Which marketing philosophy holds that consumers will favor products that offer the most in quality?
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Marketing is a social and manager process whereby individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and values with others. There are five alternative concepts under which organisations conduct their activities, the so-called marketing management philosophies: the production, product, selling, marketing and societal concepts. The production concept holds that consumers favour products that are available and highly affordable; management’s task is to improve production efficiency and bring down prices. The product concept holds that consumers favour products that offer the most in quality, performance and innovative features; thus, little promotional effort is required. The selling concept holds that consumers will not buy enough of the organisation’s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort. The societal marketing concept holds that generating customer satisfaction and long-run societal well-being are the keys to both achieving the company’s goals and fulfilling its responsibilities. Show
Most successful and well-known companies have adopted the marketing concept, according to which achieving organisational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than competitors do. Implementing the marketing concept often means more than simply responding to customers’ stated desires and obvious needs. Customer-driven companies research customers to learn about their desires, gather new product and service ideas, and test proposed product improvements. The explosive growth in connecting technologies has created a New Economy which provides marketers with new ways to learn about and track customers as well as create product and services tailored to meet customer’s needs. Marketers have redefined how they connect with their customers; in contrast with yesterday’s companies that focused on mass markets, today’s companies are selecting their customers more carefully and developing more lasting and direct relationships with them. Web seems to enable customer relationship building as companies can demonstrate the abovementioned marketing concept on their web sites by including features that are important to consumers; online companies have moved from mass marketing to segmented marketing or one-to-one marketing, in which they target carefully chosen individual buyers. The New Economy revolves around information businesses; information has the advantages of being easy to differentiate, customize, personalise and dispatch at incredible speeds over networks. With rapid advances in connecting technologies companies have grown skilled in gathering information about individual customers and more adept at individualising their products. Marketing companies go to great lengths to learn about and understand their customers’ needs, wants and demands; they build extensive customer databases containing rich information on individual customer preferences and purchases and then they mine these databases to gain insight by which they ‘mass-customise’ their offerings to deliver greater value to individual buyers. Web enables consumers and companies to access and share an unprecedented amount of information with just a few mouse clicks. In order to be competitive in today’s new marketplace, companies should adopt web technologies or risk being left behind. ************** Armstrong, G. & Kotler, P. (2003) Marketing: An Introduction. New Jersey: Pearson Education Ltd Drummond, G. & Ensor, J. (2005) Introduction to Marketing Concepts. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth – Heineman Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Saunders, J., Wong, V. (2001) Principles of Marketing. New Jersey: Pearson Education Ltd Palmer, A. (2012) Introduction to Marketing: Theory and Practice. Oxford University Press Masterson, R. & Pickton, D. (2010) Marketing: An Introduction. London: SAGE Publication Ltd What are Marketing Management Philosophies?Marketing is the process of selling and buying products or services with the objective to gain profit either in monetary terms or in fringe benefits. It is a part of a larger management process. Management is the structured way adopted and followed by an organization from the starting till the implementation process. All the marketing efforts are guided by certain philosophies, which determine how the marketing activities should be carried out. Such philosophies are known as the marketing management philosophies. Marketing management has five philosophies to achieve the objectives of an organization. The evolution of marketing management philosophies started in the middle of the 18th and 19th centuries, during the industrial revolution. Every company has different marketing philosophies devised as per their requirement. But in a broader sense, there exists five marketing philosophies or concepts and a company should follow the right philosophy, as per their requirements and customer needs. The five major marketing philosophies are as follows −
Production ConceptAs per the management guru Philip Kotler, this concept is the oldest of the concepts in business. It holds that consumers will prefer products that are widely available and inexpensive. Managers focusing on this concept concentrate on achieving high production efficiency, low costs, and mass distribution. They assume that consumers are primarily interested in product availability and low prices. This orientation makes sense in developing countries, where consumers are more interested in obtaining the product than in its features. The idea of consumer demand for affordable products comes from the Say’s law that states that “supply will create its own demand”. By increasing the production of the products, the companies utilize the advantage of economies of scale. The reduced cost price makes the product appear inexpensive to the customer which generates more sales. Lower price may be able to generate more customers, but with the decline in quality the sales volume will decrease. This theory holds good when demand is more than the supply, but a customer will not always be looking for cheaper products, there will be many factors that will impact the customer purchase decision. Product ConceptPhilip Kotler suggests that this orientation holds that consumers will favor those products that offer the most quality, performance, or