Marketing is a set of activities, in intimate relationship, dedicated to obtaining benefits, with the production and marketing of products, goods and / or services that meet the current and / or potential needs of the consumer.
With this we have gone from the ideal conception of philosophy to putting it on the ground where supply and demand meet.
Those activities - functions and subfunctions - that make up this set that includes the practice of Business Marketing, constitute the subject of study for this course.
And they will be developed -although necessarily schematically-, in the immediate chapters of the current text, in order to provide an overview of the scope of Marketing, as well as its nature.
We begin the tour, already in a business sense, analyzing the different ways in which companies can approach their relationship with the markets.
1.2. Company Orientations towards the Market
Commercial operations are in fact acts of exchange, where companies deliver their products in exchange for a value equivalent to the price set for them. Although this value is generally represented by money, other types of value are not excluded, as we will see later.
There are four approaches, or optics, under which companies can develop these exchange activities.
1.2.0. Possible approaches to the Exchange
Although production, product and sale are part of what we understand by Marketing, activity-based approaches, based on one or more of these criteria, have nothing to do with Marketing.
Marketing development begins when you think about demand as a result of a need, whose knowledge precedes the development and manufacture of a product that only comes into existence based on it.
As this aspect is the core of the problem regarding the scope of Marketing, we will deal with it in the environment that is suitable for it, and that presents the process of transformation from need to demand, in the following section.
Regarding the other three orientations of the Company, we are interested in seeing and highlighting the substantial differences of each one, in relation to the marketing approach.
1.2.1. Production and Product Optics
We group the two concepts together because they are - at least in appearance - intimately related. This qualification is necessary since there is the fact that even large multinational corporations market, with their own brand, products of third-party manufacturing, in which case there would be a dissociation between the production perspective and that of the product.
According to the production perspective, it operates in the belief that demand will be favorable for those products available at low cost.
As a consequence of this approach, the activity of companies is oriented towards the economy of scales and massive distribution.
This business orientation can be effective in two market situations:
1st.When demand is higher than supply. Situation that occurs in
Third World Countries and some of the so-called EAST.
2ª.When the cost of production is high, and this can only decrease through an improvement in productivity that allows a decrease in unit costs.
This second situation falls within the philosophy of "mass production - cheap prices" adopted by Henry Ford in 1900 to expand the automobile market, and it is a valid option when it comes to developing an extensive demand, in a new market, for a product. with high initial production costs.
As for product-oriented companies, they operate according to the belief that the consumer will favor those products that offer the best quality.
Quality "in itself" and quality "in my"
Here, among many other things, he was forgetting that one thing is quality itself, measurable with precision laboratory instruments and another very different quality in me, or what is the same, how, I, consumer, perceive and I interpret the quality.
The importance of this difference will be highlighted when trying, in the MARKET Analysis COURSE, the pseudo-taste tests, a commercial research technique that allows evaluating the effect of other variables, independent of the organoleptic qualities themselves, in the perception and preference of flavors, the assessment of qualities etc.
But do not think that it is only small and economically weak companies that can suffer the negative effects of a product-centered approach.
Dupont, one of the most powerful chemical companies in the world, developed, at the beginning of the 1970s and with great cost, a fiber classified as miraculous since it was as resistant as steel, and was a real revolution in the textile and textile market. Thousands of applications were expected. This is the KEVLAR.
This is the problem
To develop products without guidance on the specific need, or needs, that you can meet.
On many occasions to try to get out of the impasse, which is usually the focus of the product, resort to sales orientation.
1.2.2 Optics of the Sale
Those who adopt this approach uphold the principle that:
Like the good cloth, in the ark it is not sold, it is necessary to go hunting for the consumer and force the sale through aggressive techniques.
This is the usual recourse for those who claim to sell what they produce rather than produce what is sold.
It is a technique widely used in the sale of "not wanted" products: encyclopedias, insurance, etc. and also in some of the classifieds "as wanted" as can be the cars, very personified in this case in the caricature of the "Honest John" so repeated in the American cinema and television series, which tries to sell "what he has" (in instead of having “what is sold”) to any visitor to your establishment.
There are many people who think, very wrongly, that aggressive sales and promotion techniques are the fundamental, if not the only, objective of Marketing.
When these aggressive techniques are used by politicians, to capture accessions and votes, it is said, also wrongly, that they do Political Marketing. And it is not that it is not possible to speak of Political Marketing, but never in function of the simple aggressiveness in the sale of ideas, or of the electoral paraphernalia (rallies etc.).
