Wondering what are marketing concepts?
Why should you care about marketing concepts anyway?
How can marketing concepts help you achieve your business objectives and increase your profitability?
In this article, we discuss marketing concepts in detail. We will go over the marketing concept definition, understand the importance of marketing concept, identify the elements of the marketing concept and see how effective marketing concepts can be to your business.
We have divided this article into the following sections for your ease of navigation:
- Marketing concept definition
- Importance of marketing concept
- Elements of marketing concept
- Comparing different marketing concepts
- Effective marketing concepts
- Takeaways
Let’s get started…
Marketing concept definition
What is marketing
Marketing, in its most simplistic terms, is to create the right exchange between you and your customers.
Marketing is fundamentally how you communicate your company’s value proposition to your audience to entice them to purchase from you.
Marketing requires that you get your strategic marketing efforts right.
This is called the “right principle”.
The right principle is the marketing process where your company’s goal is to provide the right products or services, to the right customers, at the right time, through the right marketing message delivered the right way.
Getting all these variables just right will mean you will succeed in your marketing operations and company profitability.
Now that we know what marketing means in its essence, what does marketing concept mean?
What is the marketing concept
Marketing concept is the philosophy that companies and businesses adopt to get to know their customer needs and make business decisions striving to satisfy their customer needs better than their competitors.
To deliver value to your customers, the marketing concept philosophy requires that you first consider your customer and define how you can satisfy their needs and wants.
The marketing concept requires that you focus on your customers’ needs and wants, integrate proper organizational activities to satisfy those needs and ensure that your customers get value from your efforts.
Through effective marketing concept strategies, your company’s goal is to become the market leader, increase overall profitability while satisfying your customer demands, needs and expectations.
There are five main marketing concepts to consider:
Marketing concepts are philosophies adopted by companies driving them to make business decisions on how to produce, market, sell and cater to their customers.
Companies use marketing concepts to better understand what their customers need and how the company can provide value to their customers.
Importance of marketing concept
Marketing concept is very important for companies as it is the basis on which they make business decisions on how to produce their products, how they innovate, how they market their products to their customers and what they hope to achieve as an end result.
Customers will make purchasing decisions based on what they “need” and what they “want”.
A customer needs something to survive and remain a healthy and operational member of our society.
Whereas a customer wants something that is not necessary for his or her survival but to satisfy their individual desires and emotional needs.
The importance of the marketing concept is to identify how your customers think, what do they need, what to they want and how will they go about satisfying their needs and wants.
Marketing concepts are used by marketing professionals and businesses to identify what they will want to sell, to who and how.
Elements of marketing concept
So what are the elements of the marketing concept you ask?
There are five of them:
- Production concept
- Product concept
- Selling concept
- Marketing concept
- Societal marketing concept
Let’s look at each of these concepts in further detail.
Production concept
One of the oldest marketing concept is that customers will always prefer to purchase a product that is readily available and highly affordable.
This does not mean that a company should take a production only approach without thinking of what its customers really need.
The production concept is a good marketing philosophy to adopt in ensuring you optimize your operations in such a way that you deliver the best possible product at the best possible price.
With the production concept, your ultimate objective is to be the best company in producing your product in an accessible and affordable way.
Product concept
The product concept is more aligned with the actual needs of the customers.
Whereas the production concept is aimed at optimizing your company’s production, the product concept is the idea that your customers will prefer to purchase a product that is of high quality and satisfying their needs.
On the basis of the marketing product concept, companies are encouraged to continually innovate and deliver better products.
The focus under this concept is that by continually improving your product and innovating, customers will keep on buying from you.
Customers are driven by quality enhancements and innovation and that’s what you will deliver to them.
Selling concept
The selling concept is the philosophy of a company wanting to market and promote their product on a large-scale basis to a wide audience.
The idea is to sell as much as possible.
Under the selling concept, the primary reason a customer will buy your product is because you were able to successfully market and promote to your audience leading them to buy your product.
The other characteristic of a selling concept is that your company will focus on selling what it has to offer as opposed to seeling what the customers really need.
You care less about what your customers really need or want.
Your plan is to convince as many people to buy from you regardless of their state of mind or desires.
Marketing concept
The marketing concept is the idea that if your company can truly understand your customers’ pain points, needs and wants, you’ll be able to deliver precisely what they need.
The marketing concept is a concept requiring your company ot fully understanding your customers.
You provide your customers with value in a way that they can recognize and benefit from.
This concept works backward where you will identify what your customers want and then deliver the products and services that fits best with their needs.
The marketing concept appears to be the most dominant concept in today’s economy.
Companies tend to focus on their customers first and then plan how to deliver that to them.
Societal marketing concept
Under the societal marketing concept, the idea is to put the customers’ needs and the society’s well-being on the same level of importance.
