Defining Marketing

Defining Marketing

Marketing is a tool used by all businesses to promote their services or goods. Marketing is used to bring in new customers and to retain previous customers too. Marketing is how a business communicates with the consumers through a variety of media such as TV, Radio, and Internet. Businesses need marketing to show consumers how good their product or service is and to persuade consumers to choose them over the competition.

Marketing can be defined differently by different people or sources. Kotler and Keller (2012) define marketing as identifying and meeting human and social needs or meeting needs profitably. In other words marketing is not only about selling a product, but also identifying what market would benefit from this product the most. We can distinguish between a social and a managerial definition of marketing. Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and freely exchanging products and services of value with others (Kotler & Keller, 2012, p. 6).

Another definition of marketing which is similar to the one mentioned above is the one found in the course material e-book for this marketing class. 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 (Perreault, Cannon, & McCarthy, 2011, p. 6). The text also views marketing in two ways, social and managerial.

Marketing plays a key role in the success of a business. With so much competition in the market, businesses must stay ahead of the competition in order to be successful. Marketing affects many aspects of a business. Marketing promotes research and innovation, to develop new ideas and products in order to fulfill the need of the consumer (Perreault, Cannon, & McCarthy, 2011).

Innovation is something that is present in our everyday life. At this moment consumers are always looking for the next best thing in technology. Since the consumer demands new and innovative electronics we see that many businesses such as Apple and Samsung constantly reveal a new phone, computer, or tablet. These new technology is marketed to consumers all over the world.

Marketing has an effect on our standard of living. When businesses provide consumers with a good product or service, it creates more jobs. By creating more jobs many time higher incomes can result from this and thus the standard of living goes up as well (Perreault, Cannon, & McCarthy, 2011). Wal-Mart is an organization in our community that has