The marketing concept has evolved over the last years, marketing reflects to a key approach to doing business

“The Marketing concept holds that the key to achieving the organisational goals lies in determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfaction more efficiently and effectively than the competition”. For an organisation to provide products that satisfy customers needs through a co-ordinated set of activities that also allows the organisation to achieve its goals, because customer satisfaction is the major aim of marketing concept.

Organisations need to communicate effectively with their customers, outlining the benefits of its service and how they can be used to improve the customer lifestyle. Motorola produced mobile phones that enable their customers to use multimedia messaging, enabling customers to send, not just voice, but also graphic images and audio clips. When these features were introduced customers started purchasing the Motorola mobile phones, because Motorola met the customers requirements. For Nokia, Samsung and other mobile phones companies, to stay in the market, needed to adapt their mobile phones. The disadvantage of this product, when it was launched was that, not every person had this Mobile phone due to the price of the mobile phone. So it was pointless for the Motorola customers to have the phone, as they could not communicate with other people who do not have the added features.

The most important relationship in the market is obviously that between an organisation and its customers. Organisations will find out about customers requirements before supplying the products to satisfy customers needs. Organisations need to communicate effectively with their buying publics through the marketing process, marketing lies at the heart of successful Business activity. Organisations need to ensure that they are part of a quality supply chain, the supply chain is the links involved in bringing goods to the final customer, for example, Marks and Spencer stores buy their ready prepared meals and most of their clothes from factories, owned by other companies, which supply them exclusively. Marks and Spencer develops very close links with these suppliers. It insists that the goods that it buys meet pre-determined specifications.    

 

An organisation needs to create and maintain an appropriate marketing mix, which will satisfy the customers in the target market. An organisation will control the product, place, price and promotion in order to satisfy their customers.

Product is the important element to an organisations marketing mix, for a product to be successful must meet the customer needs. A product can be seen in different ways, a person buys an overcoat to keep warm, buys sunglasses to shade their eyes from the sun and buys a watch to tell the time. This isn’t a particular product that a person will buy; an item needs to fit in with our particular perceptions. So you wouldn’t buy any coat, sunglasses and watch, you will buy the product that suites your needs, for example, Sony had designed a CD walkman, that their customers can carry with them, it was big in size and wouldn’t fit in to a pocket easily, Sony have now adapted this product and have launched a Mini Disc walkman which looks similar to a CD walkman but it is half the size and has additional features. This will enable the customers to carry their Mini Disk Walkman. The Mini Disc is designed that it is small and compact that will easily fit into a pocket. As the requirements of the customer alter, where Sony have started on their latest innovation of a network Mini Disc that can be connected a laptop computer, and also a PC kit that enables users to download digital music file stored on their computers hard drive on to a Mini Disc.

In order to satisfy a customer a product must be available at the right time and in a convenient location. When dealing with the place variable an organisation will make products available in the quantities desired to as many customers as possible and to keep the cost of transport and storage to a minimum. Organisation don’t respect their customer to shop around too much in order to find a product, so Sony have distributed their product to many shops and Sony also have a number of independent dealers who only deal in Sony products. Sony’s product is distributed to those dealers through a central distribution warehouse who order the products when needed, and many of the products are available on the Internet.  

Coco cola is the worlds best selling soft drink, largely because it is available virtually everywhere. The best way of marketing the product easily available is to give people easy access to direct to the product, either by shopping on the internet, TV shopping, paying by credit cards and mail order etc.

 All organisations face a task of setting a price on their products or services. Price is important if other elements in the marketing mix are relatively similar across a range of competing products. Price is important to people, although the product is high quality, some people can only pay a certain price and others may afford it, for example, rich people will pay more for the Mini Disc Walkman, and other people will purchase low quality produced Mini disc player. As Sony has re-launched the Mini Disc, prices were cut as they realised that prices were limiting sales. Sony used a price-skimming strategy in Japan to keep the price of the Mini Disc as high as possible due to the high demand of the Mini Disc. In America Sony failed to recognise the customers needs, so the price was kept to a minimum because there wasn’t a demand of high quality devices from the customers.

Promotion represents the various aspects of marketing communication; this is the communication of information about the product. Products can be communicated in various methods such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, packaging and display, for example, mobile phones are advertised in magazines, newspaper, Internet and posters on shop windows. This is too keep the customers interested in the products and for the organisation to build a relationship with the customer, the organisation will offer money or discount to the person who recommends a friend to the company, for example Argos will give their customers £10 credit if they recommend a friend.

In conclusion, the marketing concept is the major aim to an organisation. It can clearly be seen that marketing focuses on the satisfaction of the customer needs, wants, and requirements.

From the above analysis, for an organisation to be successful, needs to meet the requirements of the customers, in order to do this the organisation needs to consider the views of customers and to see what the customers requires.  

Organisations need to maintain a good relationship with their customers because they need to satisfy the customer through a set of activities, which will also allow the organisation to achieve its goal.

The marketing mix, which explore the, price, place, product and promotion variable. These are adapted and focused upon the customer. The customer will consider weather or not to purchase, where to purchase, the item that they prefer.

(1,558 words).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dave Needham, Rob Dransfield, Phil Guy, Mark Show, David Dooley. (1999). Marketing for higher awards. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers

Dibb, Simkin, Pride, Ferrell. (2001). Marketing concept and strategies. 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Miffin Company

Mack Hanan, Peter Karp. (1991). Customer satisfaction. New York: amacom

John Wilmshurst. (1995). The fundamentals and practice of marketing. 3rd ed. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

 

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