Marketing affects the interests of each of us every day of our lives. We Wake up when the radio clock “cacio” turns on a Michael Jackson song. In the bathroom we brush our teeth with Colgate paste , shave with Gillette razor, freshen our mouths with Listerine antiseptic , spray our hair with Revlon varnish, and use a variety of other toiletries and appliances manufactured in different parts of the world. We put on Calvin Klein jeans and bass boots . In the kitchen we drink a glass of orange juice “Minit-maid” , pour into a plate of crispy rice “Kellogg” and fill it with milk “Bordens” . After a while , we drink a Cup of Maxwell house coffee with two teaspoons of Domino's sugar while munching on a Sara Lee muffin . We buy oranges grown in California, coffee imported from Brazil, a newspaper made of canadian wood, and the news reaches us as far away as Australia.
All this became possible thanks to the marketing system, and with minimal effort on our part. It has provided us with a standard of living that our predecessors could only dream of.
In terms of market relations, and especially in the transition to the market period, marketing is one of the most important economic disciplines. The effective functioning of the entire national economy depends on how well the marketing system is built.
At the moment, there is a lot of all kinds of literature on marketing, in Western countries, a huge long-term experience in the functioning of the marketing system has been accumulated. But due to the fact that marketing in Russia operates in specific conditions, today there are very few monographs of domestic authors on marketing in which it would be possible to find competent, deeply thought-out, calculated proposals for the creation of a Russian marketing system that meets our Russian realities.
In this work attempt to identify the basic principles of marketing, consider the main regularities of the existence of marketing as well as to consider the peculiarities of marketing in Russia.
THE ESSENCE OF MARKETING. ITS MAIN ELEMENTS.
What is behind the concept of “Marketing"? Most people mistakenly identify marketing with selling and promotion.
And no wonder! After all, Americans are constantly pestered by television commercials, newspaper ads, direct mail advertising, visits of salesmen. Someone's trying to sell something. It seems that we are not going anywhere from death, taxes and Commerce.
Therefore, many are surprised to learn that the most important element of marketing is not sales. Sales is just the tip of the marketing iceberg. Marketing is just one of its many functions, and often not the most essential. If the market leader has worked well on such sections of marketing as the identification of consumer needs, the development of suitable products and the establishment of an appropriate price for them, the establishment of a system of distribution and effective stimulation, such goods will certainly go easily.
Everyone knows about the so-called tradable goods, for which consumers hunt in droves. When Eastman Kodak made Instamatic cameras , Atari made the first video games, and Mazda made the RH - 7 sports car , they were inundated with orders because they offered exactly the products they needed at the time. commodity imitators, and products that clearly differ from existing ones and offer consumers new benefits.
One of the leading theorists on management problems , Peter Drukker, puts it this way: “the Purpose of marketing is to make sales efforts unnecessary. Its purpose is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service will fit the latter exactly and sell itself.”
This does not mean that marketing and promotion efforts are losing their importance. It is rather that they become part of a larger “marketing mix” , i.e. a set of marketing tools that need to be harmoniously linked to each other in order to achieve maximum impact on the market.
Here is Philip Kotler's definition of marketing:
Marketing is a kind of human activity aimed at meeting the needs and requirements through exchange.
To clarify this definition, consider the following concepts: needs, requests, goods, exchange, transaction and market.