What is marketing and why is it important?

Definition: Marketing is the work done by the business in

Identifying customer wants and needs

• Informing the customer about the forms products
• Persuading customers to purchase the firms products

By its definition, we can see that marketing is focussed on actual and potential business customers.

  

Importance: We study marketing because it is an important business process. Marketing is important to the business it
Provides the business with information on the products that customers will want to purchase

• informs customers about the products offered by the business that will satisfy their wants and needs
• persuades customers to buy the products offered by the business that will satisfy their wants and needs

Effective marketing supports the most important business objective of business survival as follows

Effective marketing means that a business produces products that will meet customer wants and needs

1. Effective marketing informs and persuades customers to buy these products
• this increases sales for the business
• this increases business profits (assuming of course that the increase in sales are greater than any increase in costs to product and promote the new products!)
• increased profits help a business to survive in the long term – the most important long term objective of any business

 

For Example: For example, Apples iPad meets customer needs for a multi-featured portable wireless device. Those needs were identified by thr careful study of existing and potential customers by Apples marketing department. In addition the marketing department has promoted the devide (to inform and persuade) customers to buy it.

The iPad has sold amazingly well – leading to increased profits for Apple. Apple can use those profits to ensure its long term survival (e.g.by investing in new markets, new products etc)