MARKETING IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AND EVOLUTION OF MARKETING

MARKETING IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AND

EVOLUTION OF MARKETING

The marketing concept is a matter of increased marketing activity, but it also implies better marketing programs and implementation efforts. In addition, the internal market in every company (marketing your company and products to and with the employees of the company) has become as challenging as the external marketplace due to diversity and many other social/cultural issues.
What image comes to mind when you hear the word “marketing”? Some people think of advertisements or brochures, while others think of public relations (for instance, arranging for clients to appear on TV talk shows). The truth is, all of these—and many more things—make up the field of marketing. Marketing as “planning and executing the strategy involved in moving a good or service from producer to consumer.”
With this definition in mind, it’s apparent that marketing and many other business activities are related in some ways. In simplified terms, marketers and others help move goods and services through the creation and production process; at that point, marketers help move the goods and services to consumers. But the connection goes even further: Marketing can have a significant impact on all areas of the business and vice versa. Lets discuss some Marketing Basics In introductory marketing you learned some basics—first the four P’s, and then the six P’s:
• Product—What are you selling? (It might be a product or a service.)
• Price—What is your pricing strategy?
• Place or distribution—How are you distributing your product to get it into the
marketplace?
• Promotion—How are you telling consumers in your target group about your
product?
• Positioning—What place do you want your product to hold in the consumer’s
mind?
Personal relationships—How are you building relationships with your target consumers?
Marketing management is the conscious effort to achieve desired exchange outcomes with target
markets. The marketer's basic skill lies in influencing the level, timing, and composition of demand
for a product, service, organization, place, person, idea or some form of information.There are several factors that participated role to evolution of marketing like:

•  Changes in Consumer Behavior

There have been many major marketing shifts during the last few decades that have shaped
marketing in the 21st century. There is a view among professional marketers that there is no longer
the substantial product loyalty that existed over the last few decades. Product and brand loyalty,
many argue, has been replaced by something more akin to a consumer decision that is based on the
absence of a better product or service. In addition, there are major changes in the way customers
look at market offerings. During the 1980s customers were optimistic, and in the early 1990s they
were pessimistic. Later in the 1990s, consumers appeared rather optimistic, but still cautious at
times. The following chart demonstrates some of the major shifts that have occurred to the
present:
Increasingly it is clear that while the 4 Ps (product, price, promotion, and place) have value for the
consumer, the marketing strategies of the 21st century will use the four “4 Cs” as added critical
marketing variables:
1. Care: It has replaced service in importance. Marketers must really care about the
way they treat customers, meaning that customers are really everything.
2. Choice: Marketers need to reassess the diversity and breadth of their offerings into a manageable good-better-best selection.
3. Community: Even national marketers must be affiliated, attached to neighborhoods wherever they operate stores.
4. Challenge: The task of dealing with the ongoing reality of demographic change.

•  End of the Mass Market

During the late 1990s, we witnessed the death of the concept of mass market. Regardless, some
marketers continue to argue that database marketing will never replace mass marketing for most
products. The view is that communicating with users by e-mail, Web site, mail, telephone, or fax
will never become cost-efficient enough to justify the return. However, the success of the Internet
provides considerable evidence that one-to-one marketing is and will be appropriate for many
packaged goods and other high- and low-involvement products that in the past sold almost
exclusively with brand advertising.
Through the 1970s, only high-end retailers and personal-service firms could afford to practice oneto-
one marketing. For the most part, they did it the old-fashioned way with personal selling and
index-card files.
During the 1990s, bookstore chains, supermarkets, warehouse clubs, and even restaurants began to
track individual purchase transactions to build their “share of the customer.” Many of these
programs now run on Personal Computers platforms or workstation environments much more
powerful than the most capable mainframes of the 1970s. It is possible today to track 5 or 6
million customers for the same real cost as tracking a single customer in 1950. With Internet-based
databases and remote access, this capability literally has exploded in the last few years.
The situation will become even more interesting as one-to-one marketing becomes even
increasingly pervasive. With an increasingly powerful array of much more efficient, individually
interactive vehicles, the options are virtually unlimited, including on-site interactivity, Web site
connections, fax-response, e-mail, and interactive television.
Most households today either have direct Internet access, or with TV sets that also provide realtime
interactivity through the Internet. We are closing rapidly on the time where individuals will
interact with their television and/or computer simply by speaking to it. Via various Web sites,
computers work for us to enable us to remember transactions and preferences and find just the
right entertainment, information, products, and services. Likewise, online capabilities enable
providers to anticipate what a consumer might want today or in the future. Unfortunately, the
system has been slower to protect consumers from commercial intrusions that they may not find
relevant or interesting.
The increasing level of market definition and refinement (and resulting opportunities for
marketers) is possible through the massive social, economic, and technological changes of the past
three decades. Some of the important demographic shifts have been:
• Increasing diversity of the population. The United States has always been an immigrant
nation. However, large numbers of immigrants from Latin America and Asia have
increased the proportion of minorities in the country to one in three, up from one
in five in 1980. This diversity is even more noticeable in the younger market.
• Changing family and living patterns. There has been a substantial rise in the divorce rate,
cohabitation, non-marital births, and increased female participation in the labor
force. In addition, married couples with one earner make up only 15 percent of all
households. Dual-earner households have become much more common—the
additional income is often necessary for the family to pay their bills. Thus, older
have replaced the stereotypical family of the 1950s, working parents with much less
time available.
• Emergence of a new children’s market. Minorities are over-represented in the younger
age brackets due to the higher fertility and the younger population structure of
many recent immigrants. The result is that one in three children in the United
States is black, Hispanic, or Asian. In addition, nearly all of today’s children grow
up in a world of divorce and working mothers. Many are doing the family shopping
and have tremendous influence over household purchases. In addition, they may
simply know more than their elders about products involving new technology such
as computers.
• Income and education increases are two other important demographic factors impacting
the marketing management arena. Generally, income increases with age, as people
are promoted and reach their peak earning years, and the level of education
generally has increased over the last few decades. Family units today often have
higher incomes because they may have two earners. Accordingly, there is an
increased need for products and services because they likely have children and are
homeowners.
In sum, the need for market analysis and marketing decision-making, and managers to perform
those tasks has never been greater. But, as the course will demonstrate, the complexities of, and
analytical tools required for, these activities have never been greater. Be prepared for a challenging
experience.

