Marketing Management Orientation

Marketing management is the art and science of choosing target and building profitable relationships with target customers. To carry out these activities, marketing managers have to take marketing efforts. What philosophies should guide these marketing efforts? What weight should be given to the interests of the organization, customers and the society?

There are five alternative concepts under which organization conduct their marketing activities. Such as areThe production conceptThe product concept The selling concept The marketing concept The societal marketing conceptThe Holistic marketing Concept

The production conceptIt holds that consumers will favor the products that are available and highly affordable. Management should focus on improving production, low costs and distribution efficiency.

It is appropriate in two situations When the demand for a product exceeds the supply.When the products cost is too high and improved productivity is needed to bring it down.When a company wants to expand the market.This orientation makes sense in developing countries such as China.

Criticism The production concept can lead to marketing myopia.Companies adopting this concept run a major risk of focusing too narrowly on their own operations and losing sight of the real objective-satisfying customers needs.

The product conceptThe product concept holds that consumers will favor products that offer most in quality, performance and innovative features. Therefore the organization devote its energy to making continuous product improvement.Managers in these organizations focus on making superior products and improving them over time.

A product concept leads the company to strive constantly to improve the quality of its product and to add new features that are technically feasible without finding out whether or not consumers really want these features.

A product concept often lead to marketing myopia that is a focus on the product rather than on the consumer needs it presumes to satisfy.A new or improved product will not necessarily be successful unless it is priced, distributed, advertised and sold properly.

The selling conceptThe idea that consumers will not buy enough of the organizations products unless the organization undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort.

This concept is typically practiced with unsought goods.Most firms practice the selling concept when they face overcapacity.Their aim is to sell what they make rather than what the market wants. They earn profit through sales volume.The marketers primary focus is selling the product that it has unilaterally decided to produce.

Criticism It focuses on creating sales transaction rather than on building long term, profitable customer relationships.It views marketing as hunting

The marketing concept The marketing holds that achieving organizational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors do.

The marketing concept starts with a well defined market, focuses on customer needs and integrates all the marketing activities that affect customers.This concept is consumer-oriented, market-driven, value-driven, integrated and goal-oriented.It earns profits by creating long-term customer relationships based on customer value and satisfaction.The job is not to find the right customers for your products, but to find the right products for your customers.

Customer driven companies research current customers deeply to learn about their desires, gather new product and service ideas and test proposed product improvements. Such customer driven marketing usually works well when a clear need exists and when customers know what they want.

Criticism In many cases, customers do not know what they want or even what is possible.Customers are not expert enough for the solution.

The societal marketing concept The societal marketing concept holds that the organization should determine the needs, wants and interests of the target markets and deliver the desired satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than do competitors in a way that maintains or improves the consumers and societys well-being.

This concept balances the companys interests, customers interests and societys interests.Now companies are beginning to think of societys interests when making their marketing decisions.

The societal marketing concept calls upon marketers to build social and ethical considerations into their marketing practices. They must balance and juggle the often conflicting criteria of company profits, consumer want satisfaction and public interest.

The Holistic Marketing ConceptThe concept is based on the development, design and implementation of marketing programs, processes and activities that recognizes their breadth and interdependencies.Holistic marketing concept recognizes that everything matters with marketing. Four components of holistic marketing are relationship marketing, integrated marketing, internal marketing and social responsibility marketing.