Special characteristics

The art of recruitment advertising is to attract the largest number of worthwhile applications at the lowest possible cost. The advantage of using a recruitment or selection agency is that applications can be obtained discreetly and they can be screened to provide employers with a short list of the best candidates. Two skills have to be applied. The advertisements must be so worded that they both sell the job and attract the best applicants, while correct choice of media will bring the vacancy to the notice of the largest number of good applicants as economically as possible.

 

 

The Higher Purpose of Marketing

 

What is the higher purpose of marketing? What should an enlightened marketer try to accomplish?

This question is raised because managers sometimes lose sight of their ultimate goals and settle for short-term gains of dubious benefit to themselves and others. When they lose a sense of higher purpose, their work becomes unsatisfying and their attitude cynical.

The most common view is that the marketer's goal is to maximize the market's consumption of whatever the company is producing. In this view, the marketer is a technician who engineers sales gains. Marketing success means selling more and more gum, cars, and ice cream bars as if the consumer were a huge consumption machine that must constantly be stuffed with goods and services. Even if consumers don't want this much consumption, it is good for the economy and creates jobs. Yet Adam Smith observed that hunger is limited by the size of the human stomach. More generally, people will eventually run out of time to consume all that they could buy. They may rebel against overeating and overdressing, and start thinking "enough is enough" or even "less is more." Frederick Pohl wrote a science-fiction short story, "The Midas Touch," in which factories are completely automated and the goods roll out continuously and people consume as much as they can in order not to be buried under the goods. In the story, ordinary people are given high consumption quotas, while the elite are excused from having to consume so much. Furthermore, the elite are given the few jobs that are still left to do, so that they don't have to face the bleakness of no work.

A sounder goal for the marketer is to aim to maximize consumer satisfaction. The marketer's task is to track changing consumer wants and influence the company to adjust its mix of goods and services to those that are needed. The marketer makes sure that the company continues to produce value for the target customer markets.

Even consumer satisfaction, however, is not a complete goal for the marketer. The act of creating "goods" to satisfy human desires also creates some "bads" in the process. Every car that is produced satisfies a transportation need and at the same time contributes to the level of pollution in society. The economist Kenneth Arrow noted that high gross national product also means high gross national pollution. The sensitive marketer has to take responsibility for the totality of outputs created by the business. First, the marketer is a member of the public and therefore victimizing himself to some extent. Second, the society has spawned consumerists, environmentalists, and other public-action groups, who make life difficult for those firms that are indifferent to the "bads" they create in the process of pursuing profits.

Ultimately, the enlightened marketer is really trying to contribute to the quality of life. The quality of life is a function of the quantity and need-satisfying quality of goods and services, the quality of the physical environment, and the quality of the cultural environment. Too often the firm rests its case on its ability to produce great quantities of goods and services and does not pay enough attention to its impact on the other components of life quality.

 

Marketing

 

Marketing is the cornerstone discipline of some of the most successful companies in America and a discipline of growing interest to companies and nonprofit organizations throughout the world. All organizations face the problem of how to increase value for target markets that are undergoing continuously changing needs and wants. Organizations must thoughtfully define their products, services, prices, communications, and distribution in a way that meets real buyer needs in a competitively viable way. That is the task of marketing.

Although selling is a very old subject, marketing is a relatively new subject. It represents a higher-order integration of many separate functions - selling, advertising, marketing research, new-product development, customer service, physical distribution - that impinge on customer needs and satisfaction. Many organizations at first resist marketing because it threatens vested interests within the organization and their own concepts of how to manage the organization effectively. Marketing gradually gets established, however, first as a promotion function, later as a customer service function, still later as an innovation function, then as a market positioning function, and ultimately as an analysis, planning, and control function. Few companies understand and install marketing in its full form when first considering it. Even after marketing is effectively implemented in an organization, there is a tendency for many managers to forget its main principles in the wake of success.

Marketing's task in the organization is not only to help it recognize business opportunities and serve the various publics but also to harness the organization's energy to enhance the quality of life in society.

Marketing is human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes.

Human Needs and Wants

The starting point for the discipline of marketing lies in human needs and wants. Mankind needs food, air, water, clothing, and shelter to survive. Beyond this, people have a strong desire for recreation, education, and other services. They have strong preferences for particular versions of basic goods and services.

