The English expression "marketing," is a gerund of the verb "to market," which is derived from the Greek "merk" which means to market, which is the same as to buy.
In North American English it is customary to convert the gerund and the infinitive of the verb that indicates action into equivalents, almost synonyms. This is not the case in our language, which made it quite difficult for the translator to translate the English versions of the first books on this subject into Spanish. The result was that throughout the Spanish-speaking world different terms appeared for the same phenomenon and sometimes the same term for different phenomena. For example, marketing is translated in some South American countries as marketing, a term that in Mexico corresponds to the translation of merchandising, while marketing for the Mexican is marketing.
In English, the word marketing is almost always accompanied by another with which to clearly express what you want to convey, despite the fact that they and the world of science, arts and technology had traditions and conventions so as not to have to use two words, because only one was enough. The fundamental expressions of marketing as an area of study or training, as well as professional and business practice, are, in English, marketing activity, marketing management (or administration) and marketing science. That is, as can be inferred, in the United States the problem of marketing semantics was solved in the easiest way: ignoring its existence.
Those who have the problem are us, especially those who speak Spanish, who in order to understand each other in international forums we are forced to use the words of the English language. We must try to standardize semantics, something relatively easy, if we do what we had to do at the beginning of the development of this area, that is to consult with linguists so that they would search for new but appropriate terms from the semantics point of view.
Because we didn't, we now have a number of incorrect terms, disrespectful of naming conventions, and sometimes even crazy.
Decades ago, Lic. Américo García Guerra, then Director of the ITESM School of Business Administration, and later the undersigned, did that. So it is normal that I think that my terms contain correct semantics, and that I am annoyed by the corrections that are made to my writing. So I am going to explain the terms I use in marketing. Let's start with the root, the etymology.
The verb that gives rise to the word market is not to market. It is market, synonymous with buying. The buyer is a merchant and can do so to satisfy a domestic need (his own or his home), in which case he is a consumer. The merchant who buys to satisfy derived demands, that is, who buys to satisfy the needs of others is traditionally called a merchant, and more recently merchant If the demand is derived from the production of goods or services, the merchant, buyer, is called user.
On the other side of the transaction that changes hands of the good or satisfactory, there is a seller, who can assume various forms both in his organization, as in the type of need he intends to satisfy, in terms of the volume of his commercial transactions, etc. Thus, it can be an individual producer, a reseller, a production organization, a professional service provider, a facilitating agency, a bank, a political party, a hospital, an insurance company, a baseball team, etc.
Both the action and the effect of market (the act of purchase), as well as the place or establishment where purchase / sale transactions are carried out is called a market. Now extended to mean segments of buyers united by some type of characteristic or methodology of analysis of similarities, and to the aggregate of merchants who acquire the products of an organization, or of all the organizations of an industry, economic sector, nation or of planet Earth.
Mercadología is a misnomer for two reasons. The first is, as stated above, that the root is not market, it is merk. The second is that the conventions for naming science do not allow the use of Spanish words, but they do allow Greek ones. Mercado is Castilian. If it were allowed, there would be no biology, zoology, zootechnics, or many other sciences. They would be called vidalogía, animalogía and animalotecnia I do not know if there could be another proposal, but it seems that the term mercology meets the requirements of scientific nomenclature. Thus, the science that studies the behavior exhibited by all the actors in the process of satisfaction of tastes, desires and consumer needs, is called Mercology.
On the side of the bidder, when it is an organization, its behavior is carried out through the application of technologies that are based on findings from other sciences and arts, such as psychology, administration, pictorial art, dance, theater, optimization systems, statistics, sociology, anthropology, etc., in order to get the preference of your market for your set of offers. That is managerial management and is called Mercotecnia.
The market, understood in the sense of the market action, is the object of study of the mercology and the purpose of all the sale actions. However, in order not to add confusion, it is preferable to leave the term used so far as valid: marketing.
Finally, the Mercologist does science, the Merc-technician is a business manager and Marketing is the activity in the market.
