Marketing is an activity. Marketing activities and strategies result in making products available that satisfy customers while making profits for the companies that offer those products. Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives (American Marketing Association).
Marketing is far more than tactics. Marketing is analysis, and a sound marketing strategy is based on this analysis. Having a solid understanding of customers means having a solid understanding about how customers behave, their motivations, their perceptions and preferences. It means segmenting the market correctly and not in the way that most companies think about segmentation. Marketing is everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers. It includes diverse disciplines like sales, public relations, pricing, packaging, and distribution. In order to distinguish marketing from other related professional services, S.H. Simmons, author and humorist, relates this anecdote.
Marketing is your strategy for allocating resources (time and money) in order to achieve your objectives (a fair profit for supplying a good product or service). Yet the most brilliant strategy won 't help you earn a profit or achieve your wildest dreams if it isn 't built around your potential customers. A strategy that isn 't based on customers is rather like a man who knows a thousand ways to make love to a woman, but doesn 't know any women. Great in theory but unrewarding in practice.
Marketing starts with market research, a learning process in which marketers get to know everything they can about the needs and wants of consumers, and it ends when somebody buys something. Many companies feel that services provided to customers after the purchase also are an important part of marketing. All of
References: http://uncw.edu/career/marketing.html http://tenonline.org/art/mm1/9301.html http://www.asbcentral.com/marketing%20pdf/what.pdf http://www.smallbusinessdelivered.com/whydoesyourbusinessneedagoodmarketingplan.html https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/content/eBookLibrary2/content/eReader.aspx