Marketing

Marketing is the process of planning and executing the pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods, ideas, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals." American Marketing Association.

Product, price, promotion, and placement

In popular usage, the term "marketing" refers to the promotion of products, especially advertising and branding. However, in professional usage the term has a wider meaning that recognizes that marketing is customer centered. Products are often developed to meet the desires of groups of customers or even, in some cases, for specific customers. McCarthy divided marketing into four general sets of activities. His typology has become so universally recognized that his four activity sets, the Four Ps, have passed into the language.

Related Topics:
Advertising - Brand

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The Four Ps are:

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• Product: The Product management aspect of marketing deals with the specifications of the actual good or service, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants.
• Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts.
• Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, publicity, and personal selling, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company.
• Placement or distribution refers to how the product gets to the customer; for example, point of sale placement or retailing.

These four elements are often referred to as the marketing mix. A marketer can use these variables to craft a marketing plan. The four Ps model is most useful when marketing low value consumer products. Industrial products, services, high value consumer products require adjustments to this model. Services marketing must account for the unique nature of services. Industrial or b2b marketing must account for the long term contractual agreements that are typical in supply chain transactions. Relationship marketing attempts to do this by looking at marketing from a long term relationship perspective rather than individual transactions.

Related Topics:
Marketing mix - Marketing plan - Service - Services marketing - B2b - Supply chain - Relationship marketing

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