Principles of Marketing

Universal Functions of Marketing

Buying, selling, transporting, storing, standardizing and grading, financing, risk taking, and market information.

Buying Function

Looking for and evaluating goods and services.

Selling Function

Promoting the product

Transporting Function

The movement of goods from one place to another.

Storing Function

Holding goods until customers need them.

Standardization and grading

Sorting products according to size and quality.

Financing

Provides the necessary cash and credit to produce, transport, store, promote, sell, and buy products.

Risk Taking

Bearing the uncertainties that are part of the marketing process.

Market Information Function

The collection, analysis, and distribution of all the information needed to plan, carry out, and control marketing activities.

Intermediary

Someone who specializes in trade rather than production.

Collaborators

Firms that provide one or more of the marketing functions other than buying.

Economic System

The way an economy organizes to use scarce resources to produce goods and services and distribute them for consumption by various people and groups in the society.

Government officials decide what and how much is to be produced and distributed by whom, when, to whom, and why.

Market-Directed Economy

The individual decisions of the many producers and consumers make the macro-level decisions for the whole economy.

Simple Trade Era

A time when families traded or sold their surplus output to local distributors.

Production Era

A time when a company focuses on production of a few specific products—perhaps because few of these products are available in the market.

Sales Era

A time when a company emphasizes selling because of increased competition.

Marketing Department Era

A time when all marketing activities are brought under the control of one department to improve short-run policy planning and to try to integrate the firm’s activities.

Marketing Company Era

A time when, in addition to short-run marketing planning, marketing people develop long-range plans—sometimes five or more years ahead—and the whole-company effort is guided by the marketing concept.

Marketing Concept

The idea that an organization should aim all of its efforts at satisfying its customers—at a profit.

Production Orientation

Making whatever products are easy to produce and then trying to sell them.

Marketing Orientation

Trying to carry out the marketing concept

Marketing Metrics

Numeric data that allow marketing managers to evaluate performance, often against a set target or goal.

Triple Bottom Line

A measure of long-term success that includes an organization’s economic, social, and environmental outcomes.

Purpose Orientation

An organization’s reason for being that extends beyond profit and creates value for stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, and communities

Customer Value

The difference between the benefits a customer sees from a market offering and the costs of obtaining those benefits.

Micro-Macro Dilemma

What is good for some producers and consumers may not be good for society as a whole.

Social Responsibility

Marketing Management Process

The process of (1) planning marketing activities, (2) directing the implementation of the plans, and (3) controlling the plans.

Strategic Management Planning

The managerial process of developing and maintaining a match between an organization’s resources and its market opportunities.

Marketing Strategy

Specifies a target market and a related marketing mix.

Target Market

A fairly homogeneous (similar) group of customers to whom a company wishes to appeal.

Marketing Mix

The controllable variables that the company puts together to satisfy a target group.

Mass Marketing

The typical production-oriented approach that vaguely aims at everyone with the same marketing mix.

Channel of Distribution

any series of firms (or individuals) that participate in the flow of products from producer to final user or consumer.

Sales Promotion

promotion activities—other than advertising, publicity, and personal selling—that stimulate interest, trial, or purchase by final customers or others in the channel