To gain a deeper understanding of the definition of marketing, I interviewed 3 people from different backgrounds and professions to find out their views on marketing, i.e. what is it and why do they think so? So, firstly, I spoke to Mr. Zen, one of the family friends, who is now 26 years old, and is working part-time and also works as an accountant in some organization in Pune, India. His current goal is to start his own accounting firm. According to him, marketing is something that is necessary for companies/organizations to increase their sales, because the increase in sales also leads to profit for the organization and stakeholders, so marketing is trying to sell your products to more people. From his point of view, it seems that this is a kind of sales orientation.
Next, I spoke to my friend Sam who is now 22 years old and works as a manager at Hungry Jack's in Victoria and I asked him how their company uses marketing or what their perception of marketing is. He told me that marketing plays a crucial role in their business to attract consumers through promotions like student discounts and so on. Their first motive is to get more people to try their food, and for that, they offer various discounts. From his point of view, it seems that their company is behind the relationship orientation. In addition, he told me that he plans to become a shareholder/franchisor of the restaurant in the next 2-4 years.
And the third person I interviewed was Jay, a 30-year-old marketing manager of Hero Cycles, who has been working for the last 4-5 years in the same organization. He believes that marketing is about promoting a product to inform consumers about its needs. He added that they use various sources like social media, print media, etc. to tell the public about their new products and features. In the future, he plans to do the same, but with the team, he creates new ideas for approval.
According to Alvin J. Silk, marketing has meaningful strategies to build and maintain customers through the exchange of goods. Further in his book ‘What Is Marketing?’ he clarified that this is not just a task assigned to certain professionals, but a broad team that must have an understanding of the target market and must perform better than the organization's competition to entice more people with benefits. To a certain extent, it also suggests that marketing is a separate part of the business that somewhat differentiates it from other organizations. In short, according to the author, in order for a business to increase or increase the volume of its services, it should not advertise the service, but the benefits of that service.
Now, according to the Nordic view, marketing is to form relationships with consumers. More specifically, its purpose is to create, maintain, and channel public-firm connections that can be sorted through trust and commerce. Because of longer relationships with consumers, it makes sense to continue endless relationships with people to continually maintain trust and sales. However, it also mentions that fewer small trades also lead to good returns. In addition, it shows that maintaining good relationships and trust can create a competitive rivalry. Furthermore, this definition of marketing does not contradict the fact that elements of the marketing mix are dominant but only explains that a relationship orientation is also part of the marketing mix.
In conclusion, I just want to say that marketing means different things to each person, or we can say that there are several definitions of marketing. After interviewing people and reading various articles, marketing to me is to introduce the public to products and services according to their needs and to build a relationship with them. Because once we offer our services to the public, they feel attracted to it, and we could try to do the same to build relationships with consumers and take it longer so that it brings profits to the organization.