturer’s service, and a third manufacturer’s price when you actually make a choice. Together, the three make up a single firm’s offer.
Communicating Offerings
Communicating is a broad term in marketing that means describing the offering and its value to your potential and current customers, as well as learning from customers what it is they want and like. Sometimes communicating means educating potential customers about the value of an offering, and sometimes it means simply making customers aware of where they can find a product. Communicating also means that customers get a chance to tell the company what they think.
Marketing Mediums
Just about anything that is used to reach out to prospects and customers is part of the marketing mix. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Print, TV, radio, print media, direct mail, catalogs, outdoor, shopper marketing, event marketing
- Digital Media, which broadly encompasses anything digital such as digital display advertising, email, podcasts, YouTube video
- Social media along the lines of Instagram, WeChat, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.
- Search engine marketing, which includes “buying” keywords that people use to search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Baidu, Amazon
- Search engine optimization, which uses web page content and external content (such as in social media) that helps increase organic —or nonpaid—search results
- Sales, which include internal and external sales people, relationship managers, outbound telephone solicitors, and customer support people
