The Marketing Concept
Marketing concept holds that achieving organizational goals based on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the required satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors do. Marketing and selling concepts are frequently confused.
The primary differences are:
A. Selling concept takes an "inside-out" perspective (focuses on presenting products and utilized heavy promotion and selling efforts).
B. Marketing concept takes an "outside-in" perspective (focuses on values, needs and satisfactions). Various companies claim to adopt marketing concept but actually do not unless they commit to market-focused and customer-driven philosophies:
- The customer-driven company's research current customers to study about their desires collect new product and service ideas, and test proposed product improvements.
- Such customer-driven marketing typically works well when there exists apparent need and when customers know what they desire.
- When customers do not know what they want, marketers may try customer driving marketing--understanding their needs even better than customers themselves do, and creating products and services that will meet existing and latent needs currently and in the future.