Basics of Marketing - Kotler Philip

What is marketing?

What is behind the notion of "marketing"? Most mistakenly identify marketing with sales and incentives.

And no wonder! After all, Americans are constantly harassing television commercials, newspaper ads, sending direct mail advertising, visits of traveling salesmen. Someone is always trying to sell something. It seems that we can not escape from death, taxes and commerce.

Therefore, many are surprised to learn that the most important element of marketing is not marketing. Sales? Just the tip of the marketing iceberg. Sales? Just one of many of its functions, and often not the most significant. If a marketer has worked well on such sections of marketing as the identification of consumer needs; The development of suitable products and the establishment of an appropriate price for them, the establishment of a system for their distribution and effective incentives, such goods will most likely go easily.

Everyone knows about the so-called especially running goods, which consumers hunt in droves. When the firm "Eastman Kodak" created cameras like "Instamatic", the firm "Atari"? The first video games, and the company "Mazda"? Sports car "RH-7", they were filled with orders, because they offered exactly the goods that were needed at that time. Not imitation products, but products clearly different from those already existing and offering consumers new benefits.

One of the leading theorists on governance, Peter Drucker, says this: "The purpose of marketing? Make marketing efforts unnecessary. His goal? So it is good to know and understand the client that the product or service will be just right for the latter and sell oneself. "

This does not mean that sales and promotion efforts are losing their significance. Rather, it means that they become part of a larger "marketing mix", i.e. A set of marketing tools that need to harmonize harmoniously with each other in order to maximize the impact on the market.

Here is our definition of marketing:

Marketing ? A kind of human activity aimed at meeting needs and needs through exchange.

To clarify this definition, consider the following concepts: needs, needs, requests, goods, exchange, transaction and market . 2 .