Explain what is marketing. Why do you think it is important for an organization to engage in marketing? Explain also what the different marketing philosophies are.

The goal of marketing is to create exchanges that will satisfy and benefit both the customer and the organization. Marketing is the function of an organization that identifies their current and potential customers, creates products or services that meet the needs and wants of customers, informs and persuades the customers to purchases these products or services, and reinforces the customers’ confidence in the purchase that they made.

It is important for marketing efforts to be customer-oriented. When marketing a product or service, the organization must be certain that the product or service that they are providing is one that the customer wants. However, it is quite often marketing efforts fail when the organization developed the product/service first, then tried to convince it’s customer to buy it.

The key for a successful marketing effort is maintaining a level of customer satisfaction while at the same time, creating a profit for the organization. Profits must be made in order for the organization to continue to do business. Therefore, the success of an organization depends on effective marketing that can make the organization meet the clients’ wants and make profit.

Marketing Philosophies

The Production Concept

The Production Concept stated that consumers favor products that are available and affordable and management emphasizes production and distribution efficiency.

The basic philosophy of this concept is that if we can build quality products at affordable prices, they will eventually sell themselves. As a result, the major objective of firms follow the production concept is to minimize costs and to maintain product quality with lower cost. If costs can be reduced, prices can then be lowered. Costs are reduced by attempting to increase production and distribution efficiencies as much as possible. 

The Selling Concept

The Selling Concept stated that consumers as unwilling customers whose inherent opposition must be overcome to make a sale (such as the unsought goods - insurance, organ donation requests). They aimed at encouraging sellers to misrepresent their products or services and can lead to problems in maintaining high customer satisfaction.

Marketers follow this philosophy pursued the objective of maximizing sales revenue via very aggressive promotion in order to stimulate demand. In other words, the ‘hard sell’ became the basic philosophy of doing business. The assumption was that people were not going to buy the product unless they were forced to buy in some way. Believers in this philosophy began to really beef up their promotion programs.  Firms pumped large sums of money and other resources into advertising, geared up larger sales forces, and retrained sales people to emphasize more aggressive selling techniques.

This slide underscores everything we have talked about with respect to the selling concept. The characterization of the sales manager beating his fist on the desk portrayed on this slide (at right) strongly suggests that the customer’s want and needs are secondary, if thought of at all. The only thing of concern is to ‘make that sale’ and customers must be convinced to buy -- heavy promotion is required to stimulate demand. 

The Marketing Concept

The marketing concept links the company's success with the consumer's continuing satisfaction. Its “outside-in” approach starts with a well defined target market and an analysis of their needs and wants. Then it builds the company’s offering around meeting those needs better than the competition.

The marketing concept begins with the customer. The core part of the marketing concept states that we should first find out what the customer wants and needs. We then begin to develop marketing program aimed at filling those wants and needs. Proper implementation of the marketing concept requires sound research into what customers want and need. This means that carefully conducted and evaluated marketing research is an essential component of the marketing process. Only after a fully understanding of the market is attained, that should consideration be given to alternative marketing programs (consisting of product, price, promotion, and distribution) to ascertain which programs offer the best potential for creating customer satisfaction. 

The Societal Marketing Concept

In addition to the marketing concept, the idea that the company should contribute to the betterment of society as a whole.

It is an extension of the marketing concept that challenges organizations to conduct their operations in a socially responsible manner. In other words, the core of the societal marketing concept asks firms to consider the ethical consequences of their actions and the collective needs of society at the same time they work to identify and satisfy customer needs and at the same time the firms still need to remain profitable.

The emphasis with the societal marketing concept is still on profitably satisfying customer wants and needs. However, the objectives shift just a little bit. Concern with protecting society’s long-term interests becoming the main objective while at the same time making profit. The marketing mix must be tempered with societal concern. Each element of the marketing mix should be considered and ask if what the firms are doing is consistent with the objective of protecting society's interests.

Relationship Marketing

Relationship Marketing extends marketing practice, and the philosophy of the marketing concept, to include building stronger, long-term relationships with customers; and, building relationships with our own business partners.

The implication is that developing strong relationships with our business partners (suppliers and distributors) will lead to better channel arrangements, higher levels of cooperation, less conflict, and increased efficiency. If we can do this, everybody wins, particularly the ultimate consumer.

Stated somewhat differently, relationship marketing means that we treat everyone as if they are customers. This includes the people that supply us with goods and services, and the channel intermediaries that may buy goods and services from us for resale to their own customers. By relationship-building with all of these organizations and individuals, we can develop strategies that are in the best interest of everyone in the entire channel of distribution. As a result, everyone wins. Decisions are not made to optimize people’s own power and position within the channel; rather, decisions are made to optimize efficiency for the entire channel itself. 

The Organization I am working for follow which Marketing Philosophies

For the organization that I am working for, it has adopted the Marketing Concept in the past and the marketing philosophy is now heading towards the Societal Marketing Concept. The organization sells and provides labours to design, install, repair and maintenance of various systems, such as the fire, security, electrical, background music, traffic surveillance systems. In the past, the company is based on the targeted market and relied on the long term relationship with clients by continuing satisfying their needs to get their purchase orders. Most of the clients will ask us to quote again when they need the services that we deliver.

After receiving their request for quotation, our Salesman will come to their office and discuss with them what they need and submit proposals by giving them advice. As the design of the systems requires professional knowledge, most of the clients accept our proposals without much hesitation (just ask for discount for the quote). When the government passed an Ordinance for the new security requirements for the ships entering Hong Kong this year, a seminar was held and we have invited the potential clients – managers of shipping companies and ship owners to participate to gain more knowledge for our products and our company. The needs of the ship owners are recognized to meet the new Ordinance and some of the participants of the ship owners express their interest in our products.

As the parent company of the organization I am working for is located in the United States - which is a listed company in the US market, in order to maintain corporate image, the organization is heading towards her marketing philosophy to the Societal Marketing Concept. New policies were adopted to increase staff’s concern on environmental friendly and occupational safety aspects.

We are requested to conduct our operations in a socially responsible manner, such as the promotion materials must made by recycle papers, and many other aspects of the company applied the environmental friendly policies. The design of the systems must base on modifying the existing equipments with additional upgrade rather than to upgrade the whole system which creates waste from the old system. This is more environmental friendly and showed that our organization conducts her operation in a socially responsible manner. This act benefits both the client (to spend less on just upgrading the system) and the society (create less waste materials) and also make us operate with profit.

I think that the societal marketing concept that the organization heading towards is the best marketing philosophy and is good for the company, the customer and the society as a whole. The customer can save more money for upgrading the systems and our company can maintain good relationship with clients as they trust us to help them to save rather than asking to buy something that may not be necessary. With less waste materials, the society can benefit. With following the societal marketing concept, the organization is still operate profitably by satisfying customer wants and needs. Just slight changes were made for the proposed items; all parties can be benefit from the marketing philosophy of the organization.

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