Basic Marketing Concepts

According to John Stubbs, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, “Marketing consists of the anticipation, identification and fulfilment of customers’ needs. It is, or should be, at the heart of every commercial enterprise (and a good few non-profit organizations as well). The source of every organization’s future cash flows is the customer, and it is the task of marketing to win customer preference. This requires highly professional marketers, but also a company-wide appreciation of the role and critical importance of marketing.”
It is therefore the communication and explanation of marketing to a wider audience is vital.
Marketing Definition
There are three main way to define marketing. As Forsyth (2003) points out:
· Marketing as a philosophy of business. That of seeing the customers and ensuring profitability by providing them with value satisfaction. The reverse of saying ‘This is what we make, buy some’, it ensures the business focuses on customer needs.
· Marketing as a function of business. It is the total management function that co-ordinates all that the philosophy implies, anticipating the demands of customers, identifying and satisfying their needs by providing the right product or service at the right price, time and place.
· Marketing as a series of techniques used to carry out the whole process. These include advertising and selling, plus a plethora of other promotional techniques and everything from research to pricing.
Marketing: art or science?
The techniques of promotion, advertising and selling are not precise in their effect. They, and marketing itself, are as much art as science. So the good marketers are as creative as they are technically able; whether they succeed or not may have as much to do with experience, and with ‘gut-feel’ as it does with following the rules. They are the modern-day commercial alchemists; except that instead of eye of toad and wing of bat their ingredients are USPs, copy platforms, self-liquidating offers and brand strategies. Perhaps more than any other management function marketing thrives on jargon; and whilst jargon is only professional slang, it is invaluable in an activity where the great thing is to appear more scientific than artistic (Forsyth, 2003).

Recommended Book
Patrick Forsyth, Marketing Stripped Bare—An Insider's Guide to the Secret Rules