Welcome to Blogs @ CSU-Global Campus and my blog, KUPsansSourcer. Most of the content here will be copies of submissions I’ve made to Percolating!, a media and marketing blog by Kup & Sourcer. I’m Kup, but I’m blogging here sans Sourcer. Kup & Sourcer brews up custom communications. Percolating! is the Kup & Sourcer “idea factory” that we offer clients for percolating communications solutions. What I offer students here is a ”contemplation corner.” A better understanding of business in general—and marketing in specific—should percolate here!
Here’s a Percolating! piece from August 2006 entitled “What is Marketing and Why Should You Care?” I welcome your comments and questions!
This morning I came across a lecture I developed a few years ago for a community college e-commerce class. Surprisingly, it’s still pretty relevant/current. If you want a marketing primer–or refresher–this might be worth your five minutes of reading.
What is marketing and why should you care? Consider the following quote (attributed to that ever-wise Anonymous): “There are three kinds of companies: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what’s happened.” Consider also this old Chinese proverb: “If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.” As the world spins forward in the 21st century, there is not only change, but an accelerating rate of change. Companies often fail to recognize that their marketplace changes every few years, if not more often. It has always been the case that last year’s winning strategy may become today’s losing strategy. But, the evolution of the Internet and enabling technologies make marketplace changes faster and easier. As Anonymous observed, there are two kinds of companies: those who change and those who disappear. By exploring marketing and its role in the ever-changing Ecommerce word, you have a better chance of anticipating and adapting to market changes that affect your business.
How should we define marketing? Is it a set of activities done by individual firms or organizations? Or, is it a social process? Marketing is both a set of activities performed by organizations and a social process. In other words, it exists at both the micro and macro levels. Micro-marketing looks at customers and the organizations that serve them. Macro-marketing takes a broad view of our whole production-distribution system.
Specifically, micro-marketing is the performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization’s objectives by anticipating customer or client needs and directing a flow of need-satisfying goods and services from product to customer or client. And, macro-marketing is a social process that directs an economy’s flow of goods and services from producers to consumers in a way that effectively matches supply and demand and accomplishes the objectives of society.
Let us focus on management-oriented micro-marketing and see marketing through the eyes of the marketing manager. Keep in mind, however, that your organization is just a small part of a larger macro-marketing system, our society’s economic system.
As a business person, marketing is the most important thing you do in business today, because marketing, in all its varied forms, is concerned with attracting customers, getting them to buy, and making sure they are happy enough with their purchase that they come back for more. (That’s the part many of us forget, that making sure they want to come back for more, or meeting expectations part.) That’s why marketing consists of so many different activities: sales, advertising, customer service, the product itself, your pricing and discounts, reputation, strategies, and much, much more.
But, as a consumer, you should also care about marketing because you pay for the cost of marketing activities–in advanced economies, marketing costs about $.50 of each consumer dollar (sometimes more). It also plays a big part in economic growth and development–it stimulates research and new ideas that can bring choice to consumers and result in higher employment rates, higher incomes, and a higher standard of living. An effective marketing system is important to the future of nations. And, that’s why macro-marketing is a discipline of its own.
Figuring out how to satisfy customers–existing or prospective–is what marketing and marketing strategy planning is all about. So, marketing provides needed direction for production–helps ensure that the right goods and services are produced and find their way to consumers.
The fact is, whether for lack of skills and resources or lack of time, most people don’t make most of the products they use. (Who do you know that makes their own shoes? Who do you know that grows all their own produce?) Specialized production makes the high standard of living that most people in advanced economies enjoy. And, marketing, by definition, provides needed direction for production. Together production and marketing supply five kinds of economic utility that are needed to provide consumer satisfaction: form, task, time, place, and possession utility. Utility means the power to satisfy human needs.
Form utility is provided when something tangible is produced. Task utility is provided when a service is performed. But, just producing products or delivering services doesn’t result in consumer satisfaction! The product or service must be something that consumers want or else there is no need to be satisfied and, thus, no utility. That is how marketing guides production–marketing decisions focus on the customer and include decisions about goods and services to produce.
Even when marketing and production combine to provide form or task utility, consumers won’t be satisfied until possession, time, and place utility are also provided. Possession utility means obtaining a good or service and having the right to use or consume it. Typically customers exchange money for possession utility. Time utility means having the product available when the customer wants it. And, place utility means having the product available where the customer wants it. Time and place utility are very important for services, too. Both time and place utility challenge us more and more as e-commerce technologies advance!
Simply stated, marketing provides time, place, and possession utility; and, guides decisions about what goods and services should be produced to provide form and task utility.
If you want to do some reading or add to your business library, here are some of the many great books about marketing out on the market (in fact, these are a little dated, yet still excellent):
- “Basic Marketing – A Global-Managerial Approach” by William D. Perrault, Jr. and E. Jerome McCarthy
- “Marketing for Dummies” by Alexander Hiam
- “Kotler on Marketing – How to Create, Win, and Dominate Markets” by Philip Kotler
- “Marketing Plans that Work – Targeting Growth and Profitability” by Malcolm H.B. McDonald and Warren J. Keegan
“Basic Marketing” is a true text book. It has been used in the classroom for 40 years or so and its updates have always been timely. “Marketing for Dummies” is much more tactical. It’s easy to read and humorous, but I would consider it a complement to other marketing books, rather than a stand-alone resource. “Kotler on Marketing” is a more balanced business book that has a lot of practice behind it; Kotler is an academic and a hands-on consultant who writes more captivating prose. “Marketing Plans that Work” is like “Marketing for Dummies” in that it is more tactical, but it also is a little more thoughtful than “Marketing for Dummies.” The website www.emarketer.com is a great up-to-the-minute resource, angled specifically at e-commerce but also with a good sprinkling of all-around marketing ”poop.” You can subscribe to a free E-newsletter that gives you daily news, theory, and trends through the website.