What is Marketing & What is the Purpose?

What is marketing? – Most of people often mistakenly assume that marketing and advertising are the same thing. Yet the fact is that those two are completely different things. Marketing is an activity, while advertising is just one of the marketing tools. To help you with the understanding, you can imagine marketing as a bridge that connecting two islands; the “producer” island and the “costumer” island. Without that bridge, both of that islands population cannot reach each other. From this analogy, we can simply understand that marketing is the link between producers and costumers. But, the real definition is actually more than that.

What is marketing?

According to the American Marketing Association, marketing is the business activities that enable the producers to get in touch with the costumers, in order to provide them with the opportunities to purchase the product that they need. It is ended when somebody buys something. However, this marketing process is not that simple. What is marketing process? It is the flow of the product from the producer to the costumer. Producer started by attracting the attention which is not easy. Branding, packaging, and advertising are some of the marketing tools that can be used by the producers as their product identification. Producers also have to make sure that their product is reachable by the customer by the terms of location and price. Finally, selling is a process where the product has moved to the hands of customers who need it in exchange of money.

What is marketing element means?

In order for the marketing process to run smoothly, producers must ensure that they had considered all elements of marketing in their planning. The marketing element consists of:

1. Product: the product should meet the need of the customer, based on the result of marketing research.
2. Place (distribution): the product should reach the customer by using various distribution functions such as transportation, warehousing, channel management, etc.
3. Pricing: the level of price should be acceptable to the profit that the producer wants to achieve as well as to the customer.
4. Promotion: various methods of promotion like personal selling or sales promotional program can be used to communicate the product to public.

These elements are very important in the implementation and if all of them have been included in the process, then the purpose of marketing would be achieved; which is to provide benefits to both costumer and producer. I hope this article can help to answer the – what is marketing - question.