The nature and scope of marketing - Essay Example

?Introduction Marketing is known to be a socio-economic activity that is significant. The marketing activity is essential in that it satisfies human wants and raises the social welfare. The base of marketing is known to be production. Through the distribution of the goods and services, marketing supplements the activities of production. Through marketing, the producers and the consumers are associated together mainly for mutual benefits. It enables the ownership of goods and services to be transferred to the consumers. Production will lack purpose if the produced goods are not delivered to the targeted consumers using proper mechanisms of marketing. Marketing is about developing winning offers to each segment of customers. Furthermore, marketing is about managing productive customer relationships by attracting new customers and retaining existing one through offer of quality goods and services as well as satisfying them. They also measure the level of company’s brand image and customer’s satisfaction level. Selling and marketing have to be differentiated clearly. Selling mainly focuses on the sellers needs while marketing focuses on satisfying the buyer’s needs through product and everything that is linked with its creation, delivery and consumption. There are four pillars that support the marketing concept and they include; the target market, the needs of the consumer, integrated marketing and profitability. The marketing concept unlike selling takes a unique perspective. It begins its focus on a market that is well defined, focuses on the various needs of consumers, organizes activities that influence the consumers and makes profits through customer satisfaction. The fundamental marketing concepts include; marketing analysis, customer behavior, marketing instruments and marketing strategies. The nature and scope of marketing Over the past years, the argument on marketing nature and scope has continued to build up. This issue has resulted in newer definitions being introduced in some of the marketing textbooks. However, it is the obligation of the marketers to clearly give a clarification on what they would like the scope of their field to be like. This requirement results from the definition of marketing. It is referred to as a declaration of the scope of the field that has to be decided in a way that benefits the subject’s theoreticians, practitioners, and even teachers. In order to define the marketing scope in a logical way, standards ought to be established. These standards will provide useful guidance in testing all the marketing definition. Usually marketing task is perceived to be that of creating, promoting and delivering different products and services to various consumers and businesses. Marketing is a wide subject involving a number of activities, which are aimed at increasing market share, retaining customers and adding new customers. The scope of marketing is classified to include; first, the study of the needs and wants of a consumer, the aim of production of goods is to satisfy different human wants. Therefore it is the obligation of every marketer to study consumer’s needs and wants. Consumers are motivated to buy the goods and services by their needs and wants. Secondly, marketing concern itself to the study of behavior of the buyer and competitors. The study of an individual buyer behavior is emphasized in the modern marketing. For market segmentation and market targeting, a marketer has to carefully analyze the customers’ pattern of behavior. The study of competitors helps a business entity to establish own competitive advantage and explore the strengths to win more customers. Thirdly, marketing involves planning and development of product. In marketing, product remains to be the core. The planning and development of a product begins with product idea creation and ends with the product commercialization and development. The decisions such as branding, packaging, labeling and grading comes under the product planning. It also covers existing product lines expansion or contraction. Fourthly, marketing involves product pricing and associated policies. Every marketer is required to observe the existing policies regarding prices of products. Fifth, marketing involves distribution of goods and services. One of the key areas of marketing is studying its channels. The main focus is to distribute goods to several consumers at the least cost possible. Hence, distribution channels selected ought to be suitable. Sixth, marketing involves communication. Communicating with customers and the outside world is done through advertising, public relations, personal selling and promotions. Communication enhances service or product brand. The main aim of communication is to increase demand of goods and services of the company, change customer’s belief and attitudes, enhance the image of the company and increase market share of company’s products and services. These communication activities play a key role in the attainment of the marketing goal. A company needs to use integrated communication during advertising and promotion of its product or services. Integrated communication combines audio and visual communication strategies to increase awareness of company’s product and services. Visual is the most powerful form of communication because the image is registered in the customer’s mind for quite a longer period. Seventh is consumer satisfaction. In the contemporary society, the consumer remains sovereign. They determine what the business should be and where it is suppose to prosper. Therefore consumer satisfaction ought to be the focus of every marketer. In summary, one of the major objectives of marketing is to satisfy the consumer. Finally, marketing is comprised of the marketing control. Marketing audit is used in marketing to handle marketing control. Marketing tools There are a number of marketing tools that help a business entity to markets its products and services. Several tools are used by marketers in order to acquire the needed responses from the markets that are targeted. These tools make up a marketing mix. A marketing mix is defined