The Marketing Concept
By: Mike • Essay • 294 Words • February 15, 2010 • 1,141 Views
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Simply stated, the marketing concept means that an organization should seek to make
a profit by serving the needs of customer groups. The concept is very straightforward and
has a great deal of commonsense validity. Perhaps this is why it is often misunderstood,
forgotten, or overlooked.
The purpose of the marketing concept is to rivet the attention of marketing
managers on serving broad classes of customer needs (customer orientation),
rather than on the firm’s current products (production orientation) or on devising
methods to attract customers to current products (selling orientation). Thus, effective
marketing starts with the recognition of customer needs and then works backward
to devise products and services to satisfy these needs. In this way, marketing
managers can satisfy customers more efficiently in the present and anticipate
changes in customer needs more accurately in the future. This means that organizations
should focus on building long-term customer relationships in which the initial
sale is viewed as a beginning step in the process, not as an end goal. As a result,
the customer will be more satisfied and the firm will be more profitable.
The principal task of the marketing