BASIC CONCEPTS OF MARKETING

1. MARKETING: - Marketing is "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for

creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for
customers, clients, partners, and society at large." Marketing is a product or
service selling related overall activities. It generates the strategy that underlies
sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an
integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships
and create value for their customers and for themselves.

2. SELLING: - Selling is offering to exchange something of value for something

else. The something of value being offered may be tangible or intangible. The
something else, usually money, is most often seen by the seller as being of equal
or greater value than that being offered for sale. Another person or organization
expressing an interest in acquiring the offered thing of value is referred to as a
potential buyer, prospective customer or prospect. Buying and selling are
understood to be two sides of the same "coin" or transaction.

3. CONSUMER: - An individual who buys products or services for personal use

and not for manufacture or resale. A consumer is someone who can make the
decision whether or not to purchase an item at the store, and someone who can be
influenced by marketing and advertisements. Any time someone goes to a store
and purchases a toy, shirt, beverage, or anything else, they are making that
decision as a consumer.

4. CUSTOMER: - A customer (also known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is

usually used to refer to a current or potential buyer or user of the products of an
individual or organization, called the supplier, seller, or vendor. This is typically
through purchasing or renting goods or services. However, in certain contexts, the
term customer also includes by extension any entity that uses or experiences the
services of another. A customer may also be a viewer of the product or service
that is being sold despite deciding not to buy them. The general distinction
between a customer and a client is that a customer purchases products, whereas a
client purchases services.

5. MARKETING MIX: - The term marketing mix refers to the primary elements
that must be attended to in order to properly market a product. Also known as The
4 Ps of Marketing, the marketing mix is a very useful, if a bit general, guideline
for understanding the fundamentals of what makes a good marketing campaign.

6. MARKETING ENVIRONMENT: - The various external forces that can

directly or indirectly affect the many activities of an organization. This is an
integral part of environmental scanning. These activities include acquisition of
human resources, raw materials, financial resources, and development of goods
and services. The marketing environment includes forces such as: political, legal,
regulatory, economic, social, technological, and competitive.
 7. MARKETING INFORMATION SYSTEM: - Set of procedures and practices
employed in analyzing and assessing marketing information, gathered
continuously from sources inside and outside of a firm. Timely marketing
information provides basis for decisions such as product development or
improvement, pricing, packaging, distribution, media selection, and promotion.
See also market information system.

8. CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR: - Consumer behaviour is the study of when, why,

how, and where people do or do not buy a product. It blends elements from
psychology, sociology, social anthropology and economics. It attempts to
understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. It
studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics and
behavioural variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also tries to
assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference
groups, and society in general.

MARKET SEGMENTATION: - Division of the market or population into

subgroups with similar motivations. Widely used bases for segmenting include
geographic differences, personality differences, demographic differences, use of
product differences, and psychographic differences.
9. TARGET MARKETING: - It involves breaking a market into segments and
then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments.

10. PRODUCT MIX: - Product mix is the range of associated products which yield
larger sales revenue when marketed together than if they are marketed
individually or in isolation of others.

11. PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION: - A source of competitive advantage that

depends on producing some item that is regarded to have unique and valuable
characteristics. Product differentiation can be achieved in many ways. It may be
as simple as packaging the goods in a creative way, or as elaborate as
incorporating new functional features. Sometimes differentiation does not involve
changing the product at all, but creating a new advertising campaign or other sales
promotions instead.

12. PRODUCT POSITIONING: - In marketing, positioning has come to mean the

process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their
target market for its product, brand, or organization. Positioning is defined as the
way by which the marketers create impression in the customers mind.

13. NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: - It is the process developing a new

product or service for the market. This type of development is considered the
preliminary step in product or service development and involves a number of
steps that must be completed before the product can be introduced to the market.
New product development may be done to develop an item to compete with a
 particular product/service or may be done to improve an already established
product.

14. PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE: - A marketing theory in which products or brands

follow a sequence of stages including: introduction, growth, maturity, and sales
decline.

15. PACKAGING: - The wrapping material around a consumer item that serves to
contain, identify, describe, protect, display, promote and otherwise make the
product marketable and keep it clean. It is more than just your product's pretty
face. Your package design may affect everything from breakage rates in shipment
to whether stores will be willing to stock it.

16. LABELLING: - It is a distinctive name or trademark identifying a product or

manufacturer, especially a recording company. You may be required to include
certain information on the label of your product when it is distributed in specific
ways. For example, labels of food products sold in retail outlets must contain
information about their ingredients and nutritional value.

