Marketing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Marketing - Research Paper Example This paper will look at marketing in general, as a process of moving products or services from the manufacturers or providers to the hands of their customers. Marketing Definition Marketing is a large process as Pride and Ferrell (3) defines it, encompassing quite a lot of processes. According to Pride and Ferrell (3) â€Å"marketing is the process of creating, distributing, promoting and pricing goods, services, and ideas to facilitate satisfying exchange relationships with customers to develop and maintain favourable relationships with stakeholders in the dynamic world.† According to this definition, marketing is includes more than just movement of goods from the plant to the customers. Marketing Process Sandhusen (2) defines the marketing process as the manner in which a firm seeks to identify the unfulfilled needs of the customers and coming up with various strategies to meet these needs. It does not involve just the process of moving products from the manufacturing plant to the customers. It involves the various processes that a marketing department goes through in order to come up with a marketing plan. Marketing process involves a number of steps, which include situation analysis in the market to identify the needs of the customers. ... Marketing mix decisions helps the firm to identify how to best get their products to the markets. Implementing the plan is the last step of the planning process where the firm ensures the laid down plans are followed by the teams supposed to implement the plan (Pride and Ferrell 195). Pride and Ferrell (3) state that â€Å"the essence of marketing is to develop satisfying exchanges from which both customers and marketers benefit.† This means that proper marketing is of benefit to both the firm and the customers. Marketing Mix When marketing a product, a firm need to develop an effective marketing mix which involves offering the right product, sold at the right price, in the right place and should offered using the most suitable promotion (Burrow and Jim 440-445). A number of conditions have to be met by a company seeking to create a successful marketing mix for its products. The features of the product that the company seeks to offer to the people must possess the right featur es which are desirable to the people. 4P’s of Marketing Price Gitman and Carl (295) points out that price is the most important integral of the marketing mix, since it is creates revenue for the firm. According to â€Å"pricing strategy is based on demand for the product and the cost for the producing it.† Thus, the price set should cater for all the expenses incurred by the product. Price is the only factor of the marketing mix which is not a cost, when compared with the others. The price of a product largely determines the value of sales made by a particular company. Price of a product or a service is largely affected by what the customers believe is the most appropriate value of the item on sale. If a company sets very high prices for its products so as to gain more profits, it