How can your company produce products and offer services in such a way that your customer will see the value you can contribute to the society at large.
What matters to society are things like accessibility to all, protection of the environment, products and services helping mankind’s well-being and so on.
Comparing different marketing concepts
Difference between the selling concept and the marketing concept
The selling concept focuses on large-scale selling of products and services while the marketing concept is the idea to deliver products and services that customers need leading to their satisfaction.
It’s not about selling in quantity but selling what really matters.
The selling concept will be more suitable for products and services that customers will not have a natural tendency to seek out or think of buying while the marketing concept applies to any product and any service so long as you sell it in light of your customers’ motivations.
The selling concept does not necessarily consider the customer when creating a product or a service and will push it out to the masses through marketing efforts while marketing concept is the process of identifying what customers need and producing just that.
Fundamentally, the selling concept is a company-centric concept while the marketing concept is a customer-centric one.
Difference between marketing and marketing concepts
Marketing is how a company will market and promote their products and services to reach their ideal customers or an audience.
Marketing concepts represent strategic decisions made by a company on how to reconcile their customer needs, their desire to increase sales and beat the competition.
Whereas marketing is the way you provide visibility to your products and services, the marketing concept is the approach you’ll take to communicate a message, values or ideas to your target audience.
You can use digital advertising channels to promote your product, that’s marketing.
You can offer your clients a product or a service most suitable to solve their problem and you present it as such, that’s a marketing concept.
Difference between marketing concept and market concept
The market concept is business intelligence gathered to understand your current market and forecast how the market will change over time, how will customers behave in the future, what are the factors contributing to a shift in consumer behaviour and how are your competitors positioning themselves to take advantage of these changes.
The market concept is a careful analysis of the market, the industry and social pressures impacting the same.
With a detailed market concept analysis, your company can make decisions on how to take advantage of emerging opportunities in the market or to pivot to avoid adverse market changes.
Marketing concept is the philosophy companies use to make decisions on what’s good for their customers and how they can continue delivering value to them on the long-run.
The marketing concept is centered mainly around how you address your customers’ needs and wants while the market concept is what you anticipate those needs and wants to look like in the future and how your competitors will take advantage of that.
Effective marketing concepts
Depending on your industry, your products and competitors, you may lean towards one marketing concept more than another.
It’s can be difficult to apply all the five important marketing concepts at the same time.
You may be able to apply one or two marketing concepts to be effective.
Let’s look at how each marketing concept can be an effective concept to implement.
When production concept is effective
The production concept is an effective marketing concept for companies believing that their customers need a product that is affordable and accessible.
By focusing on your production, your objective is to ensure your products are available to all customers who need it.
This can be effective when demand is greater than supply.
By ensuring that your customers can get your product at any time and in a cost-effective manner, you are focused on the production concept.
When product concept is effective
The product concept focuses on your product quality and characteristics.
The idea is that by innovating, customers will demand more of your product.
The product concept can be effective when customers expect to get the best of what’s available in the market.
The focus of your marketing is on product quality and advancements.
This fits really well in the technology space.
When selling concept is effective
The selling concept is effective when you have a product that your customers are not naturally included to think of buying.
In this concept, you are less concerned by your customer but more about selling to them whether they really need your product or not.
The selling concept is effective for things like insurance products or food that is not necessarily healthy for you.
With the selling concept, you push your product out the door and target as many people as possible.
When marketing concept is effective
The marketing concept is effective in almost any industry or for any product.
It’s probably the dominating marketing concept in today’s economy.
The idea here is to do your market research, understand your clients, their needs and wants and find the right products and services that will directly address their needs and wants.
It’s the most customer-centric approach to marketing.
This can be effective for your company if you produce and market products that you know will solve your customers’ pain points or satisfy their wants.
When societal concept is effective
The societal concept is a marketing concept that has taken more of importance over the past decades.
By demonstrating to your customers that you care about the society, the environment and everyone’s well-being, you distinguish yourself from those companies who ruthlessly do whatever it takes to make more money.
The societal concept is effective when your customers are highly conscious of their purchasing decisions and its consequences on society and the environment.
Takeaways
There you have it, marketing concepts!
Marketing concept is your company’s philosophy in how you organize your business activities to cater to the needs and wants of your customers.
You have essentially five main marketing concepts:
- production concept
- Product concept
- Selling concept
- Marketing concept
- Societal concept
Each of these concepts will dictate how customer-centric or business-centric you will behave.
The marketing concepts will provide you with the basis to identify what you are trying to achieve when selling your products and services.
Are you selling to satisfy your customers’ needs or are you pushing your product out hard to rack up the sales?
We hope that this article was useful to you on marketing concepts.
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