Marketing Concept and Marketing Segmentation in Practice - Term Paper Example

Here, the exchange process involves the customers giving out money for goods or services that they feel are satisfying their wants and needs. Therefore, customers are only willing to engage in the exchange process if their needs are fully being satisfied. Therefore we can define the marketing concept as a way of satisfying consumer needs and at the same time achieving the organizational goals (Kotler and Gary, 2010). Marketing is a manager’s responsibility that requires adequate planning, coordination, and implementation of campaigns by a skilled and competent manager. The marketing manager has to set marketing goals and objectives and make sure they are met.

Is there a relationship between marketing and selling? Yes, there is. According to Peter Drucker, marketing aims at making selling possible or superfluous. This means that marketing wants to know the customers' needs such that the product or service, sells itself. While marketing is backed by an integrated marketing plan, selling is involved in aggressive selling and promotions emphasizing price variations so as to close the sale (Scott, 2000). The terms want and needs, as used in our definition, are different. A want is a desire while a need is something that human needs cannot do without. The main basic needs are food, shelter, clothing, and sex. According to Maslow’s hierarchy, there are five categories of needs as indicated below:

• Physiological needs. These include the basic human needs of food, shelter, and clothing
• Safety needs. According to Maslow, all human beings feel that they need to be protected and safeguarded.
• Belongingness and love needs. Every human being has a desire of being loved and to belong in a family or a group.
• Esteem needs. Human beings need to be recognized when they achieve something so as to feel motivated.
• Actualization needs. These needs are the last needs in Maslow’s hierarchy and involve the need to realize personal potential, growth, and self-fulfillment.

There are several benefits associated with the marketing concept (Kotler, 2009). To begin with, a firm is able to attain a competitive edge. Through the adoption of appropriate marketing strategies, a firm can easily penetrate the markets by offering the best compared to its competitors. In other words, this is what is termed as a competitive advantage. Another benefit of the marketing concept is that a firm is able to know customers' needs and wants and their changing preferences through deep market research and market analysis.

Marketing also assists a firm in achieving organizational goals. Most organizations aim at customer satisfaction and profitability (McDaniel and Gitman, 2007). Through marketing business networks can be created. Business networking is a marketing tool used to create business opportunities through relationships with business minded people. The reason why business networking is preferred is that the costs incurred are low compared to other modes of marketing such as promotions, advertising and public relations (Dibb et.al 2005). Therefore, business networking only require s more personal commitments than money. There are two commonly used methods for creating business networks. There is face to face networking which requires physical presence. Face to face networking is commonly preferred because the quality of relationships created is very high compared to that of the other modes. The other mode of business networking is via the online system.