What is Marketing

Marketing, more than any other function, deals with customers.
A simple definition of marketing is managing profitable customer relationships.
Marketing is all around you.

Marketing Defined
Marketing must be understood in the new sense of satisfying customer needs.
We define marketing as the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return. 

Understanding the Marketplace and Consumer Needs
There are five core customer and marketplace concepts.

1. Customer Needs, Wants, and Demands
Human needs are states of felt deprivation. They include basic physical needs, social needs, and individual needs.
Wants are the form human needs take as they are shaped by culture and individual personality.
When backed by buying power, wants become demands. Given their wants and resources, people demand products with benefits that add up to the most value and satisfaction.
Outstanding companies go to great lengths to learn about and understand customers’ needs, wants, and demands. They conduct consumer research and analyze mountains of customer data.


2.  Marketing Offers—Products, Services, and Experiences
Consumers’ needs and wants are fulfilled through a marketing offer—some combination of products, services, information, or experiences offered to a market to satisfy a need or want.
Marketing offers are not limited to physical products. They also include services and other entities, such as persons, places, organizations, information, and ideas.
Sellers who are so taken with their products that they focus only on existing wants and lose sight of underlying customer needs suffer from “marketing myopia.”
By orchestrating several services and products, companies create brand experiences for consumers.

3. Customer Value and Satisfaction
Customers form expectations about the value and satisfaction that various marketing offers will deliver and buy accordingly.
Marketers must be careful to set the right level of expectations. If they set expectations too low, they may satisfy those who buy but fail to attract enough buyers. If they raise expectations too high, buyers will be disappointed.
Customer value and satisfaction are key building blocks for developing and managing customer relationships.

4. Exchanges and Relationships
Marketing occurs when people decide to satisfy needs and wants through exchange relationships.
Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something in return.
Marketing consists of actions taken to build and maintain desirable exchange relationships with target audiences. The goal is to retain customers and grow their business.

5. Markets
A market is the set of actual and potential buyers of a product.
Marketing means managing markets to bring about profitable customer relationships.
Buyers also carry on marketing. Consumers do marketing when they search for the goods they need at prices they can afford. Company purchasing agents do marketing when they track down sellers and bargain for good terms.
The company and the competitors send their respective offers and messages to consumers. All of the actors in the system are affected by major environmental forces.
Each party in the system adds value for the next level.

Designing a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy
We define marketing management as the art and science of choosing target markets and building profitable customer relationships with them.
The marketing manager’s aim is to find, attract, keep, and grow target customers by creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value.

Selecting Customers to Serve

The company must first decide whom it will serve. It does this by dividing the market into segments of customers (market segmentation) and selecting which segments it will go after (target marketing).
Some companies may seek fewer customers and reduced demand. In cases of excess demand, companies may practice demarketing to reduce the number of customers or to shift their demand temporarily or permanently.

Marketing management is customer management and demand manage¬ment.

Choosing a Value Proposition

The company must also decide how it will serve targeted customers—how it will differentiate and position itself in the marketplace.
A company’s value proposition is the set of benefits or values it promises to deliver to consumers to satisfy their needs.
Value propositions differentiate one brand from another.

Marketing Management Orientations

There are five alternative concepts under which organizations design and carry out their marketing strategies.

• The production concept holds that consumers will favor products that are available and highly affordable. Management focuses on improving production and distribution efficiency. The production concept can lead to marketing myopia.
• The product concept holds that consumers will favor products that offer the most in quality, performance, and innovative features. Marketing strategy focuses on making continuous product improvements. The product concept can also lead to marketing myopia.
• The selling concept holds that consumers will not buy enough of the firm’s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort. This concept is typically practiced with unsought goods—those that buyers normally do not think of buying. Most firms practice the selling concept when they face overcapacity.
• Marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions better than competitors do. This concept is customer centered. 
• The societal marketing concept holds that marketing strategy should deliver value to customers in a way that maintains or improves both the consumer’s and the society’s well-being.  Companies should balance three considerations in setting their marketing strategies: company profits, consumer wants, and society’s needs.