Long before the marketing concept philosophy dominated global marketing practice, two philosophies earlier held sway

in marketing viz. the production concept and the selling concept. Particularly with regard to the selling concept, many companies adopted it because they wrongly assumed that consumers will not buy enough of the firms products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort (Kotler and Armstrong, 2010:34). This effort, Kotler and Armstrong say, is an aggressive selling approach that is bedevilled with high risks as it focuses on creating sales transactions, as opposed to evolving long-term, beneficial customer relationships, like the societal marketing concept advocates. The aim of the selling concept, therefore, is often to sell, according to Kotler and Armstrong, what the company makes, relative to making what the market wants. They say that the concept assumes, albeit poorly, that customers who are coaxed into buying the product will like it. Or, if they do not like it, they will possibly forget their disappointment and buy it again later (Kotler and Armstrong). It was, therefore, in the light of the failing of the selling concept, and the need to appreciate the imperative of a new world order in marketing practice, that celebrated marketing teacher and leading management theorist, Peter Drucker, proposes in his 1973 work, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices that:
There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available. 1

Deducible from Druckers proposition is what Kotler and Armstrong (2010:29) explain as the task of marketing in contemporary times, and which is the essence of that all-too-important statement. For them, Today, marketing must be understood not in the old sense of making a sale telling and selling but in the new sense of satisfying customer needs. Kotler and Armstrong continue that If the marketer understands consumer needs; develops products that provide superior customer value; and prices, distributes, and promotes them effectively, these products will sell easily (emphasis mine). And stating that numerous individuals consider marketing only as selling and advertising, Kotler and Armstrong (2010:29) point out that selling and advertising are only part of a larger marketing mix a set of marketing tools that work together to satisfy customer needs and build customer relationships. They, as a matter of fact, explain clearly that selling and advertising are only the tip of the marketing iceberg. It is, therefore, in this connection that marketing studies, amongst other activities in the field of marketing, contemporaneuosly valorize the marketing concept at the expense of the selling concept. The marketing concept is a management philosophy which holds that achieving organizational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target markets (emphasis mine) and delivering the desired satisfactions better than competitors do (Kotler and Armstrong, 2010:34). And with such a philosophy, company focus on customer value and satisfaction ultimately leads to sales and profits. Thus, rather than what Kotler and Armstrong call a product-centered make and sell philosophy, the marketing concept is a customer-centred sense and respond philosophy. They say that the marketing concept starts with a welldefined market, focuses on customer needs, and integrates all the marketing activities that affect customers. In turn, it yields profits by

creating lasting relationships with the right customers, based on customer value and satisfaction. In pointedly defining marketing as the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return, Kotler and Armstrong explicate that what happens in the final analysis of companies working to understand consumers, creating customer value, and building strong customer relationships, is reaping rewards in the shape of sales, profits and long-term customer equity. From the foregoing, one can figure out that marketing is all about creating value for customers, in a way that actually renders selling redundant. And in order to get this right, companies must necessarily and wholly understand the customers that they are out to serve. And to fully understand the customer, means that the marketers study of the consumer is vital because of the impact that mood, emotion and/or situation have on consumer decisions. This, perhaps, underscores the take of Kotler and Armstrong (2010:30) that The most basic concept underlying marketing is that of human needs, as states of felt deprivation which should, however, be attenuated. Such human needs run from physical to social, and through individual needs. One, therefore, notes that Schiffman and Kanuk (2009:20) avow that The marketing concept states that, to be successful, a company must understand the needs of specific groups of consumers and then satisfy these needs more effectively than the competition. The customer also has wants which are the form human needs take as they are shaped by culture and individual personality, according to Kotler and Armstrong (2010), who also lengthily explain that wants are shaped by ones society and are described in terms of objects that will satisfy needs. When backed by buying power, wants become demands. Given

