Introduction to Marketing
Defining Marketing
Marketing is the creation, communication, and delivery of value, as well as the management of customer relationships for a lifetime.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Define marketing, its role within a firm, and the competitive advantages it offers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key Points
- The set of engagements necessary for successful marketing management includes capturing marketing insights, connecting with customers, building strong brands, shaping market offerings, delivering and communicating value, creating long-term growth, and developing marketing strategies and plans.
- Marketing is one of several functional areas in a business that must be guided by a core company philosophy, while focusing on the exchanges that take place in external markets to maximize performance.
- The specific role of marketing is to provide assistance in identifying, satisfying, and retaining customers. If marketing consistently highlights a company’s competitive advantage over other alternatives, consumers may become loyal to the point of selecting the brand by default.
Key Terms
- competitive advantage: Something that places a company or a person above the competition.
Defining Marketing
Marketing is the act of facilitating the exchange of a given commodity for goods, services, and/or money to deliver maximum value to the consumer. From a societal point of view, marketing is the link between a society’s material requirements and its economic patterns of response. Marketing satisfies these needs and wants through both the exchange processes and building long-term relationships.
Marketing can be viewed as an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, delivering, and communicating value to customers, and managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its shareholders. Marketing is the science of choosing target markets through market analysis and market segmentation, as well as understanding consumer buying behavior and providing superior customer value.
The set of engagements necessary for successful marketing management include capturing marketing insights, connecting with customers, building strong brands, shaping the market offerings, delivering and communicating value, creating long-term growth, and developing marketing strategies and plans.