What is marketing and marketing management?

Answer 1

Before answering, lets distinguish the difference between marketing and sales. Sales Almost all sales is the process of convincing people, usually one person at a time, to buy your product or service. The role of a salesperson is to influence the behavior of the customer, so that the customer gives her money to you, and not to another company. Sales tends to be a one-to-one relationship, where one salesperson deals with one customer at a time. Sales should not be confused with promotion and advertising, which supports sales. For example, if a hardware store advertises big discounts, that advertising campaign may attract potential customers to come into the store. The decision to discount the prices is a promotion. The advertising is, well, advertising. But the store still requires people to interact with those potential customers on a one-to-one basis to make the sale. That is sales. Salespeople require a salary and/or commission, and sometimes they have travel and other expenses that must be reimbursed. Expenses can be claimed separately, or built into a commission regime - either way, the employer pays for all the costs of sales. Cost of sales is a significant proportion of many company's mark-ups, and is an important factor to remember - it will come up again. Marketing Marketing is a two-step process. In the first step, marketers venture into the community of potential customers (the "market") and gather meaningful information about that market. Their purpose of this step is not to sell to that market, but to learn from the market. There are several ways marketers can learn about the market, including: · meeting and speaking with past, existing, and potential future customers · reviewing media coverage about that market's habits and activities · reviewing articles, advertising, and literature about other companies operating within the same market · conducting focus groups and surveys upon groups of individuals that represent that market · hiring market research firms to conduct studies involving the above or other activities. For example, suppose a furniture factory sends marketers into the community of furniture stores and home owners to learn what motivates those people to purchase furniture. Through interviews, focus groups, competitive research, and industry analysis, the marketers discover soft white leather furniture is the next big thing. The marketers have completed the first step of their two step process. Marketing Management The second step of the marketing process heavily involves the marketing managers and executives. The marketing manager must convince the company to change its processes in order to take advantage of the information the marketers gathered. This often not easily done, and it can come at quite a cost and risk. In our furniture factory example, suppose our factory does not have any suppliers that provide soft white leather, and it would have to re-tool its manufacturing equipment to use this new, more delicate leather. To take advantage of the upcoming demand for soft white leather furniture, the factory would have to find new suppliers and purchase new equipment. Moreover, the factory might need to cut back on production from its existing lines so that the factory has the capacity to launch a new line of soft white leather furniture. Finally, the new suppliers would be unknown to the factory, and therefore there is a risk that the suppliers are not as reliable as its other suppliers. It is the marketing manager's responsibility to weigh all the factors (supply chain, production, projects, risk, branding, cost, cash flow, and others) before recommending a decision. Then, if the marketing manager decides to pursue a course of action, then that marketing manager must convince all the other managers (purchasing, production, sales, customer support, etc.) to also adopt the recommended decision. Reducing the Cost of Sales In short, it is the marketer's responsibility to change the company's behavior. This concept is the opposite if sales, which as we reviewed above, influences the customer's behavior. By changing the company's behavior, the marketer strives to create a more attractive product, which in the end makes the product easier to sell. A salesperson needs to spend less time and effort selling easy-to-sell products, and therefore the cost of sales goes down when the marketer influences a company to complete a successful market adaptation. And that is the ultimate goal of marketing - to reduce the cost of sales. Reducing the cost of sales increases the profitability of the company. Increased profit enables the company to spend more on marketing and production, which allows the company to pursue even more profitable adaptations.