Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers.

Marketing might sometimes be interpreted as the art of selling products, but selling is only a small fraction of marketing. As the term "Marketing" may replace "Advertising" it is the overall strategy and function of promoting a product or service to the customer. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."[1] From a societal point of view, marketing is the link between a societys material requirements and its economic patterns of response. Marketing satisfies these needs and wants through exchange processes and building long term relationships. The process of communicating the value of a product or service through positioning to customers. Marketing can be looked at as an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, delivering and communicating value to customers, and managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its shareholders. Marketing is the science of choosing target markets through market analysis and market segmentation, as well as understanding consumer buying behavior and providing superior customer value. There are five competing concepts under which organizations can choose to operate their business; the production concept, the product concept, the selling concept, the marketing concept, and the holistic marketing concept. The four components of holistic marketing are relationship marketing, internal marketing, integrated marketing, and socially responsive marketing. The set of engagements necessary for successful marketing management includes, capturing marketing insights, connecting with customers, building strong brands, shaping the market offerings, delivering and communicating value, creating long-term growth, and developing marketing strategies and plans.[2]

Contents

1 Marketing concepts o 1.1 Earlier approaches o 1.2 Contemporary approaches 2 Customer orientation o 2.1 Organizational orientation 2.1.1 Herd behavior 2.1.2 Further orientations 3 Marketing research o 3.1 Marketing environment o 3.2 Market segmentation o 3.3 Types of Market Research 4 Marketing planning o 4.1 Marketing strategy 5 Marketing specializations 6 Marketing Promotion strategies o 6.1 Above the line o 6.2 Below the line 7 Buying behavior o 7.1 B2C buying behavior o 7.2 B2B buying behavior

8 Use of technologies 9 Services marketing 10 See also 11 References 12 Bibliography o 12.1 Works cited

Marketing concepts
Earlier approaches
The marketing orientation evolved from earlier orientations, namely, the production orientation, the product orientation and the selling orientation.[3][4] Profit driver Western European timeframe

Orientation

Description

Production[4]

Production methods

Product[4]

Quality of the product

Selling[4]

Selling methods

A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service. Thus, this signifies a firm exploiting economies until the of scale until the minimum efficient scale is reached. A 1950s production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with a good certainty that consumer tastes will not rapidly alter (similar to the sales orientation). A firm employing a product orientation is chiefly concerned with the quality of its own product. A firm until the would also assume that as long as its product was of a 1960s high standard, people would buy and consume the product. A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of a particular product, and not determining new consumer desires as such. Consequently, this entails simply selling an already 1950s and existing product, and using promotion techniques to 1960s attain the highest sales possible. Such an orientation may suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that i