There is no doubt that people's needs and wants today are staggering. In one year, in the United States alone, Americans purchased 67 billion eggs, 250 million chickens, 5.5 million hair dryers, 133 billion domestic air travel passenger miles, and over 20 million, lectures by college English professors. These consumer goods and services led to a derived demand for more fundamental products, such as 150 million tons of steel and 3.7 billion pounds of cotton. These are a few of the wants and needs that get expressed in a $1.3 trillion economy.

A useful distinction can be drawn between needs, wants, and intentions, although these words are used interchangeably in common speech. A need is a state of felt deprivation of some generic satisfaction arising out of the human condition. People require food, clothing, shelter, safety, belonging, esteem, and a few other things for survival. People actually need very little. These needs are not created by their society or by marketers; they exist in the very texture of human biology and the human condition.

Wants are desires for specific satisfiers of these ultimate needs. A person needs food and wants a steak, needs clothing and wants a Pierre Cardin suit, needs esteem and buys a Cadillac. While people's needs are few, their wants are many. Human wants are continually shaped and reshaped by social forces and institutions such as churches, schools, corporations, and families.

Intentions are decisions to acquire specific satisfiers under the given terms and conditions. Many persons want a Cadillac; only a few intend to buy one at today's prices.

These distinctions shed light on the frequent charge by marketing critics that "marketers create needs" or "marketers get people to buy things they don't need." Marketers do not create needs; needs preexist marketers. Marketers, along with other influentials in the society, influence wants. They suggest to consumers that a particular car would efficiently satisfy the person's need for esteem. Marketers do not create the need for esteem but try to point out how a particular good would satisfy that need. Marketers also try to influence persons' intentions to buy by making the product attractive, affordable, and easily available.

 

Products

The existence of human needs and wants gives rise to the concept of products. Our definition of product is very broad:

A product is something that is viewed as capable of satisfying a need or want.

A product can be an object, service, activity, person, place, organization, or idea. Suppose a person feels depressed. What might the person do to get out of his or her depression? What products might meet the need to feel better? The person can turn on a television set (object); go to a movie (service); take up jogging (activity); see a therapist (person); travel to Hawaii (place); join a Lonely Hearts Club (organization); or adopt a different philosophy about life (idea). All of these things can be viewed as products available to the "feeling depressed." If the term product seems unnatural at times, we may substitute the term resource or offer or satisfier to describe that which may satisfy a need.

In the case of physical objects, it is important to distinguish between them and the services they represent. People do not buy physical objects for their own sake. A tube of lipstick is bought to supply a service: helping the person look better. A drill bit is bought to supply a service: making a needed hole. Every physical object is a means of packaging a service. The marketer's job is to sell the service packages built into physical products.

 

Exchange

Marketing exists when people decide to satisfy needs and wants in a certain way that we shall call exchange. Exchange is one of four ways in which a person can obtain a product capable of satisfying a particular need.

The first option is self-production. A hungry person can relieve hunger through personal efforts at hunting, fishing, or fruit gathering. The person does not have to interact with anyone else. In this case there is no market and no marketing.

The second option is coercion. The hungry person can forcibly wrest food from another. No benefit is offered to the other party except the chance not to be harmed.

The third option is supplication. The hungry person can approach someone and beg for food. The supplicant has nothing tangible to offer except gratitude.

The fourth option is exchange. The hungry person can approach someone who has food and offer some resource in exchange, such as money, another good, or some service.

Marketing centers on that last approach to the acquisition of products to satisfy human needs and wants. Exchange assumes four conditions:

1. There are two parties.

2. Each party has something that could be of value to the other.

3. Each party is capable of communication and delivery.

4. Each party is free to accept or reject the offer.

If these conditions exist, there is a potential for exchange. Whether exchange actually takes place depends upon whether the two parties can find terms of exchange that will leave them both better off (or at least not worse off) than before the exchange. This is the sense in which exchange is described as a value-creating process; that is, exchange normally leaves both parties with a sense of having gained something of value.

 

Market

The concept of exchange leads naturally into the concept of a market:

A market is the set of all actual and potential buyers of a product.

An example will illustrate this concept. Suppose an artist spends three weeks creating a beautiful sculpture. He has in mind a particular price. The question he faces is whether there is anyone who will exchange this amount of money for the sculpture. If there is at least one such person, we can say there is a market. The size of the market will vary with the price. The artist may ask for so high a price that there is no market for his sculpture. As he brings the price down, normally the market size increases because more people can afford the sculpture. The size of the market depends upon the number of persons who have (1) an interest in the object, (2) the necessary resources, and (3) a willingness to offer the resources to obtain it. These three things make up the level of demand.

