Introduction

marketing is defined as social and managerial process by which individuals and organizations obtain
what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others.

Marketing mix is the set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the
target market. These tools are called the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.

1.1 Identifying Marketing Philosophies

1.1.1 Marketing philosophy: Meaning, Importance, and Types
 Meaning of marketing philosophies
The marketing concept/philosophy is the strategy that firms implement to satisfy customers'
needs, increase sales, maximize profit, and beat the competition.
 Importance of marketing philosophy
The marketing philosophy underlines how the company achieves the need of the customer
and profitability.
 Types of marketing philosophy
There are five types of marketing philosophy
1) Production concept
2) Product concept
3) Selling concept
4) Marketing concept
5) Societal marketing concept
1. Production concept
The production concept holds that consumers will favor products that are available and highly
affordable or cheap. Therefore, management should focus on to minimize production costs,
improving production and distribution efficiency.
This concept is one of the oldest orientations .The this orientation run a major risk of losing sight of
satisfying customer needs and building customer relationships. which leads to the marketing myopia
– i.e., short-sightedness on the role of marketing..
This production concept is found to be applicable if two situations prevail.
1) When the demand for a product exceeds supply.
2) If the production costs are very high, that discourages consumers from buying the product.
So the company can reduce production cost to get dominant market share.
2. Product concept
The product concept holds that consumers will favor products that offer the most in quality,
performance, and innovative features. The main emphasis here is on the product. Therefore, the
management fails to identify what business it is in, which leads to the marketing myopia – i.e., short-
sightedness on the role of marketing.
 3. The Selling Concept
Many companies follow the selling concept, which holds that consumers will not buy enough of the
firm‘s products unless it undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion efforts. The Concept
proposes that customers, be individual or organizations will not buy enough of the organizations
products unless they are persuaded to do so through selling efforts. Such aggressive selling,
however, carries high risks.
It focuses on creating sales transactions rather than on building longterm, profitable customer
relationships. The aim often is to sell what the company makes rather than to make what the
market wants.
4 The Marketing Concept
The marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on knowing the needs and
wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions better than competitors do. Here
marketing management takes a ―customer first‖ approach. Under the marketing concept, customer
focus and value are the routes to achieve sales and profits. Instead of a productcentered make-and-
sell philosophy, the marketing concept is a customer-centered sense-andrespond philosophy. The
job is not to find the right customers for your product but to find the right products for your
customers.
The marketing concept four main pillars
a) Market focus
b) Customer orientation
c) Coordinated marketing
d) Profitability

5. Societal Marketing Concept

Here the Societal Marketing Concept puts human welfare on top before profits and satisfying the
wants. This concept calls upon marketers to balance three considerations in setting their marketing
policies: company profits, consumer want satisfaction and public interest

1.2 Utilizing marketing information system

1.2.1 marketing information system
A marketing information system is a continuing and interacting structure of people, equipment
and procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate, and distribute pertinent, timely and accurate
information for use by marketing decision makers to improve their marketing planning,
implementation, and control. The ingredients for a good marketing information system are
consistency, completeness, and orderliness. Marketing plans should be implemented on the
basis of information obtained from the intelligence network
1.2.2 Sources of Marketing Information System
The information needed by marketing managers comes from three main sources:
1. Internal company information –
2. Marketing intelligence – This can be information gathered from many sources, including
suppliers, customers, and distributors.
. 3. Market research – Marketing research is a process that identifies and defines marketing
opportunities and problems, monitors and evaluates marketing actions and performances, and
communicates the findings and implications to the management.
Why Conduct Market Research?
Marketing research is conducted to:
 develop product, price, promotion, place/distribution, and people plans
 identify problems in their marketplace and discover new opportunities
 Learn about competitors and how they are marketing their products.
 find out what consumers think about their product category
 gauge the performance of existing products
Three types of research design
Exploratory Research: It is defined as collecting information in an unstructured and informal
manner. It is often used when little is known about the problem. Analyzing secondary data in a
library or over the Internet is one of the most common ways of conducting exploratory research.
Exploratory research is/are
 Used to better define a problem or scout opportunities.
 Commonly used In-depth interviews and discussions groups.
Descriptive Research: Descriptive research designs refer to a set of methods and procedures
that describes marketing variables. Descriptive studies portray these variables by answering
who, what, why, and how questions. These types of research studies may describe such things
as consumers ‗attitudes, intentions, and behaviors, or the number of competitors and their
strategies..
Descriptive research:
 Is used to assess a situation in the marketplace (i.e., potential for a specific product or
consumer attitudes)
 Methods include personal interviews and surveys.
Causal Research: Causal Research explores the effect of one thing on another and more
specifically, the effect of one variable on another. The research is used to measure what impact
a specific change will have on existing norms and allows market researchers to predict
hypothetical scenarios upon which a company can base its business plan
Causal research:
 Is used for testing cause and effect relationships.
 Typically through estimation
1.2.3 process of market research