Marketing

Marketing is a term that consists of social and managerial processes by which individuals or groups can exchange the products and value to fulfill their wants and needs. Many of the social sciences like psychology, sociology and economics gives more information about marketing methods. In popular usage marketing is the promotion of products and in professional usage it is customer centered. Marketing attempts to optimize an organization's ability to make a profit, whether monetary (profits or donations) or electoral.

For a marketing plan to be successful in the target market the mix of 4P’s should reveal the requirements of the customers. Two major factors of marketing are:

• Acquisition (Enrollment of new customers)
• Base management

The 4P’s are:

• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Place

Product

Inmarketing mix product phase is the first element that deals with the specifications of the goods or services and how it is related to satisfaction of the customers. Products are usually developed to meet up the wishes of the customers. Supporting elements like warranties and guarantees comprises the reach of the product. Products may be tangible, which can be touched or intangible, which may not be touched like services. The three basic levels of products are:

• Core
• Actual
• Augmented

Products are sorted according to the five characteristics on which the firm managers concentrate while making a new product to satisfy the wants of the customers.

• Quality
• Features
• Styling
• Brand name
• Packaging

Price

Price refers to the process of setting a price to the product including the discount. Price is the only element in the marketing mix that brings revenue to the firm. In order to bring revenue the managers should concentrate on both the internal and external factors of the organization. The following are the pricing strategies available for the marketing mangers.

• Skimming
• Penetration
• Quantity
• Psychological

Promotion

Promotion refers to the various methods of promoting the product .The four promotional tools available to the marketing managers are:

• Advertising
• Sales promotion
• Publicity
• Personal selling

The combination of these promotion tools is referred to as the Promotional Mix, promotion target is to correspond effectively to the potential customers the features and benefits of the products.

Place

Place refers to where and how the product gets to the customers, which geographic region, to which segment etc. Two basic issues involved in getting the products are:

• Channel management
• Logistic management

Since these four variables are controllable, the best mix of these elements is determined to reach the selected target market. As well as the standard 4P’s three more P’s are added and it extends to 7P’s that are People, Process and Physical Evidence. Philosophy is added as the potential 8th P of marketing.

Two Levels of marketing

Strategic marketing aim is to create a competitive advantage relative to its competition. Strategic marketing finds out how an organization tries to win against its rival in a market place.

Operational marketing carries out marketing functions to magnetize and retain customers and to make the most of the value derived from them. Operational marketing also satisfies the customer with on time services and meets the customer anticipation.

Customer focus

Today many companies have a customer focus that means the company concentrates its activities and products on consumer demands. The three of doing this are:

• Customer driven approach
• Sense of identifying market changes
• Product innovation approach

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA (Solution, Information, Value and Access)

Global Marketing

Global marketing is defined as the marketing on a worldwide scale that merges and takes the business advantage of global opportunities, similarities and differences in order to meet global objectives.

Reasons for the shift from domestic to global marketing
• Saturation of domestic markets
• Worldwide competition
• E-Commerce

Evolution to global marketing

Global marketing is an evolutionary process and is not a revolutionary shift. There are five stages are summarized below.

• Domestic marketing
• Export marketing
• International marketing
• Multinational marketing
• Global marketing

Thus marketing plays a pivotal role in any business to create awareness about products or services to the target audience. Academically also marketing is favorite subject among the student communities. Marketing is the backbone of any organization to be successful in todays competitive business world. Due to liberalization and globalization, global marketing in recent years have gained much more importance to sell the companys products or services to the global customers.