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How many times throughout the day do people make product decisions? If you stop to think about it, many product decisions are made every day, some without much thought. What should I wear? What should I eat? What am I going to do today? Many product decisions are answered routinely every day and they help move the economy of cities, countries and ultimately the world.

Provide value and customer satisfaction.

Effectively target customers.

Enhance the value of the company.

Improve products and services.

Create a competitive advantage

Understand how customers view their products versus their competitors' products.

Expand the knowledge base in the field of marketing,

Apply marketing strategies toward a positive affect on society (encourage people to support charities, promote healthy habits, reduce drug use etc.)

Product decisions also shape life for the consumer. How can simple decisions be so important? Why do marketers spend millions of dollars to uncover the reasons behind these decisions?

To define consumer behavior: it is the study of consumers and the processes they use to choose, use (consume), and dispose of products and services. A more in depth definition will also include how that process impacts the world. Consumer behavior incorporates ideas from several sciences including psychology, biology, chemistry and economics.

"All marketing decisions are based on assumptions and knowledge of consumer behavior," (Hawkins and Mothersbaugh, 2007). Researching consumer behavior is a complex process, but understanding consumer behavior is critical to marketers-they can use it to:

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Tim Friesner

Marketing Teacher designs and delivers online marketing courses, training and resources for marketing learners, teachers and professionals. View all posts by Tim Friesner

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How many times throughout the day do people make product decisions? If you stop to think about it, many product decisions are made every day, some without much thought. What should I wear? What should I eat? What am I going to do today?

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1. Selling Concept:

The philosophy here is that the customers if left alone would not buy enough of the company s products and hence companies must undertake a large-scale aggressive selling and promotion effort. This concept is used when companies find themselves with an overabundance of products that they have to sell in order to deplete their inventories.

This concept is practised more profoundly in case of unsought goods (that people seldom want to buy) like insurance products, encyclopedias etc. The seller's aim is to sell what they make rather than make what will sell in the market. The company has to push their products through aggressive personal selling, persuasive advertisement, extensive sales promotions (like heavy use of price discounts), strong publicity and public relations.

But hard selling carries high risks. It assumes that customers who are coaxed into buying a product will like it and if they don't, that they won't bad mouth it or complain to consumer organisations and will simply forget about their disappointment or dissatisfaction and will buy again. But with so many buying options and high degree of cognitive level, the buyers cannot be taken for granted in that way. The danger is that the focus on "making the sale" overshadows the focus on building long-term relationships with customers and the dissatisfied customers may bad-mouth the product to a great extent.

2. Marketing concept:

The role of a mutually satisfying exchange is central to the marketing concept. The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving its organisational goals consist of the company being more effective than competitors in creating, delivering and communicating customer value to its chosen target markets in order to satisfy the customers at a profit. Three features of the marketing concept are customer orientation, coordinated effort by all departments within the organisation to provide customer satisfaction and emphasis on long-term profit.

The marketing concept describes an ideal state of affairs. It exists when an organisation focuses all of its efforts on providing products that satisfy its customers. The customer is the focal point for how each area of the organisation is run. Products are created with the goal of satisfying customers' needs and wants.

All departments within the organisation should be organised around the marketing function anticipating, stimulating and meeting customers' requirements and work together toward the goal of customer satisfaction. They closely coordinate their efforts both to satisfy customer wants and achieve the organisation's long-run goals.

When an organisation is attempting to implement the marketing concept, it has a market orientation. An organisation is market oriented when it generates market intelligence on its customer needs, disseminates the intelligence across departments, and then responds organisation-wide to the information. Organisations adopting the marketing concept are committed to market-focused and customer-driven philosophies.

If you want to understand the real different between selling and marketing concept, following is a visual representation of difference between two concepts.

In brief, the functions of marketing can be explained as under:
FIGURE 1.4: Difference between selling and marketing concepts

Concepts

Starting point

Focus

Means

Objectives

Selling

Factory

Product

Selling and Promotion

Profits through sales volume

Marketing

Target market

Customer needs

Integrated

Marketing

Profits through sales customer satisfaction

Let us explain different factors of marketing:

a) Target market:

A marketer has to define the market to which it will direct its efforts. The specification and identification of market would enable the marketer to design specific marketing strategies. A target market is defined as a set of actual and potential buyers of a product, service or idea. A buyer who has interest in the product, income and willingness to buy can broadly be called as potential buyer.

However, it might not be possible for the marketer to target all of them. There might be geographical barriers, unsuitabilities of Product to certain climatic conditions or inability of the marketer to reach certain hilly or remote areas. Thus, a small portion of potential market might become part of the target market. The following figure clarifies the target market and penetrated market.

The penetration of product is difficult even if the potential market is large.

b) Customer needs:

A company can define its target market but fail to correctly understand the customers' needs. Understanding customer needs and wants is not always simple. Some customers have needs of which they are not conscious or they cannot articulate their needs or they use words that require some interpretation.

There are five types of needs. They are stated needs, real needs, unstated needs, delight needs and secret needs. Responding only to the stated need may shortchange the customer.

A responsive marketer finds a stated need and fills it. He is going to loose the customer in the near future. An anticipative marketer looks ahead what needs customers may have in the near future. A creative marketer discovers and produces solutions customers did not ask for but to which they enthusiastically respond. Therefore companies must go beyond just as consumers what they want.

This is necessary because a company's s comes from two groups, new customers and repeat customers. One estimate shows that attracting a new customer can cost five times as much pleasing an existing one and it might cost sixteen times as much to bring the new customer to the same level of profitability as the lost customer. Customer retention is thus more important than customer attraction.

c) Integrated marketing:

When all the company's departments work together for serving the customers, the result is integrated marketing. Integrated marketing takes place on two levels.

Firstly, the various marketing functions like sales force, advertising, customer service, product management, marketing research must work together.

Secondly, marketing must be embraced by the other departments. They must also think customer. According to David Packard of Hewlett - Packard, "Marketing is far too important to be left only to the marketing department". To foster teamwork among all departments, the company carries out internal marketing as well as external marketing. Internal marketing is the task of hiring, training and motivating able employees who want to serve customers well. External marketing is marketing directed at people outside the company.

d) Profitability:

The ultimate purpose of the marketing concept is to help organisations achieve their objectives. In the case of private firms, the major objective is profit. In the case of non-profit and public organisations it is surviving and attracting enough funds to perform useful work. Private firms should not aim for profits as such but to achieve profits as a consequence of creating superior consumer value. A company makes money by satisfying customer needs better than its competitors.

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Concepts of Marketing: Selling and Marketing Concept

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ADVERTISEMENTS: Concepts of Marketing: Selling and Marketing Concept! 1. Selling Concept: The philosophy here is that the customers if left alone would not buy enough of the company s products and hence companies must undertake a large-scale aggressive selling and promotion effort. This concept is used when companies find themselves with an overabundance of products ...