1.2.3. Consumer Optics and Needs
The fundamental philosophy does not vary according to the field of application, commercial, political, humanitarian, etc. Behind any proposal there must be a clear need that is intended to be satisfied, and what characterizes Marketing is this philosophy and not the media, aggressive or not., through which the object (product, good, service, or idea) is proposed.
When we talk about Marketing or simply Market orientation, we always do it based on a known demand and closely linked to a need.
1.3 From Necessity to Demand
If we think about the diachronic development of the modes of exchange in the present century, we will find that they conform to what is represented in the following diagram:
Evolution of exchange approaches in the 20th century
Towards 1900, in a situation in which demand increasingly exceeded supply in some cases or, as in the case of the automobile market, demand was practically non-existent and it was necessary to expand it in order to make the product cheaper, the approach, then justified, appears. towards production.
Subsequently, with expanded and supplied demands, the focus is on the product.
When differentiation, based on product quality, is no longer a discriminating factor, the recourse is that of aggressive sales and promotion techniques.
The next step involves a significant qualitative leap and focuses on the market. It is this that must provide us with the answer on which products to manufacture and sell with success, which will only be possible to the extent that these are capable of satisfying a potential demand justified around perfectly identified needs.
1.3.1. Needs, Desires and Motivations
All people need air, water, food, and shelter to survive.
But there are in us, in addition to these vital needs, desires: for leisure, education, services, etc. All of them, like sexual pe., are cultural constructions on a basic need, which in this case is the propagation of the species.
Of course, many of the wishes would be expendable, from the point of view of the minimum of survival, and that we could return to the caves and survive, but they are not from the cultural perspective that draws the desirable limits of the quality of life.
The quality of life is thus perceived as associated with the possession and availability of a series of goods and services, which materialize our social image vis-à-vis the others, and which constitute the minimum requirement to be accepted by the interest group, and which is D. Riesman qualifies as a “standard package”, which implies not only the possession of those goods and services, but also the assumption of the ideal of conformity that they entail.
And it is these mechanisms that transform aspects of basic needs into desires, confusing each other and making it impossible to discern where the basic need ends and desire begins, as a reworking of it.
Although the Consumer Study has a more complete treatment in the Market Analysis course that this publication will also offer, we need to establish here some basic differentiation criteria in order to understand the relationship of Marketing with the principle of necessity that justifies it. Specifying:
In Psychology we speak of instinct, need, and impulse, understanding the former as an innate condition that causes a specific and complex response among members of the same species, in the presence of a specific stimulus
The concept of need corresponds to the one mentioned above, in its sense of lack or imbalance, and whose nature can be both physiological (need for heat) and psychological (need for achievement).
As for the impulse it is the result of the physiological need, or a general desire to reach a goal.
In a practical sense we must understand desire as:
When it is said that man is a being of needs, it should be said that he is a being of wants, because as the needs are few, the desires that are articulated on them are infinite and with a structure much more complex than what their external expression appears to be.
This immense complexity was what led T. Veblen, in his Theory of the Leisure Class, to describe human consumption as conspicuous, since the visible of this is purely circumstantial, remaining, more often than not, the real hidden motivations even for the individual himself.
And we have introduced the word motivations in the subject, a concept that during the 50s and 60s acquired an excessive importance among Marketing specialists and that can be defined as:
set of conditions, which initiate, guide, and maintain behaviors, generally until some goal is achieved or the response is blocked
As we have mentioned, during the 50s and 60s, the transcendence of motivation in Marketing was overstated, and not because it was attributed more importance than what it already has as it is the fundamental engine in eliciting demand responses and preference, but because, through the works of E.Dichter, collected in his book "The Strategy of Desire", and dimensioned by the pamphlet of Vance Packar, it came to the belief that, not only was the means of know the most hidden motivations of consumers, but the possibility of, manipulating these, control and direct their behavior.
The problem was caused both by the radical nature of the method (based on Freudian psychoanalytic techniques) and by the pretentiousness of its application. This is very well summarized by the opinion of Professor Durán Pich:
Experience later showed that, although very interesting avenues had been obtained to approach the knowledge of the whys of the behavior of individuals, the total understanding of the deepest motives, and even of many belonging to higher planes of consciousness, was far from be reached..
