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ONE MORE TIME- WHAT IS MARKETING?

As a discipline, marketing is in the process of transition from an art which is practised to a profession with strong theoretical foundations. Marketing is both a managerial orientation -some would claim a business function. To understand marketing it is essential to distinguish clearly between the two.

Marketing as a managerial orientation

Marketing myopia - a watershed

Life cycles and evolution

Marketing misunderstood

The marketing function

Relationship marketing

Ever since people have lived and worked together in groups there have been managers concerned with solving the central economic problem of maximizing satisfaction through the utilization of scarce resources. If we trace the course of economic development we find that periods of rapid growth have followed changes in the manner in which work is organized, usually accompanied by changes in technology.

A major feature of our own industrial revolution is that production becomes increasingly concentrated in areas of natural advantage, that larger production units develop and that specialization increases as the potential for economies of scale and efficiency are exploited

If one had to pick a single event which marked the watershed between the production/sales approach to business and the emergence of a marketing orientation then most marketing scholars would probably choose the publication of. Theodore Levitt´s article entitled "Marketing myopia " in the July-August 1960 issue of the Harvard Business review. Levitt proposed the thesis that declining or defunct industries got into such a state because they were product orientated rather than customer orientated. Ultimately, however, all markets are finite and sales will level off as the market becomes saturated. Thereafter sales will settle down at a level which reflects new entrants to the market plus replacement/repe at purchase sales which constitutes the mature phase of the PLC

Consider the case of a very simple organism which reproduces by cell division placed into a bounded environment - a sealed test tube containing nutrients necessary for the cell´s existence. As the cell divides the population will grow exponentially, even allowing for the fact that some cells will die for whatever reason, up to the point when the colony reaches a ceiling to further growth imposed by its bounded environment. What happens next closely parallelswhat happens in product life cycles, industry life cycles and overall economic cycles- a strong reaction sets in.

The solution proposed is the adoption of a marketing orientation which puts the customer at the beginning rather than the end of the production - consumption cycle. To do so requires a fundamental shift of attitude on the part of all those concerned with production and consumption. Unfortunately, while this concept seems both simple and obvious to those who have subscribed to it there is ample evidence that it is widely misunderstood and hence misapplied.

Basically, the marketing function is responsible for the management of the marketing mix which, at its simplest, is summarized by the four Ps of product, price, place and promotion. While much more elaborate formulations containing a dozen or more elements are to be found in the marketing textbooks such fine distinctions are not central to the present inquiry into the nature of marketing

The dominant marketing management paradigm founded on the manipulation of the mix began to be questioned in the 1970s as it provided an inadequate explanation of the marketing of services. Such a challenge was unsurprising given that services had become the largest sector in the advanced industrial economies. Specifically, services marketing calls for recognition of both buyer and seller in the exchange process