Market, Product, Production and Sales Orientation

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The marketing concept

The concept of marketing has changed and evolved over time. Whilst in today’s business world, the customer is at the forefront, not all businesses in the past followed this concept. Their thinking, orientation or ideology put other factors rather then the customer first. Let us examine these below.

Production Oriented: The focus of the business is not the needs of the custobmer, but of reducing costs by mass production. By reaching economies of scale the business will maximize profits by reducing costs.

Product Orientation: The company believes that they have a superior product, based on quality and features, and because of this they feel their customers will like it also.

Sales Orientation: The focus here is to make the product, and then try to sell it to the target market. However, the problem could be that consumers do not like what is being sold to them.

Market Orientation: Puts the customer at the heart of the business. The organization tries to understand the needs of the customers by using appropriate research methods, Appropriate processes are developed to make sure information from customers is fed back into the heart of the organisation. In essence all activities in the organisation are based around the customer. The customer is truly king!

In today’s competitive world putting the customer at the heart of the operation is strategically important. Whilst some organizations in certain industries may follow anything other then the market orientation concept, those that follow the market orientation concept have a greater chance of being successful.

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Further reading:

Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotler

Principles of Marketing by Frances Brassington