•  Marketing Management Philosophies:

There are several alternative philosophies that can guide organizations in their efforts to carry out
their marketing goal(s). Marketing efforts should be guided by a marketing philosophy. Decisions
about the weight, given the interests of the organization, customers, and society need to be
made by marketing managers. There are five alternative concepts under which organizations conduct their marketing activities.
a. The Production Concept
The production concept holds that consumers will
favor products that are available ad highly
affordable and that management should,
therefore, focus on improving production and
distribution efficiency. This is one of the oldest
philosophies that guide sellers. The production
concept is useful when:
1). Demand for a product exceeds the supply.
2). The product’s cost is too high and improved productivity is needed to bring it down.
The risk with this concept is in focusing too narrowly company operations. The production
concept holds that consumers will favor products that are affordable and available, and therefore
management’s major task is to improve production and distribution efficiency and bring down prices.
b. The Product Concept
The product concept holds that consumers favor quality products that are reasonably priced, and
therefore little promotional effort is required. The selling concept holds that consumers will not
buy enough of the company’s products unless they are stimulated through a substantial selling and
promotion effort. The product concept states that consumers will favor products that offer the most
quality, performance, and features, and that the organization should, therefore, devote its energy to
making continuous product improvements. The product concept can also lead to “marketing myopia,” the failure to see the challenges being presented by other products.
c. The Selling Concept
Many organizations follow the selling concept. The selling concept is the idea that consumers will not
buy enough of the organization’s products unless the organization undertakes a large-scale selling
and promotion effort.
1). This concept is typically practiced with unsought goods (those that buyers do not normally
think of buying e.g. insurance policies).
2). To be successful with this concept, the organization must be good at tracking down the
interested buyer and selling them on product benefits.
3). Industries that use this concept usually have overcapacity. Their aim is to sell what they
make rather than make what will sell in the market.
4). There are not only high risks with this approach but low satisfaction by customers.
d. The Marketing Concept
The marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals depends on determining the needs
and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently
than competitors do. The marketing and selling concepts are often confused. The primary
differences are:
1). The selling concept takes an “inside-out” perspective (focuses on existing products and uses heavy promotion and selling efforts).
2). The marketing concept takes an “outside-in” perspective (focuses on needs, values, and
satisfactions). Many companies claim to adopt the marketing concept but really do not unless they
commit to market-focused and customer-driven philosophies:
• Customer-driven companies research current customers to learn about their desires, gather
new product and service ideas, and test proposed product improvements.
• Such customer-driven marketing usually works well when there exists a clear need and
when customers know what they want.
• When customers do not know what they want, marketers can try customer driving
marketing--understanding customer needs even better than customers themselves do, and
creating products and services that will meet existing and latent needs now and in the
future.
e. The Societal Marketing Concept
The societal marketing concept holds that the organization should determine the needs, wants, and
interests of target markets. It should then deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and
efficiently than competitors in a way that maintains or improves the consumer’s and the society’s
well being.
1). The societal marketing concept is the newest of the marketing philosophies.
2). It questions whether the pure marketing concept is adequate given the wide variety of
societal problems and ills.
3). According to the societal marketing concept, the pure marketing concept overlooks
possible conflicts between short-run consumer wants and long- run consumer welfare.
4). The societal concept calls upon marketers to balance three considerations in setting their
marketing policies:
a). Company profits.
b). Customer wants.
c). Society’s interests.
5). It has become good business to consider and think of society’s interests when the
organization makes marketing decisions.
4. Evolving Views of Marketing’s Role:
As expressed in figures initially the Marketing was considered to play equal function as other departments of the organization. But with the passage of times and growing importance of the customers marketing department attained more importance and attained the central part in the organization. Afterwards the customer is now the main actor that is controlling almost all functions and efforts of the marketing department, because the success of any organization in today’s competitive era depends upon the level of
satisfaction provided by the company. Nowadays the marketing department is acting, as integration department to provide integration among the functions performed by the company and customer is acting as controlling factor in the organization