innovative features. Managers focusing on this concept concentrate on making superior products and improving them over time. They assume that buyers admire well-made products and can appraise quality and performance. However, these managers are sometimes caught up in a love affair with their product and do not realize what the market needs. Management might commit the “better-mousetrap” fallacy, believing that a better mousetrap will lead people to beat a path to its door. Companies following this approach will be creating high quality products that will satisfy the requirements of such customers, but it will be expensive in the process. Since the focus of the companies is on producing quality products, they lose out on customers that seek inexpensive products or are influenced by availability and usability of the product. For example, the Rolls Royce company will make their cars available to only a certain set of buyers. Unlike Honda or GM, they will not mass produce their cars and make those available for one and all. Selling ConceptAccording to Philip Kotler, this business orientation holds that consumers and businesses, if left alone, will ordinarily not buy enough of the selling company’s products. The organization must, therefore, undertake an aggressive selling and promotion effort. This concept assumes that consumers typically show buying inertia or resistance and must be coaxed into buying. It also assumes that the company has a whole battery of effective selling and promotional tools to stimulate more buying. Most firms practice the selling concept when they have overcapacity. Their aim is to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants. Companies following this approach have a short life span and thus have fewer repeat customers. For example, the companies that started manufacturing face shields and sanitizers during the pandemic. Marketing ConceptThis is a business philosophy that challenges the above three business orientations. Its central idea was conceptualized and implemented in the 1950s. It suggests that the key to achieving the goals of the selling company lies in the company being more effective than its competitors in creating, delivering, and communicating customer value to its selected target customers. The marketing concept rests on the following four pillars −
However, it should not be confused with Sales concept because, Sales Concept focuses on the needs of the seller, whereas the Marketing Concept focuses on the needs of the buyer. The Sales Concept is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his/her product into cash. The Marketing Concept is preoccupied with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product as a solution to the customer’s problem (needs). Companies conduct research in order to identify customer needs and create a product that meets those needs in a better way than their competitors. It results in businesses developing relationships with customers that leads to profit generation in the long run. Classic examples for this can be Coca-Cola and Pepsi or Samsung Vs Nokia war where each company tried to establish or create a set of niche fans and customers. Societal Marketing ConceptThis is the fifth marketing concept that is mainly concerned with meeting the needs of customers as well as working towards protecting the environment, its natural resources and overall wellbeing of the society. This marketing philosophy believes that business is a part of the society and therefore businesses should give it back to society in the form of social services like poverty eradication, promoting literacy, etc. This orientation arose as some questioned whether the Marketing Concept is an appropriate philosophy in an age of environmental deterioration, resource shortages, explosive population growth, world hunger and poverty, and neglected social services. Are companies that do an excellent job of satisfying consumer wants necessarily acting in the best long-run interests of consumers and society? Any company that follows the societal concept should maintain an equilibrium between the three aspects:
If we look at the fried chicken industry, it offers tasty but unhealthy food. The chicken fries have a high fat content, and the restaurants often add on fries and cola, two products that are equally unhealthy, as a combo and the pricing is kept attractive. The products are wrapped in convenient packaging, which leads to much waste. In satisfying consumer wants, these restaurants may be hurting consumer health and causing environmental problems. Ideally, the products that bring harmful effects on environment should not be supplied only to fulfil the goal of customer-satisfaction. The customer’s satisfaction must be within the ethical ecological aspects of our society. ConclusionThese marketing management philosophies are actually a set of concepts, which is the central focus for the business to do their operations. Moreover, the organizational goals of these companies are set in the light of these marketing management philosophies. These cover the interests of not only the organization but also the customers and the society as a whole.
Updated on 13-Jun-2022 12:34:03
Which marketing philosophy focuses on quality of product?Product Concept: This is another marketing philosophy that is concerned with quality of the product rather than the quantity of the product. The consumers are always looking out for quality products and are not worried about price and the availability of the product.
Which concept holds that consumers will favor products that are available and affordable?Production concept of marketing
The production concept is the most operations-oriented than any of the other marketing concepts on this list. It speaks to the human truth that we prefer products that are easily available and inexpensive.
Which is the best philosophy of marketing?→ The five philosophies of marketing management are:. Production Concept. Production concept expresses that customers will favor products that are generally accessible and not very expensive. ... . Product Concept. ... . Selling Concept. ... . Marketing Concept. ... . The Societal Marketing Concept.. What are the 4 marketing philosophies?Companies adopt one of four philosophies when deciding on how to create an organizational marketing process. The four philosophies are production, sales, marketing and societal marketing orientations.
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