1. What is Marketing?

Marketing has often been defined in terms of satisfying customers’ needs and wants. Critics, however, maintain that marketing goes beyond that and creates needs and wants that did not exist before. They feel marketers encourage consumers to spend more money than they should on goods and services they do not really need. What is your understanding of the role of marketing and the marketing management process?

My guess, based on the fact that in chapter 2 the word value was used 227 times, is that marketing is all about creating value.

Peter Drucker (2008) devised 5 basic questions as he worked with corporations to help them define their mission. Duckers’ questions 2&3 help bring marketing into focus. Q2 – Who is our customer, and Q3 – What does the customer value, could serve as the foundation for developing a marketing strategy?

The author of our text offered up a few basic formulas as he worked to explain value. However, I found one I like better, from the folks at Flat World Knowledge Inc., and it goes like this:

Value* = benefits received – (price + hassle)

and

* Value is determined by the customer

So marketing and marketing management is all about raising the perception of value, by raising the perception in the customer’s mind of benefits received from whatever product being peddled.

References:
Drucker, P. (2008). The five most important questions you will ever ask about your organization. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Tanner, J., & Raymond, M. A. (n.d.). Chapter 1: What Is Marketing? Online Textbooks, eTextbooks @Flat_World Knowledge | Read and Remix. Retrieved January 17, 2013, from