as the set of tools of marketing that are utilized by an organization in pursuing its various objectives of marketing in the market targeted. Marketing mix is known to be a combination of the marketing tools. The marketing tools are used mainly used to meet the objectives of customers and those of an organization. The tools are mainly classified into groups and are mainly referred to as the 4Ps of marketing. The marketing 4Ps include; product, price, place and promotion. Marketing as a traditional concept promises a solution to a need or want, tell prospective buyers where to get the product or service, promises value for customers money and promises the prospective buyers that they will access the product in a specific location. Price is a component of marketing mix that is critical. Price is defined to be the product valuation and the seller usually mentions on the product. Price includes variables such as; the pricing policies, discounts and the mark-ups, the credit sale terms, delivery terms and the selected and used pricing strategy. Pricing plays a significant role on the product competitive position. Pricing might be used by the marketers as a tool that helps to attain the targeted sales volume and market share. Price can also be utilized to win the market and for effectiveness in facing competition in the market. The policies and the decisions of pricing impacts an organization sales volume and profits directly. It is important to review and adjust a product market price on regular basis. The price charged on various products of a company should be high enough in order to acquire sufficient profits. However, it should also be low enough so as to inspire customers to buy given products. The price should also enable an organization to face competition in the market in an effective way. Physical distribution that is also known as place in the marketing mix involves the following variables. The first variable is the types of intermediaries that can be utilized for distribution. Secondly are the distribution channels of marketing that can be used to distribute products. Third is a variable consisting of the transportation, warehousing and the inventory control that enable the availability of the product to the customers in an easy and economical manner. When handling distribution in large scale it is important to involve the services of other marketing intermediaries such as wholesalers and retailers. Another element of marketing mix is the place. Physical distribution involves goods being delivered to customers at the right place and time. A product physical distribution occurs through several and varied distribution channels. Promotion as a tool in marketing can be subdivided into marketing tools. According to Hiam (2009), market tools can include all forms of advertising including the billboards, the radio, televisions, yellow pages, newspapers, internet and posters among others. Currently internet marketing is becoming a common and most effective tool for marketing fast all types of goods and services both nationally and internationally. Under internet marketing are article marketing, video marketing and blogging. Article marketing involves writing articles about a business, which are then published in an online article directory. The online article directory makes the article available to many people who can access the site through the internet. Video marketing involves taking a video and pictures of company’s products and services and posting it on the internet. The video can be watched on internet through YouTube and other supporting media. When a video appears on the internet search engine, people are first tempted to watch it before they proceed and through that business can effectively market their products. Blogging is another marketing tool in the internet. Blogging involves commenting about company’s products and services. It is interactive marketing tool that most search engines favor Business can also communicate with the outside world through packaging and labeling. According to Ferrell and Hartline (2011, 207), good packaging is critical in developing a strong product or service brand. When packaging, it is important to make a good choice by considering brand name, brand marks, color, number of products to be packaged, size and shape of the package as well as materials used in packaging. Packaging can be used to signal product modification and repositioning. Three business orientations that include globalization, technological advances and deregulation are being challenged by the marketing concept. The marketing concept includes that for an organization to be able to attain its goals, it has to be ahead of its competitors in the creation, delivery, and in the communication of customer value to the established target markets. Need to integrate marketing and other functional areas To be successful, there has to be tradeoff among various functions in the business entity so that they will be a full understanding of company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. If different functions in the company fail to collaborate, then it will be extremely difficult to achieve successful marketing. If the marketing function becomes a closed loop, it may lead to a gradual decline of creativity and marketing activities. According to McDonald and Wilson (2011, 77-79), it is extremely difficult to be successful in marketing endeavors if all other functional department in a business entity are not consulted. This is because the products or services produced are directly linked with functional departments. The key functional areas apart from marketing include research and development, procurement (sourcing), production, operations, finance, sales, distribution and human resource departments. When marketing function is integrated with the above function, productive synergy is created within the company, which contributes significantly to success in the business entity. Marketing is about retaining existing customers while at the same time acquiring new ones through provision of quality goods and services and making the customers satisfied. This can only be achieved if marketing