Marketing concepts and applications

Marketing

Definition of Marketing

The discipline of marketing needs to quickly move beyond the four traditional attributes it has long relied on, including price, product, promotion and place. Marketing today is much more multidimensional and more targeted to the unmet needs, preferences and wants of consumers. In the area of Business-to-Business markets, trust is now the most precious commodity and the currency of this market. The intent of this paper is to provide a personal definition of marketing, comparing them with definitions from two different sources. Next, the importance of marketing in organizational success is discussed and three examples from the business world are provided.

Defining Marketing

The traditional four Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Promotion and Place) have over time become archaic and out of step with marketing strategies of the 21st century. The 4Ps were originally created by Dr. Phillip Kotler and were designed to be strategic in scope (Arussy, 2005). What has occurred however is that the greater depth of integration necessary to ensure an entire businesses' value chain can effectively operate forces marketing into entirely new roles and responsibilities. As a result, the 4Ps are not as all-encompassing was once seen.

The second definition of marketing included in this analysis is based on the extensive work completed by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book Groundswell, where these authors define marketing as the use of all social media and collaborative platforms to create a unique and highly valued customer experience (Bernoff, Li, 2008). This definition is also only partially correct, as it ignores the more traditional areas of marketing and focuses primarily on the more topical and popular concepts of social networks and Web 2.0-based technologies (Bernoff, Li, 2008).

In defining my own definition of marketing, I believe it is as follows: Marketing is the series of processes, systems and strategies deliberately devised to exceed customer expectations while at the same time creating exceptional value for every member of a businesses' value chain. Marketing is the development and exceeding of customer expectations over time, predicated on the synchronization of the value chain to attain this goal. The customer experience, not just the coordination of the 4Ps or the use of just social networks, that matter by far more than anything else (Arussy, 2010).

The Importance of Marketing to Organizations Success

There are many examples of why and how marketing is critical to an organizations' success. As the catalyst of any business' ability to stay solvent and grow is the ability to attract and retain customers, marketing is very important to the financial well-being of a company over time. There is also always the need to continually grow by adding new customers, while at the same time understanding what existing users want. Marketing manages these strategies and seeks to also create loyalty over time.

Marketing's role is well beyond the 4Ps and is often now a critical component in the overall development of supply chain forecasting, new product development, pricing and price administration, and the development of promotional programs that are tightly coordinated with logistics functional areas of a company. A well-run organization will take the time to create exceptional levels of integration across these core areas so marketing is claims and promises to prospects are actually accomplishable. An excellent company will also put marketing at the very center of its operations and direction; marketing will become a catalyst of overall market growth.

With the rapid adoption of social networks, marketing is increasingly multi-channel and relationship based, far exceeding the constraints of the initial 4Ps as a result (Mint, 2010). The use of social networks to create customer loyalty by listening more accurately and responding faster to customer needs is also a critical catalyst of change in this field (Bernoff, Li, 2008). In short, marketing is going through a metamorphosis, which will see it eventually become more focused on being real for the customer and making the entire organization align to their needs and expectations.

Marketing will also become more focused on analytics and metrics of performance as all digital channels can be easily measured and quantified in terms of performance. The rise of all forms of marketing analysis and the use of scorecards including lead scoring and funnel analysis are revolutionizing marketing and making it much more accountable and measurable in its performance. In short, marketing's transition to focusing purely on relationships is transitioning customer expectations and how people want to learn about new companies and buy from. The use of social networks has shown this is becoming prevalent for example (Rosman, 2010).