LO1  Define marketing and identify the requirements for marketing to occur.

Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. This definition relates to two primary goals of marketing: (a) assessing the needs of consumers and (b) satisfying them. For marketing to occur, it is necessary to have (a) two or more parties with unmet needs, (b) a desire and ability to satisfy them, (c) communication between the parties, and (d) something to exchange.

LO2  Explain how marketing discovers and satisfies consumer needs.

The first objective in marketing is discovering the needs of prospective consumers. This is not an easy task because consumers may not always know or be able to describe what they need and want. A need occurs when a person feels physiologically deprived of basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. A want is a felt need that is shaped by a person's knowledge, culture, and personality. Effective marketing can clearly shape a person's wants and tries to influence what we buy. The second objective in marketing is satisfying the needs of targeted consumers. Because an organization obviously can't satisfy all consumer needs, it must concentrate its efforts on certain needs of a specific group of potential consumers or target market — one or more specific groups of potential consumers toward which an organization directs its marketing program. Having selected its target market consumers, the organization then takes action to satisfy their needs by developing a unique marketing program to reach them.

LO3  Distinguish between marketing mix elements and environmental forces.

Four elements in a marketing program designed to satisfy customer needs are product, price, promotion, and place. These elements are called the marketing mix, the four Ps, or the controllable variables because they are under the general control of the marketing department. Environmental forces, also called uncontrollable variables, are largely beyond the organization's control. These include social, economic, technological, competitive, and regulatory forces.

LO4  Explain how organizations build strong customer relationships and customer value through marketing.

The essence of successful marketing is to provide sufficient value to gain loyal, long-term customers. Customer value is the unique combination of benefits received by targeted buyers that usually includes quality, price, convenience, on-time delivery, and both before-sale and after-sale service. Marketers do this by using one of three value strategies: best price, best product, or best service.

LO5  Describe how today's customer relationship era differs from prior eras oriented to production and selling.

Business history is divided into four periods: the production era, the sales era, the marketing concept era, and the current customer relationship era. The production era covers the period to the 1920s when buyers were willing to accept virtually any goods that were available. The central notion was that products would sell themselves. The sales era lasted from the 1920s to the 1960s. Manufacturers found they could produce more goods than buyers could consume, and competition grew, so the solution was to hire more salespeople to find new buyers. In the 1960s, the marketing concept era dawned, when organizations began to integrate marketing into each phase of the business. In today's customer relationship era, organizations focus their efforts on (a) continuously collecting information about customers' needs, (b) sharing this information across departments, and (c) using it to create customer value.

LO6  Explain how marketing creates utilities for consumers.

Marketing creates utility, which consists of the benefits or customer value received by users of the product and is the result of the exchange process. Marketing provides four types of utilities that are designed to get the right product or service to consumers (form utility) where (place utility) and when (time utility) they need it so they can ultimately use or consume it (possession utility).