The Marketing Concept

Simply stated, the marketing concept means that an organization should seek to make

a profit by serving the needs of customer groups. The concept is very straightforward and

has a great deal of commonsense validity. Perhaps this is why it is often misunderstood,

forgotten, or overlooked.

The purpose of the marketing concept is to rivet the attention of marketing

managers on serving broad classes of customer needs (customer orientation),

rather than on the firm's current products (production orientation) or on devising

methods to attract customers to current products (selling orientation). Thus, effective

marketing starts with the recognition of customer needs and then works backward

to devise products and services to satisfy these needs. In this way, marketing

managers can satisfy customers more efficiently in the present and anticipate

changes in customer needs more accurately in the future. This means that organizations

should focus on building long-term customer relationships in which the initial

sale is viewed as a beginning step in the process, not as an end goal. As a result,

the customer will be more satisfied and the firm will be more profitable.

The principal task of the marketing function operating under the marketing

concept is not to manipulate customers to do what suits the interests of the firm,

but rather to find effective and efficient means of making the business do what

suits the interests of customers. This is not to say that all firms practice marketing in

this way. Clearly, many firms still emphasize only production and sales. However,

effective marketing, as defined in this text, requires that consumer needs come first

in organizational