The organisation should have a strong foundation before it can build on the strategies of making the product and brand successful. Unless it understands the needs and wants of the target market, it will fail to create a product that will sell on its own. Once the target market is finalised, then the marketers should carry out research of finding the unfulfilled needs and wants. For example, when Motorola launched its moto G series in India, they had found that the average person wants a mobile phone that lies in-between the high-end as well as low-end offerings available in the market. Also, the product should have a brand recognition and value for money. After its launch the company went out of stock within 20 minutes of its launch.

The key is to differentiate your company’s product from that of competitors and invest in promotion program which should be effective as well as efficient. Taking the same example of Motorola’s moto G launch, the company made an exclusive contract to sell its products on ecommerce giant, Flipkart, which is well known for its reach in small towns across India with extremely efficient delivery service. This was supported by big advertisements on front pages of leading newspapers across India. This tie-up with Flipkart helped Motorola immensely. In-fact it started a new trend of signing exclusive launch of products through ecommerce sites. Many brands started following this strategy.

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The term Marketing holds different meaning for different people. For some it is shopping. When asked, where have you been? You may get a reply – I went for marketing. For some it is an art of selling, promotion, advertising, etc. To be precise Marketing involves all the above activities apart from many that we will go through in the following pages. The Knowledge Exchange Business Encyclopaedia defines marketing as “planning and executing the strategy involved in moving a good or service from producer to consumer.” To be precise, the concept of marketing has evolved over a period of time and many thinkers have given us definitions depending on its functions during that period.

What is Marketing?
Marketing is an art of getting products and services created, priced, communicated, and delivered to potential consumers by meeting the objectives of the organisation. It is not necessary that the objective of the organisation is to make profit. The organisation can carry out the marketing activities for public welfare as well.

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The main objective of marketing is to see that raw materials move from suppliers to manufacturers from where final end products of consumers’ need/choice are moved to end consumers.

Marketing functions start with understanding buyers needs and ends with fulfilling these needs by seeing that commodities of customers choice move from production facility to the final target market. The functions of marketing include buying, selling, transporting, storing, standardizing and grading, financing, risk taking and market information. Apart from the above activities, marketing in the 21^st century includes market research, planning, assisting in product development, and laying out different strategies for target markets. Functions of Marketing can be divided into following categories-

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Like any other function, Marketing too has its limitations and disadvantages. They are listed below-

1. Marketing creates needs.Marketing involves creating of needs and demands by creating products and services that the consumer wants or may need in the future. Thus it creates a society where a customer is sometimes compelled to buy something which he doesn’t needs. For example – a customer may go for an expensive model of a car where his needs are met by a basic model. Marketers also provide options of EMI’s through which customers are tempted to buy a product which affects its economic condition on a long run. Introduction of credit cards by the banking sector has put many customers under debt and many times the banks have to do settlements with their customers as they are not able to pay the bank

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Marketing benefits three different parties involved in the marketing process-
1. Manufacturer
2. Buyer
3. Society

Benefits accruing to the Manufacturer –

a. Marketing brings efficiency in the organisations structure. With clearly defined task responsibilities and integrated marketing management structure, the overlapping of activities and confusions is taken care of. For any information or data requirement the management can reach out to that particular department. It becomes easy to bring changes in any marketing strategy because of clear differentiation of tasks.

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Manufacturers offer goods and services of consumers’ desire by making them conveniently available and communicated by meeting the objectives of the company. Marketing is seen as a function of the entire enterprise. In order to study the scope of Marketing we need to study its components. A simple marketing system comprises of the following Marketing components –

Suppliers, Market offering, Market, Intermediaries, Marketing Environment.

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Manufacturers want to earn profits by fulfilling needs of buyers. In recent times, there has been a shift towards meeting societal needs as well. So we can broadly say that Marketing has three main objectives in the 21st century-

1. Meeting the objectives of the Organisation-
• To ensure that the right kind of offering is made to the byer at a profit to the company.
• To ensure the offering made is efficiently made available at the right time at the right price
• To ensure effective and efficient after sales service is provided to maintain and increase market share.
• To provide direction for future course.

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We can see from the definitions that marketing has evolved over a period of time. The end consumer has been given emphasis in the later stages. We can put the evolution of Marketing into four stages-

1. Barter system –When priorities of mankind increased, people had a need to obtain different products which they were not able to grow or make. They started exchanging goods/products via barter system. These transactions were held at different places. As most of the people led a nomadic life there was no dedicated place for exchange. This system was even successful in doing transactions with people from faraway places. Recently a research study revealed that Mayan civilization traded wheat for their vegetable produce with north-American residents.

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