Реферат: Marketing Is Marketing Essay Research Paper IntroductionMarketing

Branding exists primarily for identification and to smooth the task of differentiating products (Macrae, 1996). There is a strong psychological ingredient inherent in consumer branding with many consumers, notably of supermarket merchandise, exhibiting strong loyalty to their favored brands. This is true in certain industrial markets, but for many products the required unique positioning concept and associated marketing communications campaigns are lacking substance, longevity and the sheer emotion of consumer brand building activity (Doyle, 1998). Branding for most business-to-business goods, particularly industrial products are less persuasive and emotive than for the vast majority of consumer brands.

The marketing mix

McCarthy s 4Ps have re-appeared in many marketing texts for around three decades. Product, promotion, pricing and place (channels) are still considered to be the tactical marketing toolkit manipulated by most marketing practitioners (Dibb and Simkin, 1997). Servicing marketing added the additional 3Ps of people, process and physical evidence [2]. For industrial marketing, it is generalized in most introductory marketing texts that the core 4Ps hold firm. Compared with most consumer goods, however, there is a much stronger customer service aspect to the product proposition: technical advice before a sale, ongoing customer support and after market operations. Marketing channels are often shorter, with much use of dealer networks or direct marketing. The sales force is central to the promotional mix, sales promotion is heavily deployed, trade shows and direct marketing are popular, and advertising tends to be more technical and less emotive in nature. Even pricing is different: few industrial buyers adhere to list prices, expecting to negotiate or consider tenders (Hart, 1994). Within the 4Ps , there are important changes of emphasis, while the importance of customer service and the managing the people ingredient in the marketing mix comes straight from the practices of services marketing.

Controlling implementation

While there are exceptions in some of the more long-standing and mature marketing departments, the sales-oriented culture inherent in most industrial companies has not provided a basis for the required operational controls to ensure the effective implementation of marketing activity (Simkin, 2000). Marketing activity is more ad hoc, short-term and tactical, rather than on-going brand building or rolling out longer term marketing plan recommendations.

Some marketers may perceive these variations between consumer and industrial marketing to be only at the margins. Nevertheless, they are, from experience, quite striking differences and manifestly alter the manner in which marketing is actioned. But do they make marketing per se take on a different guise and ethos?

Marketing is marketing

Marketing is not a science: there is no single correct definition or approach to undertaking marketing. The following commonly cited definitions illustrate this variation:

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim is to know and to understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him/her and sells itself (management guru Peter Drucker).

Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably (the UK s Chartered Institute of Marketing).

Marketing consists of individual and organizational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, servicing, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas (The American Marketing Association).

There are, however, common themes in most explanations of marketing. The most important are:

1. the ability to satisfy customers;

2. the exchange of product or service for payment or donation;

3. the need to create an edge over competitors;

4. the identification of favorable marketing opportunities;

5. profits or financial surpluses to enable a viable future for the organization;

6. that resources are utilized shrewdly to maximize a business s market position; and

7. The aim to increase market share in priority target markets.

If the right opportunities are pursued, customers are properly probed, the right customers targeted with a marketing proposition designed to give a business an edge over its rivals, it is highly likely that customers will be satisfied, market share will rise in core target markets and profitability will accordingly support a viable future. Conversely, if a business develops a product or service which fails to reflect customer expectations and needs, is no better than competing offers and takes no account of evolving market conditions, it is unlikely that the future will be prosperous for such an organization. These sentiments are equally applicable to consumer or industrial markets.

Definitions of marketing count for little if businesses do not develop a process, culture and set of operational procedures to actually do marketing (Cravens, 1998; Piercy, 1998). The textbooks promote a process, which hinges on marketing analysis, marketing strategy, marketing mix tactics and internal program controls, typified by (Figure 2)

The marketing process. Recent research (Dibb and Simkin, 1997; 2000; Simkin, 2000) indicates that the majority of large UK businesses do now practice marketing and that when undertaking the more defined tasks of market opportunity appraisal, market segmentation/target marketing, or marketing planning, they do indeed proceed through an analysis-strategy-programs process.

So, is it here where there is common ground: in how marketing is defined and in the marketing process to be deployed? Is this how marketing should be explained: a common set of goals actioned through a process of marketing analysis, strategic decision making, formulation of tactical marketing mix programs and operational controls?

Are the apparent differences in buying behavior explanation, competitor understanding, marketing research activity, market segmentation bases, branding, marketing mix ingredients and internal operationalisation, simply examples of marketing academics seeking to exaggerate perhaps only very minor variations in how marketing is perceived and utilized? Are there other, perhaps more fundamental differences between the activities of consumer and industrial marketers not cited in this brief overview?

Is there one way to describe and characterize marketing? Are any differences evident in industrial marketing merely subtle nuances or do they require their own full and proper explanation? Indeed, just what are the principal similarities and differences between traditional consumer marketing and business-to-business industrial marketing?

This author has concluded, marketing is marketing , with common objectives, processes and tools, irrespective of the market in question. However, the view presented here is that the basic marketing toolkit is applied differently and requires more than minor tweaking to tackle the characteristics of many industrial business-to-business products, target markets, and even marketing managers. What do you think?

References

Assael, H. (1997), Behavior and Marketing Actions, Kent, Boston, MA.

Chang, A. and Simkin, L. (1997), Understanding competitors strategies , Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 124-34.