Marketing Principles

1. Marketing itself is concerned with what goods and services to produce, how to distribute them, the promotional efforts (including advertising) that go into supporting those products and services, and the pricing strategy that is used. The marketing concept, which has largely evolved since the Industrial Revolution, has three components: it requires that an organisation be consumer-oriented, have a coordinated marketing programme, and be goal-oriented (Evans & Berman, 1995, p. 17). Where a sales approach to business concentrates on selling product and assessing the revenue from that product (a narrow view), the marketing concept takes a broad view and considers consumer demands and tastes as well as long-term strategy.

The marketing mix is composed of four components: product, distribution (place), promotion and price (Evans & Berman, 1995, p. 18). Product refers to the specific product or service that is being offered for sale, and is the foundation for the remainder of the marketing decisions. Even within a particular product category, decisions must be made about the exact characteristics that a product will have, and whether the company will market variations on its primary product. For example, companies that sell salsa must decide not only on the basic recipe for the salsa, but whether the salsa will be available in both mild and "hot" varieties (or whether additional gradients will be added to the product line).

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organisation's level of success or failure in reaching its objectives, feedback and adaptation (Evans & Berman, 1995, p. 28). In an effective business environment, those factors that can be controlled are determined both by top management (strategic direction of the company) and by the marketing department (selecting target markets, for example). Uncontrollable factors are those which exist in the environment, such as economic conditions, which are not under the purview of either top management or the marketing department. Feedback and adaptation are important because they are the tools by which the company can gauge the success of its programmes, and which help the company achieve long-term success. Successful marketing organisations take on the issue of strategic planning, which determines what marketing actions to perform, the personnel responsible for implementing them, and how they will be determined to have been completed. Marketing plans may be for the short-term or the long-term; some are put in place for intermediate amounts of time in order to help the company achieve its long-term goals. Strategic plans depend on organisational missions to define the overall environment and determine what business the company is

Category: Business - M