We are all customers. Marketing affects everyone. Organisations use marketing to attract, entice and capture markets, consumers and customers. They also use marketing as a tool to predict changes in the market and spot opportunities in which they can possibly find business and ideally make profits. They use marketing to identify and satisfy stakeholders while managing and developing relationships. Marketing is key in maximising profits and budgets within the business.Organisations need to understand their marketplace – colleagues, competitors, customers/consumers etc. They rely on their marketing departments for this.
Marketing is an extremely important activity today and is part of society. Take an example, you are looking to buy an exercise machine for your home. Ok
where do you start? Well, there are five general steps: problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase evaluation. So your step one complete; problem is that you need an exercise machine. Now information research is where we see a huge amount of marketing. Where to do get this information? Well, some of it is delivered straight to your door papers, advertisements and so on.
Other options: you could use the Internet, phoning and visiting sports stores, catalogues and there are several more, all of which reveal how marketing has become part of our everyday lives and often taken for granted by the public. Maybe you find the machine you like, but you decide to have a look at a few other options. Even considering joining a gym or maybe a completely different type of machine. Once you have decided, you make the purchase and evaluate the product/service once you have bought and used it. So, for just one purchase, you go through several stages all of which include some form of marketing exposure. This on example clearly reveals the importance of marketing in our world.
So, in conclusion, to businesses, marketing is about predicting their marketplace to spot opportunities and create business opportunities for making profits and maximising budgets. To consumers, marketing is what we see everyday relating to products and services that we buy and use. It is what we see on the Internet, posters, in shops, catalogues, post, in newspapers, on buses and at bus stops – everywhere. Overall, without marketing to attract customers, and entice them to buy products/services, business would have a difficult time surviving in todays economy. Businesses need to do everything they can to win customers in their market and ensure they do not loose them to competitors.