What are the Five Marketing Philosophies?

 

The Five Marketing Philosophies help determine the management of marketing. Companies approach and conduct business in different ways in order to achieve their organizational goals.  The five competing concepts by which companies are guided in their marketing efforts are:

 

1.      Production concept, which is based on the fact that consumers favor products that are available and affordable.  Concentration on production efficiency and effective distribution networks outweigh the customer’s actual needs and wants.  This is used primarily when demand exceeds supply and the focus is on finding production methods that can bring the price down to attract more customers.

 

2.      Product concept, which is based on ways to improve the quality, performance, and features to attract buyers.  This philosophy tends to spend too much time adding features to their products, rather than thinking about what people actually need and want.

 

3.      Selling concept, which places the focus on sales rather than what people actually need or want.  Most of the time the product is misrepresented which results in high customer dissatisfaction.

 

4.      Marketing concept, which focuses on what people need and want more than the needs of the seller.  This concept is about the importance of satisfying the customer’s needs to achieve company success.  Products are developed around those needs and wants. 

 

5.      Societal marketing concept, which not only uses the same philosophy as the marketing concept, but also focuses around the products benefit to the betterment of society as a whole.  Greater emphasis is put on environmental impacts, population growth, resource shortages, and social services.

 

The marketing concept relies upon marketing research to define market segments, their size, and their needs.  The marketing department makes the appropriate decisions to satisfy those needs.