Wherever there is a potential for trade, there is a market. The term "market" is often used in conjunction with some qualifying term that describes a human need or product type or demographic group or geographical location. An example of a need market is the relaxation market, which exists because people are willing to exchange money for lessons on yoga, transcendental meditation, and disco dancing. An example of a product market is the shoe market, so defined because people are willing to exchange money for objects called shoes. An example of a demographic market is the youth market, so defined because young people possess purchasing power that they are willing to use for such products as education, bikinis, motorcycles, and stereophonic equipment. An example of a geographic market is the French market, so defined because French citizens are a locus of potential transactions for a wide variety of goods and services.

The concept of a market also covers exchanges of resources not necessarily involving money. The political candidate offers promises of good government to a voter market in exchange for their votes. The lobbyist offers services to a legislative market in exchange for votes for the lobbyist's cause. A university cultivates the mass-media market when it wines and dines editors in exchange for more publicity. A museum cultivates the donor market when it offers special privileges to contributors in exchange for their financial support.

 

The Marketing Concept

The marketing concept is a management orientation that holds that the key task of the organization is to determine the needs and wants of target markets and to adapt the organization to delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than its competitors.

In short, the marketing concept says "find wants and fill them" rather than "create products and sell them." This orientation is reflected in various contemporary ads: "Have it your way" (Burger King); "You're the boss" (United Airlines); and "No dissatisfied customers" (Ford).

The underlying premises of the marketing concept are:

1. Consumers can be grouped into different market segments depending on their needs and wants.

2. The consumers in any market segment will favor the offer of that organization which comes closest to satisfying their particular needs and wants.

3. The organization's task is to research and choose target markets and develop effective offers and marketing programs as the key to attracting and holding customers.

The selling concept and the marketing concept are frequently confused by the public and many business people. Levitt draws the following contrast between these two orientations:

Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller's need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.

The marketing concept replaces and reverses the logic of the selling concept. The selling concept starts with the firm's existing products and considers the task as one of using selling and promotion to stimulate a profitable volume of sales. The marketing concept starts with the firm's target customers and their needs and wants; it plans a coordinated set of products and programs to serve their needs and wants; and it derives profits through creating customer satisfaction

Among the prime practitioners of the marketing concept is McDonald's Corporation, the fast-food hamburger retailer.

In its short, twenty-year existence, McDonald's has served Americans and citizens of several other countries over 27 billion hamburgers! Today it commands a 20 percent share of the fast-food market, far ahead of its closest rivals, Kentucky Fried Chicken (8.4 percent) and Burger King (5.3 percent). Credit for this leading position belongs to a thoroughgoing marketing orientation. McDonald's knows how to serve people well and adapt to changing needs and wants.

Before McDonald's, Americans could get hamburgers in restaurants or diners, but not without problems. In many places, the hamburgers were poor in quality, service was slow, decor was poor, help was uneven, conditions were unclean, and the atmosphere noisy. McDonald's was formulated as an alternative, where the customer could walk into a spotlessly clean outlet, be greeted by a friendly and efficient order-taker, receive a good-tasting hamburger less than a minute after placing the order, with the chance to eat it there or take it out. There were no jukeboxes or telephones to create a teenage hangout, and in fact, McDonald's became a family affair, particularly appealing to the children.

As times changed, so did McDonald's. The sit-down sections were expanded in size, the decor improved, a very successful breakfast menu featuring Egg McMuffin was added, and new outlets were opened in high-traffic parts of the city. McDonald's was clearly being managed to evolve with changing customer needs and profitable opportunities.

In addition, McDonald's management knows how to efficiently design and operate a complex service operation. It chooses its locations carefully, selects highly qualified franchise operators, gives them complete management training and assistance, supports them with a high-quality national advertising and sales promotion program, monitors product and service quality through continuous customer surveys, and puts great energy into improving the technology of hamburger production to simplify operations, bring down costs, and speed up service.

A marketing orientation is also relevant to nonprofit organizations. Most nonprofit organizations start out as product oriented. Thus many colleges facing declining enrollments are now investing heavily in advertising and recruitment activities. These organizations begin to realize the need to define their target markets more carefully; research their needs, wants, and values; modernize their products and programs; and communicate more effectively. Such organizations turn from selling to marketing.