departments work closely with other departments. Sourcing department plays a critical role in ensuring that raw materials or goods for resale are purchased from suppliers who produce high quality goods so that the goods that would be sold to the customers by the company are also of high quality (McKinlay and O'Connor 2007, 140). The sourcing department also develops positive working relationship with supplier so that the suppliers would provide them with better trade discounts and give them priority during shortage of goods for resale or raw materials for production. With better discounts during sourcing, marketing department can provide sale discounts and with priority during sourcing, the business can continue to provide goods and services to their customers. The production department also contributes to success of marketing endeavors. Verma (2012 p. 393) asserts that a production department ensures that product or services produced in the company are free from errors (defects); that it conforms to a state of requirements; that it has all the necessary characteristics and features; and that the product or service is able to meet or satisfy customers’ needs. For the production team to produce goods or services acceptable to the customer, the marketing team need to facilitate visiting of customers by the production team so that they will understand customers needs better, invite customer to the company’s production lines and the production team would be willing to work extra hours to ensure that products are produced as planned and supplied to customers on schedule. When the production team work simultaneously with the marketing department, the production team would always look for better ways of producing quality products and services at lower cost and on schedule to ensure those customers’ needs are met. On the other hand, finance department is also important to the marketing department because it ensures that marketing budget is well supported for marketing department to meet advertising and promotion needs. The finance department also helps in producing profitability reports on products and services. The reports are based on the performances of different market segments, channels of distribution as well as sale territories, which would enable the marketing department to make informed decisions on who to target most to increase their sales and profitability. Another important department is the distribution department. Once the market department has promised the customers to deliver goods and services according to their expectation, the remaining work is left to the distribution department, which ensures that exact goods or services that meet quality standards of the customers are delivered on time. It is the distribution department that deliver value proposition made by the marketing department by being friendly, responsive to customers changing needs, flexible, convenient and handling complains among other things to ensure that customers remain happy and satisfied. Human resource department need to be integrated with the marketing department. Human resources is concerned with recruiting employees. Marketing department should communicate qualities and characteristics it demands for its team to ensure that they get competent members. It is the work of the human resource to recruit and motivate highly competent marketing team to ensure that marketing department becomes efficient and effective in their endeavors. The human resource department ensure that they are enough employee in all other functional departments in the company to support the market function, for example, they ensure that product team is competent and in appropriate numbers to ensure that quality goods and services are produced in good time. Research and development department is critical to the marketing function. They feed the marketing function with appropriate information that would enable it make informed decision on marketing issues. Research and development team meet and listen to customers and other functional department relay that information to the marketing function. By providing information, they provide valuable targets to the marketing team. They also try to understand customers and competitors behavior and encourage the marketing team to handle them adequately (Boone and Kurtz 2011, 379). Above all, the marketing department needs to secure support from the chief executive officer, where the chief officer of the company can help to develop a culture of collaboration among different function of the company. When a chief officer takes part in market the company’s products, everyone in the business entity is persuaded to also promote the company and its products. Marketing department need to be integrated with Information Technology (IT) department to enable it market it products through the internet effectively. Integrating IT department with marketing department enhances marketing campaign at a relatively lower cost. Another most important functional department is the sales department. Sales department is key in ensuring that customer is kept satisfied all the time. This department ensures that the value of the company is delivered in terms of providing the right quality and quantity of goods and services at the right time. They also follow-up customers to make sure that they do not have problems in using the product or service and as a result generate repeat customers, which allows the marketing teams to direct their energies and resources into new territories. References Boone, L.E., & Kurtz, L.D., 2011. Contemporary Business. 14th ed. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Ferrell, O.C., & Hartline, M. 2011. Marketing Strategy. 5th ed. Mason: Cengage Learning. Hiam, A. 2009.Marketing Kit for Dummies. 3rd ed. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. McDonald, M. & Wilson, H., 2011. Marketing Plans: How to Prepare Them, How to Use Them. 7th ed. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. McKinlay, I. & O'Connor, M., 2007. Marketing. Cape Town: Pearson South Africa. Verma, H., 2012. Services Marketing: Text and Cases, 2/e. 2nd ed., New Delhi: Pearson Education India. Read More