Marketing refers to the process through which businesses and organizations promote themselves and their products by communication with potential customers. Marketing includes all types of advertising, ranging from websites and television commercials to print and outdoor advertising. Businesses spend huge sums of money on marketing to improve their sales, but marketing also benefits society as a whole in several key ways.
(i) Delivery of standard of living to the society
A society is a mixture of diverse people with diverse tastes and preferences. Modern marketing always aims for customer satisfaction. So, main liability of marketing is to produce goods and services for the society according to their needs and tastes at reasonable price.
Marketing discovers needs and wants of society, produces the goods and services according to these needs creates demand for these goods and services. They go ahead and promote the goods making people aware about them and creating a demand for the goods, encouraging customers to use them. Thus, it improves the standard of living of the society.
(ii) Decrease in distribution cost
Second important liability of marketing is control the cost of distribution. Through effective marketing the companies can reduce their distribution costs to a great extent. Decrease in cost of distribution directly affects the prices of products because the cost of distribution is an important part of the total price of the product.
(iii) Increasing employment opportunities
Marketing comprises of advertising, sales, distribution, branding and many more activities. So the development of marketing automatically gives rise to a need for people to work in several areas of marketing. Thus the employment opportunities are born. Also successful operation marketing activities requires the services of different enterprises and organization such as wholesalers, retailers, transportation, storage, finance, insurance and advertising. These services provide employment to a number of people.
(iv) Protection against business slump
Business slump cause unemployment, slackness in the success of business and great loss to economy. Marketing helps in protecting society against all these problems.
(v) Increase in national income
Successful operation of marketing activities creates, maintains and increases the demand for goods and services in society. To meet this increased demand the companies need to increase the level of production in turn raising their income. This increase, in turn, increases the national income. Further effective marketing leads to exports adding to the national income. This is beneficial to the whole society.
(vi) Informing and Educating Consumers
One of the ways in which marketing benefits society is by informing and educating consumers. Marketing often has a persuasive intent, but it generally begins when a company identifies a customer need and seeks to explain how its products or services meet that need. For customers with clearly defined needs, marketing provides a means of learning about new products and what they do. Marketing can also include more practical information to assist in making a purchase, such as addresses, phone numbers, product release dates, store hours and Web addresses.
(vii) Managing Consumer Expectations
Besides providing consumers with useful information about products and services, marketing can also help set and manage customer expectations. Consumers rely on trusted brands and the consistency that comes from brand loyalty. They also use information from consumer advocacy groups to learn about which brands are most reliable and represent the best values.
Businesses use marketing to make consumers aware of major changes, such as mergers and transfers in ownership that affect product offerings or seek to improve quality. Government regulations prevent marketers from making false or misleading claims. This allows consumers to make informed decisions without as many risks as they would face if they had to buy without the benefit of marketing.
(viii) Economic Benefit of Marketing
Marketing drives a consumer economy, promoting goods and services and targeting consumers most likely to become buyers. Higher sales for a business that employs successful marketing strategies translate into expansion, job creation, higher tax revenue for governments and, eventually, overall economic growth. In addition, the marketing industry itself creates jobs and wealth as businesses seek new and innovative ways to promote themselves and their products. Consumer demand for marketing in new venues, such as cellphones, creates new branches of the marketing industry and furthers growth.
(ix) Modeling Consumer Behavior
Marketers work to understand consumer behavior and produce advertising that is most likely to influence it. This provides a place for behavioral researchers and economic analysts to model consumer behavior. By examining marketing data and its correlation to consumer behavior, analysts can learn about how and why people make the decisions they do. This is useful in crafting awareness campaigns for major public and social issues. It also serves to advance the fields of behavioral psychology and economic forecasting.
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