Survive / Thrive

In order for a business to continue in the long run it needs to survive or thrive.

For that the most basic need is to get customers and the other most important thing is to keep them. And to keep them an individual or a company needs to build relationships with customers.


Getting Customers + Keeping Them

The Exchange Process

At it's most basic point Marketing is an exchange based process.

You or a company will sell a product and get money in return.

With regards to this diagram:

from a seller's (or company's) point of view the cost of the product should be less than what the customer will pay which will ultimately result in a profit = P<Q

and from a customer's point of view the cost of the product should be higher than the amount the customer is paying which will result in the value of the product going up = P>Q

Needs, Wants, and Demands

Am i kidding?

This is marketing, right?

Why do we need to know primary school word definitions in order to learn Marketing?

This was the obvious question that came to my mind when going through learning meterials. I did some digging and found out why do we need to know exactly that!

The times are changing rapidly and so is the way people are thinking. Therefore in order to survive those changes marketing has to be evolved accordingly with that.

The old definition of marketing was "making a sale - or telling and selling".

But the new refined definition of marketing is "satisfying customer needs".

Moving forward with the new definition, in order to understand Customer Needs we need to know the definitions of the words Needs, Wants, and Demands. Because although they sound similar at a glance there are very different.

So what do you mean by a need?

This is what you get when you Google it!

"require (something) because it is essential or very important rather than just desirable."

So a person actually requires it for a core function to work.

For example food. - Without food you cannot live therefore it is a basic requirement or a need.

There are several types of needs and they are,

• Physical Needs - food, clothing, water, etc.
• Social Needs - belonging, affection
• Induvidual Needs - learning, knowledge, self-expression

Then there are wants, and what a Want is the way a need is formed for an individual person or a culture.

For example clothing is a basic need, and fashionable clothing is a want derived out of that basic need.

Marketing Definition - Extended!

I'm back after my first day at CIM - Marketing Essentials class!

And I did get to know about some interesting definitions of Marketing as well as the most basic one.

This is the CIM definition of Marketing:

"Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers' requirements profitably."

And the definition of Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong

"Marketing is the process by which companies create value for customers and build strong relationships in order to capture value from customers in return."