Marketing Philosophies

Marketing is referred to as the process of creating, communicating and delivering products for the customers in order to satisfy their needs and wants. The purpose of a marketing philosophy is to identify those needs and fulfil them.

Every company follows different marketing philosophies as per their requirement. But in general, there exist five marketing philosophies or concepts and a company should follow the right philosophy, as per their requirements and customer needs.

The five marketing philosophies are:

1. Production Concept
2. Product Concept
3. Selling Concept
4. Marketing Concept
5. Social Marketing Concept (Societal Marketing Concept)

Production Concept: Production concept is based on the idea that customers will prefer products that are affordable and are produced in bulk. In this marketing concept, the aim of organisations is to produce in bulk, increasing production efficiency, reducing costs and distribution performed on a large scale.

The idea of consumer demand for affordable products comes from the Say’s law that states that “supply will create its own demand”.

By increasing the production of the products, the companies utilise the advantage of economies of scale. The reduced cost price makes the product appear inexpensive to the customer which generates more sales.

Lower price may be able to generate more customers, but with the decline in quality the sales volume will decrease. This theory holds good when demand is more than the supply, but a customer will not always be looking for cheaper products, there will be many factors that will impact the customer purchase decision.

Product Concept: This is another marketing philosophy that is concerned with quality of the product rather than the quantity of the product. The consumers are always looking out for quality products and are not worried about price and the availability of the product.

Companies following this approach will be creating high quality products that will satisfy the requirements of such customers, but it will be expensive in the process.

Since the focus of the companies is on producing quality products, they lose out on customers that seek inexpensive products or are influenced by availability and usability of the product.

Selling Concept: This is the third philosophy and it is based on actual selling of the product. In the earlier two philosophies or concepts the emphasis was on production whereas selling concept is more focused on making sales for every product, which is irrespective of quality of the product or the needs of the customer.

Companies following this approach have a short life span and thus have very less repeat customers.

Marketing Concept: The selling concept is not for a long duration. The market is customer centric, therefore any product that should be able to fulfill the customer needs. Marketing concept is based on the assumption that a consumer will purchase products.

Companies conduct research in order to identify customer needs and create a product that meets those needs in a better way than their competitors. It results in businesses developing relationships with customers that leads to profit generation in the long run.

Societal Marketing Concept: This is the fifth marketing concept that is mainly concerned with meeting the needs of customers as well as working towards protecting the environment, its natural resources and overall well being of the society.

This marketing philosophy believes that business is a part of the society and therefore businesses should give it back to society in the form of social services like poverty eradication, promoting literacy, etc.

This concludes our article on the topic of Marketing Philosophies, which is an important topic in Business Studies for Commerce students. For more such interesting articles, stay tuned to BYJU’S.