Today, producers must make an effort to find out what kinds of products consumers want and to make these products available for sale. They must also make an effort through advertising to inform consumers of the goods and services that are available to them. Lets face it, all businesses have the same goal, to make consumers happy and make a profit. The marketing concept builds profits for the consumers? needs and interests. Marketing requires as mixture of production, development, pricing, placement and promotion. All of these functions must be implemented on a continuous basis in order to improve sales.
Product planning concentrates on determining which goods and services consumers want to design them and meet their needs. Pricing is an important aspect of production because it ultimately determines whether a product will be purchased and if, at the same time, it will be profitable to the company. Product distribution involves decisions about warehousing and transportation that will be cost effective, timely and safe. At this point, the company will also determine whether they will be selling products directly to the public or to an intermediary. Finally, product promotion includes personal selling and promoting the products available, advertising, and direct sales promotion, such as free samples and discount coupons.
Business income depends entirely upon the sale of products, including goods or services. Successful companies must introduce there products in a way that works consistently with the changing market, economic conditions, competition, and changing company goals so as to benefit both the consumers and the company through a high percentage of sales.
The main role of marketing managers is to insure to the best of their ability that the product will be sold in quantities necessary to benefit the company. This role entails expert knowledge about the product and knowledge of consumers? wants and needs. It will almost always include designing the specifications of the product in order to produce its precise functions and abilities. An important aspect of planning and designing a new product is differentiating it form other similar products on the market. Packaging and presentation can help to achieve this goal in some ways, however, specific features must be present within the products themselves in order to achieve this differentiation. A trademark or brand name is an important way of differentiating products by creating buyer loyalty. Brands are important in production because they make it easy for consumers to distinguish one product from another. Buyers feel confident buying certain brands that they feel they can trust and are assured of consistent quality. Brands are normally at the center of advertising. Even if a consumer is convinced about buying a product, they would be more able to identify and more apt to purchase it if it had a brand.
Advertising is an important aspect of marketing. It provides the presentation of good available to the consumer through communications vehicles such as the media. It present informative and persuasive sales messages through the newspapers, television, magazines, etc. Advertising stimulates interest in and demand for specific products, and thus supports sales promotion and personal selling. It is often used to create a favorable public view toward a company, industry or other institution. The main purpose of advertising is to help sell goods and/or services. It supports personal selling by informing the potential buyer of a products features and encouraging a favorable attitude towards it before the product has actually reached the selling stage. It reaches people sales personnel cannot since it rarely possible to have a sales force large enough to reach every potential consumer and will sometimes motivate people to seek out representatives on their own. Advertising improves personal relationships with dealers by increasing demand and sales. And finally, advertising promotes goodwill by proving to be reliable, interested in the public good and a good citizen. This advertisement will do this by concentrating on the business itself rather then the product so that consumers trust it and feel safe by using the companies products.
Setting the right price for a product is essential to it?s success. The major factors that effect product pricing are demand and competition. Demand is closely linked to price. If the supply of a product is constant, greater demand will allow higher prices. At the same time, however, higher prices will tend to reduce demand. Competition also affects pricing. Free competition tends to drive prices down because competitors will increase the supply of the product in the market and new competitors often purposely sell at lower prices in an effort to cut into the sales of an established producer. Therefore, marketers have an important choice to make when pricing a product. They can establish high prices with the expectation of selling fewer units with higher profits on each unit, or set low prices in an effort to achieve voluminous sales even though the profit on each unit may be small. They must then attempt to find the right price in order to maximize profits by balancing a sales volume with profit per unit. Federal and state governments have passed laws influencing the fair pricing of gods by companies. These Fair Trade Laws prohibit retailers from selling goods at a price lower then that set by the producer, so as to prevent unfair competition. They are supposed to protect small retailers from the competition of large stores who can afford to set lower prices because of their voluminous sales.
Marketing management includes more then just buying and selling. It includes a wide range of activities and duties, all being of great importance to the business. Nearly every firm is concerned with buying, selling, transporting, storing, risk bearing, standardizing, grading and labeling, financing, and gathering and using information. What all of these aspects have in common is that they must all be done with enough appeal and innovation necessary in order to sell products and at the same time make a profit for the company. Running a business is costly, therefore every idea must be carefully though out and implemented so as to satisfy consumers, while at the sale time, satisfying the business by creating a profit.
Market research is of equal importance to a business. As discussed previously, our economy is very diverse and constantly changing. A business must study the environment and population so as to comply with the consumers buying patterns, needs and wants. A company can do this through market segmentation, demography, and by the use of questionnaires and surveys. Market research can be carried out by the use of market segmentation, which is the dividing up of the market into similar groups so that each group may be studied and carefully examined. Demography is the study of the population as a whole through the use of statistics. Finally, questionnaires, surveys, consumer test panels, and the observation of shopper behavior in stores can also aid in identifying and characterizing a market within the economy. This will surely keep a business up to par on the changing economy in the present, as well as forecasting future trends which has also proven to be necessary in order to operate as a successful business.
In conclusion, it is obvious from my brief discussion that the term “Business” is very complex. When discussing it, one must consider many important sub-categories such as economic systems, the business cycle, business environments, types of businesses, government, management, marketing and advertising, each of which in and of itself is also very complex.