their wants and resources, people demand products with benefits that add up to the most value and satisfaction. The immediate foregoing should not give the impression that that is all there is to implementing the marketing concept, for Kotler and Armstrong clarify that implementing the marketing concept often means more than simply responding to customers stated desires and obvious needs. According to them, customer-driven companies research current customers deeply to learn about their desires, gather new product and service ideas, and test proposed product improvements. They continue that notwithstanding that such customer-driven marketing usually works well when a clear need exists and when customers know what they want, it is not in all cases that consumers know what they want. In many cases ... customers do not know what they want or even what is possible, state Kotler and Armstrong, who equally exemplify that even 20 years ago, how many consumers would have thought to ask for nowcommonplace products such as cell phones and notebook computers, demonstrating that such situations call for customer-driving marketing; that is, understanding customer needs even better than customers themselves do, and creating products and services that meet existing and latent needs, now and in the future (Kotler and Armstrong, 2010:35). What the abovementioned does is to accentuate the imperative of research in the marketing enterprise, and which is given expression in the account of Schiffman and Kanuk (2009:6), who hold that to identify unsatisfied consumer needs, companies had to engage in extensive marketing research. They say that in so doing, companies discovered that consumers were highly complex individuals, subject to a variety of psychological and social needs, quite apart from their survival needs. They discovered that the needs and priorities of different consumer segments differed dramatically, and in order to design new products and marketing strategies that would fulfil consumer needs, they had to study consumers and their consumption behaviour in depth. Kotler and Kellers
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(2010:46) anecdote in this direction is instructive enough. According to them, When Sony designed its Play Station 3 game system, when Apple launched its ipod Nano digital music player, and when Toyota introduced its Prius hybrid automobile, these manufacturers were swamped with orders because they had designed the right product, based on doing careful marketing homework. And this is why Schiffman and Kanuk (2009) aver that marketers who have a detailed perception of the consumer decision-making course are prone to always employing the marketing mix of the 4Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion, by devising products, instituting prices, opting for circulation outlets, and planning promotional communications that will constructively influence consumer purchase decisions, especially repeat purchase decisions. In other words, to the mind of Schiffman and Kanuk (2009:20-21), Marketers realize that the more they know about their target consumers decision-making process, the more likely they are to design marketing strategies and promotional messages that will favourably influence these consumers. Thus, consumer research makes possible for companies to learn about, and understand the customers needs and wants, and know just how the consumers make their decisions on consumption, which ultimately generates revenue and profits for a company. Yet again, Kotler and Kellers (2010:59) example brings this home to us, when they relate that Dell Computer does not prepare a perfect computer for its target market. Rather, it provides product platforms on which each person customises the features he desires in the computer. RELEVANCE OF MARKETING Writing alongside Kevin Keller in 2009, Phillip Kotler says that in a company, finance and accounting, operations, and other business functions would not actually count if there was no sufficient demand for the firms products and services, such that the company could make a
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profit. This is why Kotler and Keller (2009:44) declare that financial success often depends on marketing ability. The intangible assets that make up a large percentage of the value of a firm are what Kotler and Keller describe as brands and a loyal customer base, which they state that marketing helps to evolve, and which importance, discerning chief executive officers recognize. Undoubtedly, skillful marketing as an unending endeavour, helps a company to monitor their customers and competitors, just as it continuously improves their value offerings, so say Kotler and Keller (2009). This is opposed to the fate of companies that take a short-term, sales-driven view of their business and ultimately, ... fail to satisfy their stockholders, employees, suppliers and channel partners, according to Kotler and Keller. Regardless of the preceding statements, the relevance of the marketing enterprise could be inferred from the general essence of the marketing concept, which borders on the philosophy of selling more goods and more easily too, when companies produce only those goods they had already determined that consumers would buy, according to Schiffman and Kanuk, who continue to say that:
Instead of trying to persuade customers to buy what the firm had already produced, marketingoriented firms found that it was a lot easier to produce only products they had first confirmed, through research, that consumers wanted. Consumer needs and wants became the firms primary focus.

In other words, companies got the idea to produce and sell only those products that fit(ted) the customers needs, as opposed to the selling concept, in which a marketers primary focus is selling the product(s) that it has unilaterally decided to produce, according to Schiffman and Kanuk (2009:5). This selling concept requires a hard sell approach to aggressively persuade customers to buy, and the snag with it is that it is inadequate in considering customer satisfaction. Persuasive, therefore, is the relevance of the marketing enterprise, especially as presented by Schiffman and Kanuk (2009:6), when they lengthily state that The marketing concept is based on the premise that a marketer should make what it can sell, instead of trying to sell what it has made. Whereas the selling concept focuses on the needs of the sellers and on existing products, the marketing concept focuses on the needs of the buyer. The selling concept focuses on profits through sales volume; the marketing concept focuses on profits based on customer satisfaction.

REFERENCES Kotler, Phillip and Armstrong, Gary (2010). Principles of Marketing, 13th edition. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. Kotler, Phillip and Keller, Kevin Lane (2009). Marketing Management, 13th edition. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. Schiffman, Leon G. and Kanuk, Leslie Lazar (2009). Consumer Behaviour, 9th edition. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.