What is Marketing?
According to (Kotler, 2003) "Marketing is the business function that identifies unfulfilled needs and wants, defines and measures their magnitude and potential profitability, determines which target markets the organisation can best serve, decides on appropriate products, services, and programs to serve these chosen markets, and calls upon everyone in the organisation to think and serve the customer." The goals are to create value by offering superior solutions, save the buyer time and effort in finding and purchasing goods/services, and delivering a higher standard of living to society as a whole.
Evolution of Marketing
(Keith, 1960)
During a production orientation era, business concerned itself primarily with production, manufacturing, and efficiency issues. The reason for the predominance of this orientation is that there was a shortage of manufactured goods (relative to demand) during this period, so goods sold easily. The implications of this orientation were:
· Product lines were narrow
· Pricing was based on the costs of production and distribution
· Research was limited to technical product research
· Packaging was designed primarily to protect the product
· Promotion and advertising was minimal
After the WWII, as supply was starting to out-pace demand in many industries businesses had to concentrate on ways of selling their products. Numerous sales techniques such as clos ...