Blog Two: What is Marketing?

Because the primary focus of this blog is marketing, I thought it might be a good idea to first define what marketing is all about. We are all exposed to marketing on a daily basis, the most obvious of which is through advertisements in the form of television ads, internet ads, radio ads, newspaper ads, magazine ads, and the list goes on and on. The point that I am trying to make is that Marketing is everywhere! 

So what exactly is marketing? Well, marketing is a process as well as a set of techniques that are employed to promote a product, service, or even an idea, through what is referred to as the marketing mix (which I'll get to in a minute) so as to grasp a consumer's attention and boost sales, and therefore pose a benefit to all parties involved. Marketing seeks to discover what a consumer wants and/or needs and fill those needs by delivering a product. It does so by selecting a target market- that is the set demographic or group of consumers that a product, and thus the marketing program, is aimed towards. 

A marketing program is composed of four distinct factors that work together to satisfy a consumer; product, price, place, and promotion. This is known as the marketing mix, or simply put- the 4 P's of Marketing:

Product: Product refers to the consumer good, service or idea that is being "sold." 

Price: Price refers to the value of the product, service, or idea in the eye of the consumer.

Place: Place refers to where the consumer is able to obtain said product or service. 

Promotion: Promotion refers to the means of communication of the product, service, or idea to consumers.  

I have formed an abbreviated definition referring to what marketing is. I will now reference the definition of marketing provided by the American Marketing Association (AMA), "marketing is the activity for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that benefit its customers, the organization, its stakeholders, and society at large."*

The AMA's definition of marketing covers each element of the 4 P's; "creating" refers to the actual product, service, or idea, "communicating" refers to the promotion of the product, service, or idea, "delivering" refers to the place in which consumers can access the product or service, and "exchanging" refers to the price of the product, service, or idea. 

Clearly, addressing each of the 4 P's is essential in any successful marketing strategy. To help you remember what these 4 P's are and what exactly they are about here is a song I found about the 4 P's to the tune of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi."

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I hope you enjoyed this post and learned a little bit about marketing in the process! 

*Marketing, 11th Edition. Roger Kerin, Steven Hartley, and William Rudlius. McGraw-Hill: New York, 2012.