What Is Marketing

What is Marketing?

While seeking out a definition for "Marketing", I found the most common definition to be "the activities connected with advertising, distribution, merchandising, product planning, promotion, publicity, research and development, sales, transportation and warehousing of goods or services." (IndiaInfoline, 2005). When I think of marketing strategies, I immediately think of advertising and the television commercials. Though I think this may be one of the most important parts of marketing, I now understand that it is definitely more to marketing than that.

According to this understanding, there are many aspects to marketing. What I understood after reading this article is that in order to be successful in marketing you have in the right place at the right time. This takes a lot of research. The first thing is to do research to find out what the people want. Since the economy is based on supply and demand, it’s important to know what is in demand and where. This is the only way to be able to provide the services or goods in an area where they will actually sell.

In the “Definition of Marketing”, by Steve Yastrow describes marketing as “a function that works to persuade customers to behave in a way that improves a product’s performance” (Yastrow Marketing, 2005). In this definition Yastrow made a connection between the “customer behavior and the result.” I got the understanding that the behavior of the customer basically is determined by the result of how the customer felt after receiving the product or service. Yastrow also illustrated that each customer should be considered a “marketing contact” and that a business can improve performance by listening to the customer’s reaction to the services or goods given.

The text, “Marketing Management”, defines marketing as “meeting needs profitably” (Keller & Kotler, 2006). I think this would prove to be the shortest and most accurate description yet. The basic concept is to make sure that the firm is able to meet the demand of the customer in a way where the product or the service sells itself. This text gave me the understanding that it’s important to understand the market or industry of the firm. Then the company should figure out what makes them special and investigate the correct pricing. It also discusses how the customer should be treated so that they feel important and how to keep them loyal to the company.