When we talk about motivations today, we are simply talking about desires, how many lacks something specific that can satisfy a need.
1.3.2.Wishes, Motivations and Demand
It is the desires that can generate demand. And we say they can, because it is not enough that there is a manifest need for a product (defined as everything that is capable of satisfying a need) for demand to occur.
Desire is the necessary, but not sufficient, condition for demand to occur. In addition to this, a purchasing power is necessary without which the need will remain unmet no matter how strong and dynamic the desire may be. Therefore we can define the demand as:
It should be noted that demand is not generally articulated on isolated needs, but on groups of these and within a series of choice alternatives.
When someone thinks of acquiring a transport system, he not only considers mobility as a necessity, but all the conditions he deems necessary such as: speed, security, comfort, etc. For each one of these situations of need, you will find alternatives that you should value.
This process of valorization does not conform to the Classical Economy model of the "homus oeconomicus", which bases its decisions on a rational assessment of utility. And that consists of the process, carried out by the consumer…… to estimate the ability of the product to satisfy their particular perception of need.
It may be argued, at this point, that what is ultimately interesting for Marketing would be the knowledge of demand, which is where the benefit will come from.
In principle this argument seems indisputable, but it forgets that the demand is produced for a product capable of satisfying a need, So there has to be that product.
But to manufacture this product it is necessary to know the existence of the need to whose satisfaction it will contribute.
1.3.1.Needs, Desires and Motivations
This is the marketing cycle and what the approach to the market means: going from need to demand through the search, development and / or putting on the market of the product capable of satisfying the first.
But it is also a necessary condition to define the situation of one's own company in the market.
The answer to the question, which market am I in? You have to look for it in the category of the need that I can satisfy, avoiding what T. Levitt called Marketing Myopia, which occurs when the company thinks more about the product than the need (s) it satisfies.
According to this author, the crisis of the American Railways was due to the short-sightedness that focused on the product (railroad) instead of the need (for the transportation of passengers and merchandise).
As an opposite example we can cite that of the "Italian Line" Italian shipping company that knew that the need it was satisfying was that of transatlantic transport, and not just sea shipping, and launched its airline (Alitalia).
The problem may lie in staying at the most basic stage of need.
If we make women's shoes, what do we sell?
Foot protection or pretty feet?
We are going to satisfy needs, configured in the form of desires or motivations, but on the classification of these, basic or learned, as well as on the number of each of them, there is no agreement between the different schools of Psychology.
In Spain, mainly among advertisers, the Hierarchy of Needs, proposed by A.Maslow, has been widely accepted and presented in the form of a pyramid on which the base is occupied by the physiological ones, the immediate level by those related to safety, in the The third level places those relating to possessiveness and love, on the fourth level (always ascending) those relating to esteem and crowning the top corresponding to self-realization.
Without denying the usefulness of this classification, the 33 motivations, or predispositions, of purchase listed by Melvin T. Cooper appear to be of greater practical use. These are classified into the two groups that we present here:
Emotional predispositions
1.Distinction
2.Emulation 3.Economic emulation
4.Pride
of personal appearance
5.Pride of the appearance (or appearance) of the property
6.Social
achievements 7.Efficiency
8.Expression of artistic taste
9. Lucky selection of gifts
10. Ambition
11.Romantic instinct
12.Maintaining and maintaining health
13.Cleaning
14.Proper care of children
15.Satisfaction of appetite
16.Satisfaction of the sense of taste
17.Security of personal well-being
18. Relief in hard work
19.Defense against danger
20. Recreational
pleasure 21. Hobby
22.Get the opportunity for more rest
23.Secure domestic well-being
Rational Predispositions
1.Affordability
2.Easy to handle and use
3.Reliability in use
4.Quality guarantee
5.After-sales service trusted
6.Durability
7.Source of savings or business
8.Increased productivity or wealth.
9.Saving on the purchase.
10.Saving in use.
An interesting exercise, and one that we recommend, consists in choosing a series of products, and trying to establish with which motivations or predispositions of those listed would be related.
Without forgetting that - generally - the final choices gravitate more on a set of needs than on a single need or motivation.
IMPORTANT! Knowing the category of needs that we can satisfy is essential to define the real scope of our market.
Knowledge of desire and economic capabilities is the basis for defining the target group. Knowledge of the motivations or predispositions to purchase is necessary for the correct definition of positioning and communication strategies.
