Marketing may be studied by different approaches. To facilitate the study these approaches may be broadly classified as follows: Commodity Approach: The first approach is the commodity approach under which a specific commodity is selected and then its marketing methods and environments are studied in the course of its movement from producer to consumer. In this approach, the subject matter of discussion centers around the specific commodity selected for the study and includes the sources and conditions of supply, nature and extent of demand, the distribution channels used, promotional methods adopted etc. Functional Approach: The second approach is the functional approach under which the study concentrates on the specialized functions or services performed by the marketers and the problems faced by them in performing those functions. Such marketing functions include buying, selling, storage, standardizing, transport, finance, risk-bearing, market information etc. This approach certainly enables one to gain detailed knowledge Continue reading
Marketing Concepts
Factors Influencing the Consumer Decision Making Process
Each buying decision you make involves an elaborate mental thought process, a degree of active reasoning, though on the surface it may not always seem to be so. This may be because over a period of time you have taken certain buying decisions so many times that they now seem to be made almost automatically but that is not true at all. Even your daily decision of buying a loaf of bread involves the element of active reasoning as buying a new sofa set for your drawing room. However, in the former case, the extent and intensity of active reasoning may be much less as compared to the latter case. In the case of bread, the only decision variables may be which brand, quantity and retail outlet. But in the case of buying a sofa set the decision variables are far more in number. These may be: Ready-made or made Continue reading
4 Reasons Why Marketing is Important for Every Business
Managers face an endless challenge to create unique strategies that will enable them provide positional advantage in an effort to achieve superior financial or customer performance. A company’s pecuniary success largely depends upon prudent marketing efforts along with financial, operational, accounting and other business functions. Marketing is identified as focusing on strategies concerning the critical decision of market definition and market segmentation as well as the identification of potential bases for differentiation. Sometimes, people ask why marketing is important in the financial success of a company. The answer to this question is, assume you have a product to offer with excellent features, best quality and amazing packaging but no one knows about your product? There will be no demand in the market for your it, the company will make no sale and eventually no profit. Here comes the importance of marketing. The most important function of marketing, along with others, Continue reading
Ethnocentrism in International Marketing
International marketing activities are interlinked with a firm’s corporate goals, objectives and strategy. The overall aims, objectives and strategy of a firm has a great impact on international marketing decisions e.g, whether to enter new uncertain markets and how maximum would be risk that the firm is ready to take or the level of control required over international operations. There is no denying in fact that a person’s self reference criterion (SRC) and an associated ethnocentrism are a two primary obstacles to success in international marketing. Self reference criteria is defined as an unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values, experiences and knowledge as a basis for decisions. Ethnocentrism is closely connected to self reference criterion. Ethnocentrism can be defined as the nations that one’s own culture or company knows best how to do things. Ethnocentrism has been seen particularly a problem in the American managers at the beginning of Continue reading
Social, Societal, and Socially Responsible Marketing
Nowadays companies are required to take care of long term and overall interests of customers. As a number of social issues like the global environmental issues, the exhaustion of natural resources, and the infinitely increasing numbers of population have appeared companies’ effort for long-term interests of customer increases demands for social benefits. A number of health and social issues are concerned with behavior causes that are the result of voluntary behavior. The production and operation should take the long-term benefits of society into account as a whole as well as the interest of consumers which is the common ground of the social marketing concept. The corporations have to find out what target groups want and need and derive maximum satisfaction from customers while they enhance and maintain welfares in the community. The main concept of social marketing is providing a way of dealing with such problems by changing the behavior Continue reading
What Is Price Perception?
Price perception is one of the leading variables when it comes to consumers buying process. Economists, market researchers have already undergone researches and predict that in buying decision price are the driving forces. Several studies explain and determine and explain the same fact thereby concluding the fact with decision making. The determinants of price perception can be both rational and psychological factors. The other factors may become psychological factors and prestige. The key variable to explore and explain consumers’ price perception is the degree of understanding the psychological process of consumers’ price perception. When a firm has seasonal demand, the discrepancies are observed between the supply and demand. Generally the firm has excess supply at the time of low demand and scarcity when there is high demand. If the firm commercializes goods and faces seasonal demands, it can minimize the effect through good management of production and storage. The problem Continue reading