ShivaniToday, there’s a strategy for everything, but for building a strategy, it becomes important to understand the basics of it first. For example, if you want to build a strong marketing strategy, then it becomes imperative to understand marketing concepts. By following the five core marketing concepts, you can figure out the right strategy for you. To put it simply, execution is a crucial step in marketing, and it only happens after doing a lot of research and strategizing.
What is Marketing?
Marketing is the art and process of developing, executing, and maintaining an exchange relationship. You begin with attracting the customers, building a relationship with them, and finally keeping it by satisfying their needs.
That customer can be either other businesses or the customers; therefore, marketing can be B2B or B2C depending upon the situation. However, the ultimate function of marketing remains the same: to build a relationship with customers and satisfy their needs by meeting their requirements. Corporate marketing training plays a crucial role in honing the skills required to navigate this complex landscape. It equips professionals with the knowledge and strategies necessary to attract, engage, and retain customers effectively.
For example, telecommunication builds a marketing strategy that first intrigues and persuades people to use their calls, messaging, and internet packages. Once people begin using, then they urge them to rate their service by giving them stars.
What are the Marketing Concepts?
The marketing concept means whenever a company plans and implements to maximize profit by boosting sales, meeting customers’ needs, and surpassing competitors. The goal is to devise a situation that serves both parties; the customer and the company.
The idea behind the marketing concept is to predict and satisfy the needs and wants of customers better than the competitors. The marketing concepts were first derived from the book of Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. However, it remained unexplored to the world till the 21st century.
To fully appreciate the marketing concept, first, we to understand needs, wants, and demands;
- Needs – it is something inevitable for the existence of life; many adverse things can occur without it. The worst-case situation would be death. Needs cover many things, like food, shelter, self-development, security, social belonging, self-esteem, and respect.
- Wants – wants are our desires and wishes in life; our social setup and culture mould our wants.
- Demands – when our desires, needs, and wants are backed by our ability to pay, they become demands.
Since we have learned the basics of marketing, it’s time to understand five marketing concepts.
5 Basic Marketing Concepts
There is an end number of marketing concepts as every type of business has its concept. While some concepts still work today, others have become out-of-date. However, we will be looking at five core marketing concepts, also recognized as marketing management philosophies.
1. Product Concept
The core purpose of the product concept is to manufacture cheaper products because the consumers won’t pay much price for the products or services. So the businesses that accompany the product concept manufacture the goods on a mass scale and profit out of the economies of scale.
When manufacturers produce low-cost products, then they follow a broad distribution strategy to reach more audiences. By targeting more people, they can boost their productivity by expanding their market.
In the product concept, marketers do not give any importance to the requirements and wants of the customers. Their central focus is to produce more and more goods, quantity matters, not quality. As a result, consumers are usually unsatisfied with the bad quality of the products.
The product concept was popular when there were no competitors in the market; whatever you bring in the market, people would take it.
For instance: Ford was the first vehicle company; it commenced delivering more vehicles in the market. People purchased it because it was the only product available at the time.
2. Production Concept
It is one of the earliest marketing concepts where the organization concentrates on the ability of its production processes. It is to manufacture the products cheaper to make them ready for the mass population. The center of the production concept is on the quantity, not the quality of the products.
Production concept began in the mid 1950s, and it accompanies the Say’s Law. It says that supply generates demand in the market. Therefore, according to this law, when a company manufactures a product, it doesn’t need to promote its products; it would sell itself.
The law became widespread because, at that time, there was no technology and communications, and people used to travel less.
The salesman in the store used to be the only retailer, and there were few manufacturers. So there used to be a confined variety of products, whatever comes in the market, and then it would have been marketed.
For example McDonald’s and fast food chains in general also aim to ace their operations.
3. Selling Concept
As the name suggests, the idea of selling is to sell the company’s product through large-scale marketing and promotional activities. It doesn’t matter whether they satisfy customers’ needs or not.
The center of the management in this method is to finish the transaction of sale; they believe that their job is done once they market their product. Therefore, rather than establishing and maintaining a long-term connection with the customer, the customer would come back again.
The sale concept is a very precarious strategy because it’s based on a very weak notion that the company should sell whatever they’re manufacturing instead of meeting customer’s demands.
In this approach, marketers believe that if consumers don’t like the company’s product, they’ll buy something else and forget about their past shopping experience. So the whole notion of the sale concept is based on the false presumption that the customers don’t remember their past buying experience.
For example, blood donations and insurance policies come under the category of sale concept, where the marketer believes that their job is done after making the transaction.
4. Marketing Concept
When it comes to the marketing concept, it is customer-oriented. It places customers in the middle of the marketing process, discovering customers’ demands and wants, then meeting those needs better than the competitors.
In this method, the marketer assumes that the customer is always right, and his requirements and wants should be their priority. Here the marketing strategy concentrates on producing a profit by satisfying the needs and wants of customers.
It supports a very simple strategy: marketers do not search for the right customers for their product; instead, they build the right product. Thus, marketers seek to bridge the gap between the consumers and the company’s products by creating engaging content marketing materials like interactive product catalogs.
When you analyze the marketing concept with the sale concept, you may find a huge distinction between both strategies. It won’t be wrong if you state that these two strategies are at two opposite extreme poles. The best example of this concept is the Coke vs. Pepsi war, In this case (Pepsi V. Coca Cola war), it’s not just about doing another Facebook ad, but much more about the product & marketing positioning in the customer’s eye.
5. Societal Marketing Concept
The idea behind the societal marketing concept is based on the welfare of the entire society because it examines the strategy of the marketing concept. What consumers need doesn’t mean that it would be useful for them in the long term. What you need and what is suitable for you and society as a whole are two entirely different things.
For example, we all like sweet, spicy, and fast foods. We all desire the same things whenever we go out, but it doesn’t imply that it’s good for our health and the well-being of the whole society.
The goal and aim of the societal marketing concept is to make companies understand that they have a friendly and environmental responsibility, much more important than their short-term sales and profit goals. Businesses should design and operate towards a sustainable future for society; organizations are a part of society and should behave like one. One of the best examples of societal marketing concepts is the Coca Cola Super Bowl Commercial 2014 “America The Beautiful.” Campaign.
Conclusion
Production, product, and sale concepts have become out-of-date in most fields; they only survive in some fields. Today’s business follows the marketing concept of engaging and fulfilling customers’ needs and wants, but environmental challenges are challenging the entire strategy of the marketing concept.
The societal marketing concept is true that what’s healthy for an individual and suitable for the whole society are totally different things. Therefore, marketers should create a marketing strategy to consider the societal and environmental factors because there won’t be any marketing activity without society. Therefore, society’s obligations should come first.
Apart from having a knowledge of marketing concepts, it is important to have a cost-effective marketing strategy in place. In this competitive era, it has become challenging to acquire target customers. Therefore, considering launching a referral program is a great idea.
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