Marketing Analysis

Marketing is a very general term that refers to the commercial functions involved in transferring goods and services from a producer to a consumer. It is commonly associated with endeavors such as branding, selling, and advertising, but it also encompasses activities and processes related to production, product development, distribution, and many other functions. Furthermore, on a less tangible level, marketing facilitates the distribution of goods and services within a society, particularly in free markets. Evidence of the pivotal role that marketing plays in free markets is the vast amount of resources it consumes: about 50 percent of all consumer dollars, in fact, pay for marketing-related activities.

This text recognizes a chief delineation of the subject of marketing, micro- and macro-marketing. The latter pertains to the flow of goods and services within and between societies. Micro-marketing, in contrast, encompasses specific activities performed by an organization as it attempts to transfer its particular offerings to consumers, primarily through targeted marketing techniques. Case studies and a discussion of multinational marketing nuances complement the very basic review of micro and macro principles.

BACKGROUND

Marketing, as a means of transferring goods and services from suppliers to consumers, predates recorded history. It was born by the transition from a purely subsistence-based society, in which families and tribes produced their own consumables, to more specialized and cooperative societal forms. The simple act of trading a piece of meat for a tool, for example, entails some degree of marketing. The term "marketing," of course, derives from the word "market," a group of sellers and buyers that cooperate to exchange goods and services. The term "marketing" in the modem business sense is believed to have come into use during the first decade of the 20th century.

ERAS OF MARKETING.

Some scholars and marketing texts have divided the history of marketing into three and sometimes four distinct eras corresponding to the main emphases and practices of those times. Periods commonly cited include, in chronological order, the production era, the sales era, the marketing era, and in some cases, the relationship era.

The production era refers to the period leading up to the 1930s or, more broadly, the pre-World War II period, when emphasis was placed on simply producing a satisfactory product and informing potential customers about it through catalogs, brochures, and advertising. In the sales era, corresponding roughly to the decade or so after the war, companies reportedly recruited customers more actively by trying to develop persuasive arguments or pitches to encourage customers to choose their products. By the late 1950s and early 1960s this evolved further, the theory goes, into the marketing era, when companies grew increasingly sensitive and responsive to consumer preferences and to exactly what motivated purchasing decisions. Finally, in the 1980s, some argue that the notion of relationship marketing began to take hold as a guiding tenet, where companies moved away from courting simple transactions and toward facilitating more complex long term relationships with customers. The concept of relationship marketing is still quite popular today.

Although such era distinctions derive from classic marketing texts from as early as the 1960s, some observers believe the differences are overstated because of the particular marketing fads and vocabulary of more recent times, when there has been a wish by some corporate marketers to "reinvent" how they approach their craft and demonstrate that their newer practices are a departure from the past. These scholars argue that while the specific tools and vehicles of marketing have evolved over time, there has in fact been greater continuity in the historical approaches to marketing (at least within the 20th century) than these era designations suggest. In particular, several scholars have concluded that cultivating enduring relationships, purportedly the newest phase in marketing, has existed as a priority at large companies since at least the 1920s.

MACRO-MARKETING

Macro-marketing refers to the social process that directs the flow of goods and services from producer to consumerвЂ"an economic system that determines what and how much is to be produced and distributed by whom, when, and to whom. Economists and marketing scholars often identify three broad macromarketing spheres and eight functions within them that make up the economic process:

Exchange

1. Buying refers to consumers seeking and evaluating goods and services.

2. Selling involves promoting the offering.

Distribution and Logistics

3. Transporting refers to the movement of goods from one place to another.

4. Storing involves holding goods until customers need them.

Support and Facilitation

5. Standardization and grading entails sorting products according to uses, markets, and other shared attributes.

6. Financing delivers the cash and credit needed to perform the first five functions.

7. Risk-taking involves bearing the uncertainties that are part of the marketing process.

8. Market information refers to the gathering, analyzing, and distributing of the data necessary to execute the other marketing functions.

All of the eight basic macro-marketing functions exist in some form in both command economies and in free markets. In both systems, in fact, consumers have different needs, preferences, and patterns of resource allocation. Similarly, producers have different resources, goals, and capabilities. Although virtually every society has some sort of marketing system that serves to match this heterogeneous supply and demand, the success of any macro-marketing system is judged by its ability to accomplish the society's objectives, whether the chief goal is equality of wealth, as in a command economy, or the greatest good for the greatest number regardless of equal distribution, as is the case in a free market system.

In a command economy, government planners perform most of the marketing function for society. The planners tell producers what and how much to provide and at what price. The goal of the producers is primarily to meet government quotas. Such a system