THE MARKETING CONCEPT
Source: Kotler,
Philip. (2000) Marketing Management. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice
Hall.
Introduction
Company
Orientations to the Marketplace
What philosophy should guide a
company marketing and selling efforts?
What relative weights should be given to the interests of the
organization, the customers, and society?
These interest often clash, however, an organization’s marketing and
selling activities should be carried out under a well-thought-out philosophy of
efficiency, effectiveness, and socially responsibility.
Five orientations (philosophical
concepts to the marketplace have guided and continue to guide organizational
activities:
1. The
Production Concept
2. The Product
Concept
3. The Selling
Concept
4. The Marketing
Concept
5. The Societal
Marketing Concept
The
Five Concepts Described
The Production Concept.
This concept is the oldest of the concepts in business.
It holds that consumers will prefer products that are widely available
and inexpensive. Managers focusing
on this concept concentrate on achieving high production efficiency, low costs,
and mass distribution. They assume
that consumers are primarily interested in product availability and low prices. This orientation makes sense in developing
countries, where consumers are more interested in obtaining the product than
in its features.
The Product Concept.
This orientation holds that consumers will favor those products that offer
the most quality, performance, or innovative features.
Managers focusing on this concept concentrate on making superior products
and improving them over time. They assume that buyers admire well-made products
and can appraise quality and performance. However, these managers are sometimes caught up in a love affair
with their product and do not realize what the market needs. Management might commit the “better-mousetrap”
fallacy, believing that a better mousetrap will lead people to beat a path
to its door.
The Selling Concept. This is another common business orientation.
It holds that consumers and businesses, if left alone, will ordinarily not
buy enough of the selling company’s products.
The organization must, therefore, undertake an aggressive selling and
promotion effort. This concept assumes
that consumers typically sho9w buyi8ng inertia or resistance and must be coaxed
into buying. It also assumes that
the company has a whole battery of effective selling and promotional tools
to stimulate more buying. Most firms practice the selling concept when they
have overcapacity. Their aim is
to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants.
The Marketing Concept. This is a business philosophy that challenges
the above three business orientations. Its central tenets crystallized in the 1950s. It holds that the key to achieving its organizational
goals (goals of the selling company) consists of the company being more effective
than competitors in creating, delivering, and communicating customer value
to its selected target customers. The marketing concept rests on four pillars:
target market, customer needs, integrated marketing and profitability.
Distinctions
between the Sales Concept and the Marketing Concept:
1. The Sales
Concept focuses on the needs of the seller.
The Marketing Concept focuses on the needs of the buyer.
2. The Sales
Concept is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his/her product into
cash. The Marketing Concept is
preoccupied with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of
the product as a solution to the customer’s problem (needs).
The Marketing
Concept represents the major change in today’s company orientation that provides
the foundation to achieve competitive
advantage. This philosophy
is the foundation of consultative
selling.
The Marketing
Concept has evolved into a fifth and more refined company orientation: The Societal Marketing Concept. This concept
is more theoretical and will undoubtedly influence future forms of marketing
and selling approaches.
The Societal Marketing
Concept. This concept holds that the
organization’s task is to determine the needs, wants, and interests of target
markets and to deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently
than competitors (this is the original Marketing Concept).
Additionally, it holds that this all must be done in a way that preserves
or enhances the consumer’s and the society’s well-being.
This
orientation arose as some questioned whether the Marketing Concept is an
appropriate philosophy in an age of environmental deterioration, resource
shortages, explosive population growth, world hunger and poverty, and neglected
social services.
Are companies that do an excellent job of satisfying
consumer wants necessarily acting in the best long-run interests of consumers
and society?
The
marketing concept possibily sidesteps the potential conflicts among consumer
wants, consumer interests, and long-run societal welfare. Just consider:
The fast-food hamburger industry offers tasty buty
unhealthy food. The hamburgers have a high fat content, and the restaurants promote
fries and pies, two products high in starch and fat. The products are wrapped in convenient packaging, which leads to
much waste. In satisfying consumer
wants, these restaurants may be hurting consumer health and causing
environmental problems.
What
do you think?
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