What is Marketing?
Marketing is a process of attracting potential shoppers or customers that are interested in your product and services. Marketing is said to be a PROCESS as it consists of Research Work, Promotion, Selling and distribution of the product or service to the potential clients. Marketing depends on a lot of market study and consumer behaviour.
#Aim of marketing:
The main aim of marketing is to understand the customer needs and provide a product or service which totally satisfies the need of the customer. Driving the customers towards business is what marketing is required for.
#Functions of Marketing :
Marketing performs a lot of functions but some of the most basic and essential functions of marketing are as follows:
- Pricing: It simply means, deciding how much price should be charged for a particular product or service offered by the company. There are 2 major methods of pricing a product.
- Cost Oriented Pricing
- Market Oriented Pricing
- Selling: It simply means, making the good or service available to the customer which they wish to buy or avail. There are various methods of selling a product or service such as :
- Selling product at a retail shop
- Personal selling
- Online selling
- Distributing: It simply means selecting the location where a product would be sold and selecting the channel through which the product will reach the desired locations. There are various channels of distribution such as :
- Direct Channel
- Retail Channel
- Wholesale Channel
- Agent Channel
- Promotion: it simply means, to promote a product or service to the maximum possible potential clients through various channels and persuade them to buy that product or service. Various methods of promotion are :
- Advertising
- Personal selling
- Publicity
- Internet Marketing
- Sales Promotion
- Marketing Information Management: it simply means getting the market information that is required for making sound business decisions.
- Product/ Service management: it simply means, developing and changing a product or service according to the needs of the market and maximizing its reach to the potential clients.
# 4Ps of Marketing :
The four P‘s of marketing are called as the essence of the marketing process. The four P are as follows:
- Product: The first P stands for the “Product”. Here you decide what product or service are you going to offer to the customer. The product could either be a soft toy or a gel pen, it can be anything which is of some value to the consumer. Same goes for the service part. The important part is that the offered product or service should be made according to the need of the consumer. A product or service which doesn’t satisfy the needs of the consumer is of no use to the business.
- Price: The second P stands for “Price”. Here you decide the price of the product or service which you are offering to the consumer. There are various methods of pricing mentioned above. However setting a price is not as easy as it sounds, because while setting a price you have to take care that price should be affordable and should justify your product or service, with that it should also provide firm some profit for their survival and growth.
- Place: The third P stands for “Place”. Here you decide that is what all locations you will sell your product or service. It is a really essential part of marketing as if the location selected is right then it can take your business to next levels, but on the other hand if the location decided doesn’t go well with the product or service and the needs of the consumer then it can literally take years to recover the potential losses. Therefore selecting a perfect location is a really important task.
- Promotion: The fourth and the last P stands for “Promotion”. Here all you have to do is to promote your product through various methods mentioned above and make sure that your product or service reaches the potential consumer. One thing you have to take care while promoting your product or service is that the techniques chosen should be according to the product or service, the target audience should be according to the product or service. As you cannot sell a guitar to someone who doesn’t love music. Therefore the selection of the audience and methods is a really crucial part of a promotion. As the main aim is to generate sales through promotion. If a person cannot generate sales then promotion is of no use to him/ her.
Raghav Gaur BBA 3rd B TIAS India
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