Explain What is Marketing?

The term Marketing holds different meaning for different people. For some it is shopping. When asked, where have you been? You may get a reply – I went for marketing. For some it is an art of selling, promotion, advertising, etc. To be precise Marketing involves all the above activities apart from many that we will go through in the following pages. The Knowledge Exchange Business Encyclopaedia defines marketing as “planning and executing the strategy involved in moving a good or service from producer to consumer.” To be precise, the concept of marketing has evolved over a period of time and many thinkers have given us definitions depending on its functions during that period.

What is Marketing?
Marketing is an art of getting products and services created, priced, communicated, and delivered to potential consumers by meeting the objectives of the organisation. It is not necessary that the objective of the organisation is to make profit. The organisation can carry out the marketing activities for public welfare as well.

Some of the definitions from various thinkers are as follows-
(1) Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives. – AMA approves new Marketing definition,” Marketing News, March 1, 1986, p. 1. Published by American Marketing Association.

(2) Marketing is the process that seeks to influence voluntary exchange transactions between a customer and a marketer. —William G. Zikmund and Michael d’Amico

(3) Marketing is the process of discovering and translating consumer needs and wants into products and services, creating demand for these products and services and then in turn expanding this demand. —H.L. Hansen.

(4) Marketing is the business process by which products are matched with markets and through which transfer of ownership are affected. —Edward W. Cundiff

(5) Marketing consists of the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers or suppliers to consumers or end-users. —American Marketing Association

(6) Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging products and services of value with others. —Philip Kotler

(7) Marketing is the performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization’s objectives by anticipating customer or client needs and directing the flow of need satisfying goods and services from producer to customer or client. —William D. Perreault and E. Jerome McCarthy

(8) Marketing is the creation and delivery of a standard of living to a society. – Paul Mazur

Focusing on the needs of the buyer, marketing today is widely used by both profit and non-profit organizations.