The marketing concept - The Principles of Marketing

The marketing concept can be summarized with the phrase: "to achieve the company's corporate goals by satisfying the customers' needs better than the competitors do".

The marketing concept is thus about 3 things:

Customer satisfaction: you should not just concentrate on selling many products, but also make sure your customer is happy with the products and the company.
Integrated effort: the company must be consistent when it comes to the financing, production, distribution and so on... Every part of the company must take responsibility to ensure customer satisfaction.
Goal achievement: you must believe that the company's corporate goals can be achieved through customer satisfaction.

When is the customer happy?

A customer's happiness with a product is measured through the customer value.

Customer value = perceived benefits - perceived sacrifice

The sacrifice is often money: customers want to feel that the product they're buying is worth that particular sum of money.

Sacrifice can also be other things though, like time or distance, as illustrated in the example below.

The prices at Ikea are often much cheaper than other home furniture competitors, but the location of the stores might be too big a sacrifice for some people who are in a hurry, or who do not wish to drive far away from town.

Orientation

Companies are sometimes divided into 2 categories: those with a marketing orientation and those with a product orientation.

Marketing oriented companies first identity a customer's need, then delivers a product that satisfies that need.

Product oriented companies focus on their current production capabilities. From that, they create a product and then sell them aggressively to their customers.