Marketing Concepts

Concepts
Marketing concept is the philosophy that companies should examine the requirements of their customers and then make decisions to satisfy those needs in a better manner than the competitors.

Today, most of the companies have adopted various marketing concepts, but this has not always been the case. Let us now understand major marketing concepts.

The major marketing concepts are −
** Production concept
** Sales concept
** Marketing concept

Production Concept

According to the production concept, a company should focus on those items that it can produce most efficiently and also focus on creating supply of low-cost items that create the demand for the products.

The key questions that a company needs to ask itself before producing an item are −
** Can we produce the item?
** Can enough of it be produced?

This concept worked fairly during the 1920s as the items that were produced were largely those of basic necessity and there was a relatively high level of unfulfilled demand. Virtually everything that could be produced was sold easily by a sales team whose task was to complete the transactions at a price fixed by the cost of production. All in all, this concept prevailed until the late 1920's.

Sales Concept
According to this concept, the companies would not only produce the items but would also try to convince customers to buy them through advertising and personal selling. Before producing a product, the key questions were −

** Can we sell the item?
** Can we account enough for it?

This concept paid little attention to whether the item actually was required. The goal simply was to beat the competition with little focus on customer satisfaction. Marketing was an operation performed after the product was developed and produced and many people came to relate marketing with hard selling. Even today, people use the word "marketing" when they actually mean “sales.”

Marketing Concept
The marketing concept relies upon marketing studies to define market segments, their size, and their requirements. To satisfy those requirements, the marketing team makes decisions about the controllable parameters of the marketing mix.

This concept was introduced after World War II as the customers could afford to be selective and buy only those items that precisely met their changing needs and these needs were not immediately obvious. The key questions changed to −

** What do customers actually want?
** Can we improve it while they still want it?
** How can we keep the customers satisfied?

In reply to these discerning customers, companies began to adopt marketing concepts, which includes −

** Focusing on customer requirements before developing a product

** Aligning all operations of the company to focus on those needs

** Realizing a gain by successfully satisfying customer needs over the long-term

When companies began to adopt this concept, they actually set up separate marketing departments whose objective was to satisfy customer needs. Mostly, these departments were sales departments with expanded responsibilities. While this widened sales department structure can be found in some enterprises today, many of them have structured themselves into marketing organizations having a worldwide customer focus.