Explain a Marketing Concept - Essay Example

Peter Drucker rightly said that the true marketer focuses on s’ needs and profits follow on its own when one meets s needs better than their competitors. The crux of marketing lies in understanding this basic philosophy. Accordingly, this paper aims to focus on one of the concept called new product offerings by understanding customer needs. Right product offering creates new demands from the customers. For that one needs to focus not on existing wants of the customers but it becomes important to understand the underlying needs of the customers.

Customers often do not and cannot describe their needs precisely and it is a marketers job to find out the same.Gillette has been in the business of safety razors ever since 1904. It has been constantly innovating and offering new products as per the market needs. In the late 1980s, companys sales were languishing and market share plummeting. Company was quick enough to realize this and in 1990 launched a product called Sensor– an advanced twin blade shaving system. It was designed to have a pivoting head equipped with moving blades so as to adjust with facial contours.

This new offering facilitated closer and smooth shave and thereby Sensor became an instant success for it satisfied markets one of the niche area. It is not surprising that Sensor captured 15% market in the razor and blade segment. Subsequently, Gillette also introduced the ‘SensorExcel’ for women to cater exclusively the women shaving needs. The company continued to offer innovative products such as Gillette Mach3 Turbo, Gillette for Women Venus in the shaving segment year after year to meet the needs of the ever expanding market.

Pencil cell market is huge and usual complaint is a shorter life span of these cells needing replacement quite often. Gillette realizing this drawback of existing product lines introduced high-tech alkaline batteries called Duracell Ultra having a life span much larger than conventional batteries. Needless to say that this new offerings in the name of Duracell became an instant success in the market place for many home gadgets such as digital flash cameras, cell phones, watches.Thus, Gillette is the classic example that offers new products through innovation to fulfill the needs of the consumers and the company’s continued business success proves that new offering to fulfill ever increasing consumer needs is the great marketing concept.

Works-CitedGillette: Managing Product Innovation. Available at: Retrieved June 29, 2012.Kotler, Philip & Armstrong, Gary. Principles of Marketing, 14th Ed., Prentice-Hall Publishing.