Mkt421

Defining Marketing University of Phoenix 05-15-2011 MKT/421 Defining Marketing For many years now I took marketing as something that has to do with a market, like a super market, or in my country there are little market stands that people would setup shop in every day early in the morning. This central area where everybody would be located is called a “Mercado” (Mercado in Spanish means market).This is a place that people would try to sell their inventory hoping to make a living from what they sell. From my understanding it was just people trying to sell you product. In a sense marketing is that but in a more general format. In this paper I will include my own personal definition of marketing, and define marketing from two different sources as they define marketing. Based on the definitions I will explain the importance of the marketing in organizational success. I will provide three examples from the business world to support my explanation. Steve Mckee author of All Together now: “Marketing Is Everything” article from the Bloomberg Businessweek Website. Defines marketing as being everything. He states that marketing is: “Simple, everything those people do – the product engineers, the financial analysts, even warehouse mangers – contribute to how customers perceive a brand. In one sense, everything they do is marketing. So marketing is everything.” What the author is trying to portray is that every aspect of a business from the signage, to the product and employees help outfit the organizations image and business. Marketing is defined by the authors of Basic marketing: A Marketing Strategy Planning Approach text book, define marketing as: “Marketing is the performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization’s objectives by anticipating customer or client needs and directing a flow of need satisfying goods and services from producer to customer or client.” This definition goes hand in hand with the definition provided by Jan Marc Peterson a professor from the University of Phoenix. Which he defines marking as it: “Creates utility through the exchange process.” Utility being defined as a: “Want satisfying power of a good or service” to be used for a function in the marketing process, wither that be in a form, time, place and ownership form of utility. Marketing in organizational success has been seen in a timeline of the past and present and some say they can foresee the future based on the marketing research and approach taken by organizations in general. There have been four different marketing era’s recorded in past and present times. These eras are the production era, which “Business success often defined solely in terms of production victories. One example being Henry Ford the CEO of Ford motors wanted to make sure that everybody had his car, and not his competitors so he made it affordable and didn’t give much option for style color or class, until later eras, which customers then started having a voice and provided Mr. Ford and Ford Motor industries with feedback on what customers wanted and needed in their vehicles. The next era in the marketing era’s history is the sales era, when the tactic many organizations used to get customers to purchase their product was by “convincing” customers to purchase their product and overcome objections, the “Marketing Era” really didn’t start until the late 1950’s, when the marketing concept emerges, and organizations are more discovering that the only way to be successful is by satisfying customer needs. The emergence of the marketing concept had one main objective and that being for the organization to achieve a long run success. Finally the current era that we are in is that of the relationship era, which began in the early 1990’s. This took customer orientation further, and it primarily focused on establishing and maintaining relationships with both the customers and suppliers. Its focus also was to involve long term success, but not to have value added in its relationships with both customers and suppliers. At my employer, I see marketing strategies, techniques and the different eras of marketing still put into play. I see how technology allows us to connect our customers to our employees, vendors, and finally the company’s vision. The vision of my organization is to bridge the gap between the customer and technology by making it easy and affordable, and reliable. The mission is to be the one stop shop for all of our customers’ needs and wants. We have grown a lot and continue to grow as an organization. The reason why we keep growing is due to listening to our customer’s needs and wants, and adjusting to their needs and doing everything possible to meet their needs as well as their wants, and unknown wants. We do this by collecting as much data as we possibly could use technology, by gathering surveys, tracking customers shopping history etc. In conclusion, I have learned that marketing is allot more than a little market stand in my local community, but instead a utility to follow a process in learning customer needs and wants, and seeing organizations grow from this experience. Making all ties between customers and organizations a relation between the two. . In this paper I included my own personal definition of marketing, and defined marketing from two different sources as they define marketing. Based on the definitions I explained the importance of the marketing in organizational success. I provided three examples from the business world to support my explanation. Work Cited. McKee, BySteve. "All Together Now: "Marketing Is Everything"" Businessweek - Business News, Stock Market & Financial Advice. Web. 16 May 2011. . Perreault, William D., Joseph P. Cannon, and E. Jerome McCarthy. Basic Marketing: a Marketing Strategy Planning Approach. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2009. Print. Jan Marc Peterson Marketing 421 (Class notes and Power Points)