Marketing: process of planning and executing

Marketing (Your Name) (Your University) (Course Code) (Professor) June 11, 20 Marketing It is difficult to define marketing with a simple sentence owing to the fact that the concept has greater depth than it appears. In its simplest form, marketing can be defined as the process in which a product or service is created and promoted to potential customers. It is also the art of selling goods and services to consumers. In retrospect therefore, one can conceptualize marketing as the art of managing profitable customer relationships and in particular, retaining the current customers and also attracting new ones. There has been a vast array of definitions from different scholars and institutions alike, all of which attempt to capture what marketing really is. Kotler (1991) defines marketing as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value through others.”The American Marketing Association on its part defines marketing as “the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals”(Kotler,2001,p.4). Marketing is an important and critical ingredient in organizational success. It helps organizations meet the diverse needs and wants of customers in forms of goods and services. In the successful meeting of needs and wants of customers, the company gains profit which is the ultimate reward it craves for in business. Marketing also helps firms convert the customer’s needs and wants into products and services which are of value to customers. This implies that marketing helps meet both human and social needs (Kotler, 2001). Marketing is also important to organizational success in that through it, a company gains reputation among the publics. Solid reputation is one of the critical ingredients for organizational success as customers buy more goods and services from the reputable business organization. A good example is Sony, the Japanese electronic equipment maker whose brand’s reputation has translated to record sales worldwide.Also; it is through marketing activities that customers are able to know about the company’s offerings, which in return creates demand in the market for the same goods or services. The high d...