Ethics Case
Notes for Marketing
Lesson 1
MARKETING FOR CONSUMERS, FIRMS AN SOCIETY
Marketing provides needed direction for production and helps make sure that the right goods and services are produced and find their way to consumers. It encourages research and innovation – the development and spread of new ideas, goods and services.
Marketing is both a set of activities performed by organizations (micro) and a social process (macro). Aim of marketing is to identify customers’ needs and meet these needs so well that the product almost “sells itself”. Marketing should begin with assessing customer needs – not with the production process.
Marketing does not occur unless two or more parties are willing to exchange something for something else. Marketing exchange may be part of an ongoing relationship, not just a single transaction. High levels of customer satisfaction promote high customer loyalty that in turn, fosters customer retention.
Macro-marketing directs economy’s flow of goods and services from producers to consumers in a way that effectively matches supply and demand and accomplishes objectives of society (emphasis is on how the whole marketing system works). Exchange between producers and consumers is hampered by spatial separation, separation in time, separation of information and values and separation of ownership. Marketing functions help narrow the gap: the universal functions of marketing are buying, selling, transporting, storing, standardization and grading, financing risk taking and market information. Intermediary – someone who specializes in trade rather than production. Facilitators – firms that provide one or more of the marketing functions other than buying or selling. Some marketing specialists perform all the functions; others specialize in one or two.
There are two basic kinds of economic systems: planned systems (government planning) and market-directed systems (dollar votes). Most are a mixture of the two extremes. In a
Lesson 1
MARKETING FOR CONSUMERS, FIRMS AN SOCIETY
Marketing provides needed direction for production and helps make sure that the right goods and services are produced and find their way to consumers. It encourages research and innovation – the development and spread of new ideas, goods and services.
Marketing is both a set of activities performed by organizations (micro) and a social process (macro). Aim of marketing is to identify customers’ needs and meet these needs so well that the product almost “sells itself”. Marketing should begin with assessing customer needs – not with the production process.
Marketing does not occur unless two or more parties are willing to exchange something for something else. Marketing exchange may be part of an ongoing relationship, not just a single transaction. High levels of customer satisfaction promote high customer loyalty that in turn, fosters customer retention.
Macro-marketing directs economy’s flow of goods and services from producers to consumers in a way that effectively matches supply and demand and accomplishes objectives of society (emphasis is on how the whole marketing system works). Exchange between producers and consumers is hampered by spatial separation, separation in time, separation of information and values and separation of ownership. Marketing functions help narrow the gap: the universal functions of marketing are buying, selling, transporting, storing, standardization and grading, financing risk taking and market information. Intermediary – someone who specializes in trade rather than production. Facilitators – firms that provide one or more of the marketing functions other than buying or selling. Some marketing specialists perform all the functions; others specialize in one or two.
There are two basic kinds of economic systems: planned systems (government planning) and market-directed systems (dollar votes). Most are a mixture of the two extremes. In a