The Marketing Process

Introduction
The activities of marketers both reflect and shape the world we live in. Every year new products and services are launched and some of them succeeds on an unprecedented scale. As in the case of Apple's iPod, iPhone, and also iPad. They all are great inventions and highly successful in market.

According to marketing concept, the organisation must find ways to discover unfulfilled customer needs and wants and bring products that satisfy those needs and wants. This can be done in a sequence of steps that is called marketing process.

After reading this you will understand - what is marketing process, and the steps involved in marketing process.

Meaning of Marketing Process
The Marketing Process of a company typically involves identifying the viable and potential marketing opportunities in the environment, developing strategies to effective utilise the opportunities, evolving suitable marketing strategies, and supervising the implementation of these marketing efforts. 


Marketing process involves ways that value can be created for the customers to satisfy their needs. Marketing process is a continual series of actions and reactions between the customers and the organisations which are making attempt to create value for and satisfy needs of customers. In marketing process the situation is analysed to identify opportunities, the strategy is formulated for a value proposition, tactical decisions are taken, plan is implemented, and results are monitored.

Steps in Marketing Process
Following are the steps involved in the Marketing Process :-

1. Situation Analysis
2. Marketing Strategy
3. Marketing Mix Decision
4. Implementation and Control

1. Situation Analysis
Analysis of situation in which the organisation finds itself serves as the basis for identifying opportunities to satisfy unfulfilled customer needs. Situational and environmental analysis is done to identify the marketing opportunities, to understand firms own capabilities, and to understand the environment in which the firm is operating.

A thorough analysis of the situation in which the firm finds itself serves as the basis for identifying opportunities to satisfy unfulfilled customer needs. In addition to identifying the customer needs, the firm must understand its own capabilities and the environment in which it is operating.

The situation analysis thus can be viewed in terms an analysis of the external environment and an internal analysis of the firm itself. The external environment can be described in terms of macro-environmental factors that broadly affect many firms, and micro-environmental factors closely related to the specific situation of the firm.

The situation analysis should include past, present, and future aspects. It should include a history outlining how the situation evolved to its present state, and an analysis of trends in order to forecast where it is going. Good forecasting can reduce the chance of spending a year bringing a product to market only to find that the need no longer exists.


If the situation analysis reveals gaps between what consumers want and what currently is offered to them, then there may be opportunities to introduce products to better satisfy those consumers. Hence, the situation analysis should yield a summary of problems and opportunities. From this summary, the firm can match its own capabilities with the opportunities in order to satisfy customer needs better than the competition.

2. Marketing Strategy: 
Once the best opportunity to satisfy unfulfilled customer needs is identified, a strategic plan for pursuing the opportunity can be developed. Market research will provide specific market information that will permit the firm to select the target market segment and optimally position the offering within that segment. The result is a value proposition to the target market. The marketing strategy then involves:

• Segmentation
• Targeting (target market selection)
• Positioning the product within the target market
• Value proposition to the target market

3. Marketing Mix Decisions
At this step detailed tactical decisions are made for the controllable parameters of the marketing mix. It includes - product development decisions, product pricing decisions, product distribution decisions, and product promotional decisions. The action items include:

• Product development - specifying, designing, and producing the first units of the product.
• Pricing decisions
• Distribution contracts
• Promotional campaign development

4. Implementation and Control
Finally, the marketing plan is implemented and the results of marketing efforts are monitored to adjust the marketing mix according to the market changes. At this point in the process, the marketing plan has been developed and the product has been launched. Given that few environments are static, the results of the marketing effort should be monitored closely. As the market changes, the marketing mix can be adjusted to accomodate the changes. Often, small changes in consumer wants can addressed by changing the advertising message. As the changes become more significant, a product redesign or an entirely new product may be needed. The marketing process does not end with implementation - continual monitoring and adaptation is needed to fulfill customer needs consistently over the long-term.