Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging products and services of value with others.

According to the American Marketing Association, “Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goods”

There are six competing philosophies under which organizations conduct marketing activities “the production concept, product concept, selling concept, marketing concept, customer concept; and societal concept.

1) The Production Concept: The production concept is one of the oldest concepts in business. The production concept holds that consumers will prefer products that are widely available and inexpensive. Managers of production-oriented businesses concentrate on achieving high production efficiency, low costs and mass distribution.

They assume that consumers are primarily interested in products availability and low prices. This philosophy makes sense in developing countries, where consumers are more interested in obtaining the product than its features. It is also used when a company wants to expand the market.

2. The product Concept – Product concept holds that consumer will favour these products that offer the most quality, performance and innovative features. Managers in these organizations focus on making superior products and improving them over time. They assume that buyers admire well-made products and can evaluate quality and performance product oriented companies often trust that their engineers can design exceptional products. They get little or no customer input, and very often they will not even examine competitor’s products.

3. The Selling Concept: The selling concept holds that consumers and businesses, if left alone, will ordinarily not buy enough of the organization’s products. The organization most, therefore, undertakes an aggressive selling and promotion effort. This concept assumes that consumers typically show buying inertia or resistance and must be coaxed into buying. It also assumes that the company has a whole battery of effective selling and promotion tools to stimulate more buying. The selling concept is epitomized by the thinking that “The purpose of marketing is to sell more stuff to more people for more money in order to make more profit

Most firms practice the selling concept when they have over capacity. Their aim is to sell what they make rather then make what market wants.

4. The Marketing Concept: The marketing concepts hold that the key to achieving its organizational goals consists of the company being more effective then competitors in creating, delivering and communicating superior customer value to its chosen target markets.

The marketing concept rests on four pillars: target market, customer needs, integrated marketing and profitability. There is a contrast between selling and marketing concepts:

“Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer”.

Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the ideas of satisfying the needs of the customers by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.

5. The customer Concept: Under customer concept, companies shape separate offers, services and messages to individual customers. These companies collect information on each customer’s past transactions, demographics, psychographics and media and distribution preferences. They hope to achieve profitable growth through capturing a larger share of each customer’s expenditures by building high customer loyalty and focusing on customer lifetime value.

The ability of a company to deal with customers are at a time become practical as a result of advances in factory customization, computers, the internet and database marketing software.

6. The Societal Marketing Concept: The societal marketing concept holds that the organization’s goal is to determine the needs, wants and interests of target markets and to deliver the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves or enhances the consumer’s and the society’s well being.

The societal marketing concept calls upon marketers to build social and ethical considerations into their marketing practices. They must balance and juggle the often-conflicting criteria of company profits, consumer want satisfaction and public interest.

Companies see cause-related marketing as an opportunity to enhance their corporate reputation, raise brand awareness, increase customer loyalty, build sales and increase press coverage. They believe that consumers will increasingly look for signs of good corporate citizenship that go beyond supplying rational and emotional benefits.