17. BRANDING: - It is the process involved in creating a unique name and image for
a product (good or service) in the consumers' mind, through advertising
campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and
differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

18. BRAND EQUITY: - Brand equity refers to the value of a brand. Brand equity is
based on the extent to which the brand has high brand loyalty, name awareness,
perceived quality and strong product associations. Brand equity does not develop
instantaneously. A brand needs to be carefully nurtured and marketed so
consumers feel real value and trust towards that brand.

19. PRICING DECISIONS: - Decisions faced by top management and marketing

managers. How much to charge for a product or service depends on a multitude of
factors such as competition, cost, advertising, and sales promotion. Economic
theory suggests that the best price for a product or service is the one that
maximizes the difference between total revenue and total costs. However, in
reality, the price charged is usually some form of cost-plus, which is later adjusted
for market conditions and competition.

20. MARKETING CHANNELS: - A path through which goods and services flow
in one direction (from vendor to the consumer), and the payments generated by
them that flow in the opposite direction (from consumer to the vendor). A
marketing channel can be as short as being direct from the vendor to the consumer
or may include several inter-connected (usually independent but mutually
dependent) intermediaries such as wholesalers, distributors, agents, retailers.
21. RETAILING: - It is a commercial transaction in which a buyer intends to
consume the good or service through personal, family, or household use. It is the
functions and activities involved in the selling of commodities directly to
consumers.

22. WHOLESALING: - Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale

of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or
other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated
services. In general, it is the sale of goods to anyone other than a standard
consumer.

23. PHYSICAL DISTRIBUTION: - It is the process of moving goods from the

producer to the wholesaler, then to the retailer and so to the end user. Example
Physical distribution is always a problem because of high transportation costs.

24. PROMOTION MIX: - Promotion that supports marketing objectives, including

advertising, personal (face-to-face) selling, publicity (non paid advertising such as
news bulletins or magazine articles), and sales promotion (product displays, trade
shows and other sales events, dealer allowances, coupons, contests, and a variety
of other promotions that don't fit into the other three types).

25. ADVERTISING: - Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade

an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to purchase or take some action upon
products, ideas, or services. It includes the name of a product or service and how
that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade a target market to
purchase or to consume that particular brand. These messages are usually paid for
by sponsors and viewed via various media. Advertising can also serve to
communicate an idea to a large number of people in an attempt to convince them
to take a certain action.

26. SALES PROMOTION: - Sales promotion includes incentive-offering and

interest-creating activities which are generally short-term marketing events other
than advertising, personal selling, publicity and direct marketing. The purpose of
sales promotion is to stimulate, motivate and influence the purchase and other
desired behavioral responses of the firm’s customers.

27. PUBLIC RELATIONS: - Public relations means using the news or business
press to carry positive stories about your company or your products; cultivating a
good relationship with local press representatives Public relations are the opposite
of advertising. In advertising, you pay to have your message placed in a
newspaper, TV or radio spot. In public relations, the article that features your
company is not paid for. The reporter whether broadcast or prints write about or
film your company as a result of information he or she received and researched.

28. GREEN MARKETING: - Green marketing refers to the process of selling

products and/or services based on their environmental benefits. Such a product or
 service may be environmentally friendly in it or produced and/or packaged in an
environmentally friendly way. The changes are increasingly being influenced by a
firm's policies and practices that affect the quality of the environment, and reflect
the level of its concern for the community.

29. GLOBAL MARKETING: - Global marketing refers to marketing carried out

by companies overseas or across national borderlines. This strategy uses an
extension of the techniques used in the home country of a firm. It refers to the
firm-level marketing practices across the border including market identification
and targeting, entry mode selection, marketing mix, and strategic decisions to
compete in international markets. According to the American Marketing
Association (AMA) "international marketing is the multinational process of
planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of
ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and
organizational objectives.

30. VIRAL MARKETING: - Viral marketing and viral advertising are buzzwords
referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce
increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as
product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of
viruses or computer viruses. It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by
the network effects of the Internet.

31. BUZZ MARKETING: - Buzz marketing is a viral marketing technique that

attempts to make each encounter with a consumer appear to be a unique,
spontaneous personal exchange of information instead of a calculated marketing
pitch choreographed by a professional advertiser. Historically, buzz marketing
campaigns have been designed to be very theatrical in nature.

32. CONSUMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT: - Customer relationship

management (CRM) is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s
interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using
technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—
principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and
technical support.

33. E- COMMERCE: - Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or

eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over
electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount
of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread
Internet usage.

34. STRATEGIC MARKETING: - It is the identification of one or more

sustainable competitive advantages a firm has in the markets it serves (or intends
to serve), and allocation of resources to exploit them.