Sultan Ahmed, Associate Professor (Marketing)

Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

Marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest good definitions of marketing is “meeting needs profitably.”

The American Marketing Association offers the following formal definition: Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Marketing management is the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value. 

Needs: states of felt deprivation including physical needs for food, social needs for belonging and individual needs for self-expression. I.e. I am thirsty.

Wants: form that a human need takes as shaped by culture and individual personality. i.e. I want a glass of water.

Demands: human wants backed by buying power. i.e. I have money to buy a bottle of water.

Marketing offer
• Combination of products, services, information or experiences that satisfy a need or want
• Offer may include services, activities, people, places, information or ideas

Value
• Customers form expectations regarding value
• Marketers must deliver value to consumers

Satisfaction
• A satisfied customer will buy again and tell others about their good experience

Perceived Value
• The customer’s evaluation of the difference between benefits and costs.
• Customers often do not judge values and costs accurately or objectively.

Customer Satisfaction
• Product’s perceived performance relative to customer’s expectations.

Market
• Set of actual and potential buyers of a product
• Marketers seek buyers that are profitable

Segmentation
Marketers start by dividing the market into segments. They identify and profile distinct groups of buyers who might prefer or require varying product and service mixes by examining demographic, psychographic, and behavioral differences among buyers.

After identifying market segments, the marketer decides which present the greatest opportunities— which are its target markets. For each, the firm develops a market offering that it positions in the minds of the target buyers as delivering some central benefit(s).