What Is Marketing?

Marketing is fundamentally about recognizing and satisfying human and societal needs in a profitable manner. In its simplest form, it can be defined as "meeting needs profitably." Notable examples include eBay and Taobao, which addressed the challenge of finding desired items by creating online auction platforms, and IKEA, which responded to the desire for affordable furniture with flat-pack designs, thereby demonstrating effective marketing by converting social needs into profitable ventures.

Definition

The American Marketing Association provides a formal definition of marketing as follows:

Marketing encompasses organizational functions and processes aimed at creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers. It also involves managing customer relationships for the benefit of both the organization and its stakeholders.

Meaning

Marketing management comes into play when at least one party in a potential exchange considers how to elicit desired responses from others. It is both an art and science that involves selecting target markets and acquiring, retaining, and growing customers by delivering superior customer value through creation, delivery, and communication.

There are two key perspectives on marketing: social and managerial. From a social perspective, marketing is a societal process in which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want by creating, offering, and freely exchanging valuable products and services. Contrary to popular belief, selling is just the tip of the marketing iceberg. Peter Drucker, a prominent management theorist, emphasizes that marketing's ultimate goal is to understand customers so well that products or services align perfectly with their needs, essentially making selling unnecessary.

Illustrating this, Apple's iPhone and Toyota's Lexus succeeded because they designed products that precisely met customer needs, underlining the importance of thorough marketing research and understanding.

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