What is Marketing? & You; the Consumer

Hi all, I've been busy over the last couple of weeks preparing for exams, but now, they're finished! In any case I'm going to publish what could be the start of a creative non-fiction work on the field. I wrote this a few months ago and I hope that you like what it entails. A second part of this post is going to give a brief introduction to what marketing is with possible expansion posts in the future.

Marketing book prototype intro:

You look out towards a busy street. What are those things? Your mind bombards you with questions on the sea of colour you see before you. People eat in a restaurant, milling in and out of the door crowned with large golden arches. A man runs past you, his music device in hand; a white apple with a bite taken from it emblazoned upon its metal body. You look at his tracksuit marked as a quality product with a swooshy ‘tick’. What are those signs? You ask yourself and more importantly: Who constructed them?

   But wait, there’s more: A woman hands you a leaflet; vibrant red greets your vision, heralding an imperative for you to enjoy films, to Love them even. But that’s not all; a billboard sits amidst a crowded motorway telling you how much you can save just by comparing insurance. You look into your wallet and pull out cards, lots of cards- loyalties to all kinds of stores, shops, restaurants, cafes, boutiques and salons. A million hands put themselves forward, clad in gloves of all kinds: All of them wanting to shake your hand.

   This is the world of marketing. Marketing as a field looks into the persuasion and communication management to achieve desired behaviours on your part. Whenever you see a flashy advert on your television, whenever a leaflet is thrust unexpectedly and annoyingly into your hand, whenever you come across a banner on a website: Someone was behind that; a whole team of people in fact; from Researchers, Creatives, Accountants, Executives and Directors; to Media Buyers, Strategists, Brand Managers and Technical People. These are a few of the integral roes within a marketing function of a business, the function designed to persuade you to buy a product or service and to otherwise change your behaviour in order to benefit the communicating party. An official definition however comes from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, which is as follows:

“Marketing is a management process responsible for anticipating, identifying & satisfying consumer requirements profitably” (CIM, 2001: Online)

You as a Consumer:

As a consumer, you buy products and services every single day, paying your hard-earned money into the same economic system. This is where the key phrase 'management process' comes into play since when you pay for a product, you pay primarily for the benefits that it offers in exchange for the national currency used by companies in just the same way as regular, human consumers. This is what marketing is; a transaction process, aided by various tools in the marketing 'bag o tricks'. As an example, you pay McDonalds for food because you want to eradicate hunger as a human need (a Physiological one, when seen through Maslow's Hierarchy.) Check the image below for a more visual aid.

(Based on Brassington & Pettitt, 2006)

That is the essence of your role in the system. However, what are your needs? Well largely speaking, they can be split into two categories defined by marketers: Utilitarian and Hedonic. The former are defined by them being necessary for survival and as a result, there are few of them. Most needs you have however are hedonic; experiential needs involving your self-perception and how it can be improved, like when you think those new shoes will change who you are. Of course marketers help you along the path with these kinds of needs with persuasive advertising and many other tools. There are too many however to go through here: But now you know something, needs classifications and the transactional nature of consumer-based marketing.  

As a small afterthought, I thought I'd demonstrate how much theory & practice is involved in the field by uploading a partial mind map of the textbook cited for my previous image. Please bear in mind that the mind map only covers about three chapters out of about 20. Hope you've enjoyed this post as always and -as usual- feed back to me.

(*Try & read it!)