To adopt a better marketing policy you should know about concepts of marketing management.
It may now be quite clear that the main task of the marketing manager is to create profitable relationships with customers after selecting them from the total market.
But side by side the managers have to even think about performing some other activities-that we call core concepts of marketing management. These concepts of marketing management are:
Table of Contents
Concepts of marketing management
- The production concept
- The product concept
- The selling concept
- The marketing concept and
- The societal marketing concept
The production Concept
Initially, when the number of producers was relatively smaller, the concept was to produce and distribute a maximum of the product in an affordable way to the target market. Most of the products were sold due to excess demand and less supply in the market.
The initial concept was thus-the consumer will prefer products that are available and highly affordable is called the production concept in marketing management.
The main highlights for the manager were on production and distribution. In one sense we can say that people were not that much value or quality conscious at that time, rather they were engaged in fulfilling their demand even with a medium quality product.
For example, still, the government-owned organizations like WASA and DESA are following the production concepts. Not quality rather quantity is in focus.
The Product Concept
The idea in marketing management has evolved over time as many organizations have entered into the industry and put others in the competition. Now people are value-conscious, looking for more features and options to get freedom in choice.
So a medium or less quality full product doesn’t ensure the economic security of the organizations now. Consumers will prefer products that have the maximum or desired quality, performance, and features which is the underlying theme of the product concept.
And companies now are heavily investing in continuous improvement of the existing products. On the other hand, Cosco still offers the same colored and fragrance soap they had been offering for the previous 20 years without any modification or significant improvement.
The ultimate result is quite simple, where Lux is probably the leader in the soap industry and for Cosco still long way to travel. Grameen Phone has started its Flexi load program that provides a convenient facility to the users.
Banglalink is expanding its network to grab the share of the mobile telecommunication industry which is an example of their service improvement thus concentration on the product concept.
The Selling Concept
The marketing management changes are not a start-stop process rather changing rapidly with new marketing innovation. Every organization is now producing or trying to produce high-quality products.
But which organization will win the race of capturing market share? That’s why only producing a high-quality product is not enough nowadays, rather organizations have to convince the customer with huge promotional activities.
The consumer will not buy more products from an organization unless the organization undertakes large-scale promotional efforts are the selling concept of marketing.
For example, standard Chartered Bank sends its sales representatives to the customer to offer a credit card. Standard Chartered makes heavy advertisement campaigns still, to convince the customer they send their sales representatives.
As almost all the commercial banks are offering the same services, they need to convince customers with their representatives. This is an example of a selling concept.
In many cases, these sales representatives are also collecting information about the demand of the customers from the market which helps the organizations in their new product development or in product/service modification. The ultimate theme of this concept is again ‘customers are king’.
The Marketing Concept
This process starts from the market and is the extended version of the selling concept. In fact, companies who are customer-focused are using this concept. Here customer satisfaction and value are the paths to sales and profit.
Even this process eliminates the need for sales representatives thus reducing the cost of delivery in the total value chain. In this process, organizations are first taking the opinions of the customers regarding their expectations from a specific product or service.
Then they produce the product accordingly. So it can be assumed that the product will be sold in the market as it has been produced according to the demand of the people.
And maybe there will be no need to convince the customer by sending sales representatives further. The process by which the organizations are developing the goods and services according to the need and wants of the target market and delivering the desired satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than competitors is called the marketing concept.
For example, Helvetia is taking orders of the people first, and then they produce the chicken breast according to the demand of the people, either spicy or regular. But what about the traditional fast food shops?
They follow the selling concept, where they prepare the foods in advance for the customer and then customers can buy directly just by paying the bill.
In latter one, the foods are produced in a standardized way which may not fulfill the need and want of each individual accurately. Instead of using ‘make and sell’ now organizations are following the sense and respond philosophy.
Daffodils Software Limited is preparing the software that will facilitate ticketing/billing of Bangladesh Railway according to the demand of the Government of Bangladesh which is another example of marketing concepts.
Actel is offering per the second pulse (See the capsule) as that is required by the users thought initially they were charging per minute even a user made a call for 10 seconds only. Dekko online service is charging different bills from different internet users based on the number of minutes one is using the internet.
The Societal Marketing Concept
Now companies are at a very high level of marketing. Producing high-quality products, providing a huge advertisement campaign, engaging salespeople to boost up sales, etc.
But in addition, companies are now concentration on social responsibility to get the psychological sympathy of the customers or society.
Companies are doing some altruistic activities like sponsoring games, providing scholarships to the meritorious and poor students, and distributing aid to the flood-affected people which must be the social side of marketing.
These activities in one sense promote the organization and in another sense keep psychological pressure on the community they are serving. For example, SQUARE helps flood-affected people by providing necessary aid like foods, clothes, or medicine.
At the time of distributing those aids, they wear T-shirts where the name of the organization is imprinted is actually promoting the organization itself.
Whenever people are watching those name printed T-shirts they get a soft corner in their mind for the aid providing organization.
But these activities can’t be recognized as a societal marketing concept because, in societal marketing, the offer of the organization should reflect the benefit of the society.
Think of Bashundhara Tissue, in each packet a buyer will find a level where they have written that one taka from the stated price will be contributed to the National Eye Foundation in each purchase of a packet.
Again organizations are producing and providing pollution-free products to the consumer. Instead of polyethylene which is harmful to society, organizations are using environment-friendly packaging materials.
In the packet of Senora Sanitary napkin, one label says that 1 taka from each sale will of to the account of the acid victims. Delivering superior value to the customer that will also improve the society’s well being is called social marketing concept.
Consider the case of Anjuman Mofidul Islam. Whatever this organization is doing simply provides the benefit to society.
The societal marketing concept calls on markets to balance three components in setting their marketing policies: company profits, consumer wants and society’s interests. The figure given below depicts the interaction among the components of the societal marketing process.
Now let’s have another example of societal marketing. Think of the Social Marketing Company (SMC). Most likely you have heard of the SMC, which is not a company in the traditional sense, but an organization that distributes 70 percent of the condoms, 29 percent of the birth control pills, and 70 percent of the oral rehydration salts used in Bangladesh.
(See the chapter case for further understanding). This is what we call societal marketing. Again consider the Urban Primary Health care project (UPHCP) and “Sabuj Chata”. All they are doing is infant helping the community with their activities are examples of societal marketing.
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