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Sarah Scicluna _______________________________________________________________________ Outline the various marketing orientations a company may adopt and indicate which of their orientations are still relevant in today’s increasingly competitive world. Give examples to substantiate your arguments. _______________________________________________________________________ Companies use marketing management to help choose target markets and build profitable relationships with customers.
To do so, a company can adopt one or more of the five marketing orientations, these being: the product orientation, the production orientation, the selling orientation, the marketing orientation and the societal marketing orientation. According to the Selling orientation, the company’s entire focus is on selling and hence making a lot of sales. The company does not bother about the market demand, they just want to sell what they produce. This concept is practiced when the firm is into the business making products which the consumers do not know much about.
We call these unsought goods. A good example of such products is Insurance Policies. In the Product orientation, it is extremely important to consider market equilibrium which means that the market is stable and sole supply is equal to demand. If supply is greater than the demand, the price would go down and vice versa. The company aims at making a continuous effort towards product improvement and innovation. Here the firm may face problems when substitute products are available.
It happens many times that firms fail to predict the future taken into account the challenge of substitutes. For example: consumers may prefer airplanes rather than trains or modern digital cameras instead of film cameras. The company following the Production orientation believes in the fact that it should produce goods efficiently and try to bring down the prices so that products become affordable. The firm undertakes mass production and makes an effort to improve the distribution.
Limitations of this orientation are that the managers may become narrow in their thinking and forget about customer satisfaction. The Marketing orientation is concerned with first identifying the consumer needs and then making products that give maximum customer satisfaction. Marketing starts before the product is ready and continues even after the sale has been made. The company aims to make products and provide services better than the competitors. The company makes sincere efforts towards retaining the customers and also attracting new ones.
If the customers are satisfied with the product they will buy it again and again and tell other people about it also, proving to be very beneficial in the long run. Companies such as Wal-Mart have had great success following this concept. The Societal marketing concept states that the organizations task is to determine the needs, wants and interest of target customers and to deliver the desired satisfaction more efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves and enhances the consumer and the society’s well being.
This helps in improving the image of the company. Here the firms are concerned with social issues like: Environmental problems and pollution, health problems caused by fast food and so on. The last two orientations mentioned work best in the long run as they focus on the customer’s satisfaction. In order for a firm to survive in the long run and make a reasonable profit, it must ascertain the genuine needs and wants of specified target markets and then produce goods and services that satisfy the customer’s requirements.
The selling and product orientation bring short-term profits. In the selling concept marketing begins after the product has been made. Marketing should start with identifying the market needs, this means that marketing is something that should begin before the product is made. Customer satisfaction and long term profitable relations are more important. Thus, in today’s increasingly competitive world orientations such as the sales, product and production concept would be more likely to fail as they work in the short run and focus too narrowly on the product itself.