Marketing Concepts

Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others. Marketing involves building and managing profitable exchange relationships with customers. The role of marketing is to understand consumers, create value, and build strong customer relationships. All of these steps form the basis for the fourth step, building profitable customer relationships and create customer delight. In the final step, the customer reaps the rewards of the strong relationship by capturing value from the producer. The role of marketing within an organization is understanding the organizations overall strategic planning process. Strategic planning sets the stage for the rest of the planning in the firm. The strategic plan involves adapting the firm to take advantage of the opportunities in it's constantly changing environment. Companies usually prepare annual plans, long range plans, and strategic plans. The annual and long range plans deal with the companies current business and how to keep them going. Thus, planning occurs at the business-unit, product, and market levels. It has a mission of setting companies objectives, goals, and designing the business portfolio.

In order to achieve marketing involvement in product identification and promotion you should use the marketing tactics of price, place, product, and promotion. Price is the amount of money the customer will pay to obtain the product. The price will determine whether or not a product is in competiton with competitors which would either compete or penetrate with the market. Place is the companies activities that make the product available to target consumers. Granted, this will determine whether you will market direct using agents or distributors. Product means the goods and services combination the company offers to target markets. This tactic determines whether the product will be sold individually, or part