Marketing is an important department of modern day business organizations. It is concerned with the wide array of products you use. It brings these products from the marketers to you. Since these products satisfy your needs and wants, marketing’s basic function is to bring to you want satisfying products. How will you know about these products? Marketers use advertising and other methods. Advertising persuades you to buy the advertised products. Where do you buy these products from – either from an online store or and off-line brick-and-mortar shop-or a hypermarket or a supermarket. These are the distribution channels that the marketers use. All these products are competitively priced. Marketers thus, have to manage the so-called four P’s – Products, their Prices, their Promotion and the Places where they are available.
Marketers sell you the products in the country you live in. They also export products to other countries. Marketers have to manage a large sales force who approach the buyers and distributors. Thus foreign trade and sales management are integral to marketing. Marketers have to study the behavior of consumers to know what they buy and why do they buy. It is more or less the study of consumer psychology.
Thus the scope of marketing is very wide. It covers products, pricing of the products, promotion and advertising of these products, and the distribution of these products. It also covers international marketing and consumer behavior. Marketing research is conducted to know about the markets and consumers.
Had it not been for marketing, we would have not been able to use all these new products, say music systems, lap tops, tablets, antibiotics, automobiles and so many other products. Some of these products were not known a few decades back. Marketing facilitates the introduction of new products. It in a sense delivers a standard of living to you.
To begin with , companies focused on production and manufacturing. As markets expanded they felt the need of selling. In selling , the product is made and sold to you.Later came marketing. It is a paradigm shift. Marketing starts with the needs and wants of the consumers. Products are the made to satisfy these needs and wants. Thus philosophically, it is different from selling. Marketing puts the consumer in focus.
Marketing Management
Marketing management is being taught at business schools. All big companies have marketing and sales departments. They either do marketing research in-house or engage outside agencies.
Marketing management consists of marketing planning and its implementation. Any plan has to set objectives and devise strategies to achieve these objectives. A marketing plan contributes to the overall corporate plan.
A company first ignores marketing. It the stumbles and falters and the feels the need for marketing. A company takes a long time to adopt marketing. However, companies tend to forget marketing philosophy very fast. There should be a top management commitment to marketing. Marketing department’s head occupies a place of pride in the company. Marketing function is on par with other managerial functions such as finance, production and HR. Marketing ideally should be at the centre of the organisation. It should guide the other other core functions of the business available.