 

 

Marketing

 

In recent years marketing has become a driving force in most companies. Underlying all marketing strategy is "The Marketing Concept", explained in this diagram:

THE MARKETING CONCEPT (We must produce what people want, not what we want to produce) - This means that we PUT THE CUSTOMER FIRST (We organize the company so that this happens) - We must FIND OUT WHAT THE CUSTOMER WANTS (We carry out market research) - We must SUPPLY exactly what the customer wants.

We can do this offering the right MARKETING MIX "The Four P's". The right PRODUCT at the right PRICES available through the right channels of distribution: PLACE, presented in the right way: PROMOTION.

Nowadays, all divisions of a company are used to "Think Marketing". To think marketing we must have a clear idea of:

what the customer needs,

what the customer wants;

what cruses them to buy.

What the product is to the customer: functional, technological, economical, aesthetic, emotional, psychological aspects.

"FEATURES" (what the product is) + "BENEFITS" (which means that a company that believes in marketing is forward thinking and doesn't rest its past achievements: it must be aware of its strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats it faces in market (remember the letters "SWOT")).

More about "The marketing Mix" and the "Four P's"

PRODUCT: the goods or service that you are marketing. The product is not just a collection of components, but includes its design, quality and reliability.

Products have a life cycle, and forward-thinking companies are continually developing new products to replace products whose sales are declining and coming to the end of their lives. A "total product" includes the image of the product as well as its features and benefits (see below). In marketing terms, political candidates and non-profit-making public services are also "products" that people must be persuaded to "buy" and packaged attractively (see Promotion below).

PRICE: making it easy for the customer to buy. The marketing view of pricing takes account of the value of a product, its quality, the ability of the customer to pay, the volume of sales required, the level of market saturation and the prices charged by the competition. Too low a price can reduce the number of sales just as significantly as too high a price. A low price may increase sales but not as profitably as fixing a high, yet still popular, price. As fixed costs stay fixed whatever the volume of sales, there is usually no such thing as a "profit margin" on any single product.

PLACE: getting the product to the customer. Decisions have to be made about the channels of distribution and delivery arrangements. Retail products may go through various channels of distribution:

1. Producer - sells directly to end users via own sales force, direct response advertising or direct mail (mail order).

2. Producer - retailers - end-users.

3. Producer - wholesalers/agents - retailers - end-users.

4. Producer - wholesalers - directly to end-users.

5. Producer - multiple store groups/department stores/mail order houses - end-users.

6. Producer - market - wholesalers - retailers - end-users.

Each stage must add, "value" to the product to justify the costs: the middleman is not normally someone who just takes his "cut" but someone whose own sales force and delivery system can make the product more easily and cost-effectively available to the largest number of customers. One principle behind this is "breaking down the bulk" the producer may sell in minimum quantities of, say, 10000 to the wholesaler, who sells in minimum quantities of 100 to the retailer, who sells in minimum quantities of 1 to the end-user. A confectionery manufacturer doesn't deliver individual bars of chocolate to consumer: distribution is done through wholesalers and then retailers who each "add value" to the product providing a good service to their customers and stocking a wide range of similar products.

PROMOTION - presenting the product to the customer. Promotion involves considering the packaging and presentation of the product, its image, the product name, advertising and slogans, brochures, literature, price lists, after-sales service and training, trade exhibitions of fairs, public relations, publicity, and personal selling's, where the seller develops a relationship with the customer.

Every product must process a "unique selling proposition" (USP) - features and benefits that make it unlike any other product in its market.

In promoting a product, the attention of potential customers is attracted and an interest in the product aroused, creating a desire for the product and encouraging customers to take prompt action ("AIDA").

 

Direct Mail and Direct Response

 

Direct Mail

Shopping without shops or direct marketing has become very big business, aided by direct mail, TV commercials and teletext, off-the-page selling, the telephone, the computer, and the credit card. Mail order nowadays better known as direct or direct response marketing. In Britain, direct mail takes third place to press and television and takes up 10 per cent of the total advertising expenditure. It is also an excellent medium for international advertising when it is more economical to airmail selected prospects than to advertise in the press which may be very limited anyway.

Confusion of terms can be avoided by remembering that direct mail is an advertising medium but mail order (or direct response) is a form of distribution, that is, trading by mail what­ever medium is used for advertising sales offers. Consequently, direct mail is not limited to direct marketing: a retailer can use direct mail to attract shoppers to his store.