MGT301 Highlighted Handouts Set 2 by Asfand Yarr

Technical Articles – MGT301

Theme # 1: Understanding Marketing

Marketing affects all facets of one’s life as it shed a huge impact on consumer daily affairs and behavior. Daily we use products from advertising; from toothpaste to clothes. Marketing help consumer to take decisions, it help consumer to know about different opportunities and novelties around them. To be successful, companies develop sound marketing functions. To understand more about the importance of marketing in our lives let’s start with understanding the definition of marketing and other key terms.

Marketing has come out from the word market. Market is used both as noun and verb, as noun it means a place and as a verb it means to bring something to its customers. So, generally marketing is a process of taking something to its customers. Let’s have a look at what is the definition of marketing by Philip Kotler. “Marketing is a process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return”.

Marketing deals with identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest definition of marketing is “meeting the needs profitably”. Marketing is a set of all those activities that create value for customers who need them and build strong relationship with them. It is all about exchange of values between the companies and the consumers.

Let’s look at other key concepts in marketing such as need, want and demand. The marketer must try to understand the target market’s needs, wants and demands. Needs describe the basic human requirements. “Need is a state of felt deprivation”. It is a customer desire for certain products/ services. When you deprived of something, you try to fulfill it. Like thirst, it is the feeling of NOUN: MARKETS MEAN SET OF ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL BUYERS VERB: TO TAKE SOMETHING TO POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS

MARKETING IS ALL ABOUT TAKING VALUES deficiency of fluid in body. Whenever fluid lac in your body, you feel that you need to drink the water. If we extend this concept further, other needs are education, healthcare and entertainment.

" Wants" are a step ahead of needs actually wants aren’t necessary for one to survive. So, a want is the wish for a particular product or a service which are not necessary. “Wants are the form human needs take as they are shaped by culture and individual personality e.g., water and food”. When you are hungry you try to find out the food to satisfy your hunger need. For example, a Britain person needs food but he may want a Burger or Sandwich. while a Pakistani may want Haleem, Kebabs and rice. Wants are actually formed by one’s society.

Wants turn to be “Demands” when a someone irrespective of the region and culture is willing and having the ability to buy that needs or wants. Desire is the core difference between demands and wants. “Demands are those human wants that are backed by his/her buying power”. if you are hungry (need) and you have several choices like burger, Haleem, samosas, rice etc. You want pizza(want) but you do not have enough money to buy it, then it is not your demand. Needs and wants are important but demand is very vital for marketers.

Customers\ consumers are important for marketers. Those who buy something\those who consume something are customers \consumers respectively but those who buy something and those who consume something can be same or different.

Value is something of importance or something having the ability to fulfill the gap or solve a problem. Marketers focus on values as marketing is exchange of values between buyers and seller. Exchange is the act of finding a desired thing. e.g., you want to have eggs in breakfast you will go to the nearby shop and ask for eggs by giving the price to the shopkeeper. In this case exchange has taken place. Transaction is an activity in which goods services or money is passed form account to another. Exchange when take place is called transaction. Whenever you buy or sell something a transaction has occurred.

Market offering is any mixture of products, services or experiences and information to a market to satisfy the customer needs or wants, for example banks offer services; news channels offer information and confectioners offer sweets. “Marketing mix is a combination of 4P’s (product, price, place and promotion) used by marketers to distribute value to customers”. There are four Ps from marketer’s point which must match the four Cs from customers point of view. Product is all goods and services that you design and it must match with the customer solution. Price is the value on which any company offers its product. Price must be such that it matches the customer cost. Then next P is promotion. It is making your market or customer aware of the product / offering. The corresponding C is communication. Promotion must be such that message is communicated to the customer properly. Place is the distribution. Place your product such that it reaches the customer conveniently. So convenience is the corresponding C for place.

the-four-cs-category-5/”

It has been discussed that demand is the essence of marketing. Marketing is used not only by businesses but also political parties, and charity organizations as well. Actual task of marketing is to manage demand. As demand of any product that is offered for selling is never ideal so marketers face different demand situations and resultantly make different strategies for different demand situations. Different demand situations are:

Negative demand is a demand situation in which your product is facing biased or negative views of potential customers. For example, the society in which you are dealing with frozen food items, consider that only fresh food is good. Frozen food is unhealthy; there you are facing negative