Marketing Concepts and the Marketing Mix

This document discusses the marketing concept and the marketing mix, including price, place, product, and promotion. It also explores the importance of effective business communication and the challenges faced by organizations. Solutions and techniques for improving business communication are provided.

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Marketing Concepts
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Table of Contents
The marketing mix:................................................................................................................ 3
Price:................................................................................................................................................... 3
Place:................................................................................................................................................... 3
Product:.............................................................................................................................................. 4
Promotion:........................................................................................................................................ 4
Marketing communication mix:......................................................................................... 4
The marketing environment:.............................................................................................. 5
Competitive advantage and its factors:............................................................................6
Theories of business communication:.............................................................................. 6
Issues faced by organisations in business communication:......................................7
Solutions:........................................................................................................................................... 8
Effective business communication techniques used by organisations:................9

Marketing concept:
The marketing concept is a marketing philosophy that companies throughout the
world undertake with focusing on the analysis of the needs of different customers
and make decisions according to the needs of those customers to satisfy or fulfil
their needs better than the competitor would do. Many of the companies are
adapting this philosophy and try everything to gain the competitive advantage
over other companies so that they can better serve the customers in satisfying
the needs of different customers and consumers. This adaptation of such
philosophy is recent and traditionally marketers did not follow this concept to be
implemented in the organization (Armstrong and Kotler, 2000).
The marketing mix:
The marketing mix is a very popular and famous marketing terminology that
deals with the tactical or in other words the operational part of any marketing
plan. The marketing mix is usually referred to as 4Ps or the 7Ps where the 4Ps
are the price, place, production, promotion and 7Ps has an addition of three more
terms that are a process, people and physical evidence. The example of the
marketing mix can be taken from the painting of an artist where he mixes prime
colours in the probably quantities and amounts that are used in the delivery of
the final product. The following section explains the elements of the marketing
mix (Kotler, 2000).
Price:
Price refers to the amount that is paid by the customer to get the offered products
or services in return. In this element of the marketing mix, marketers take
responsibility to reduce the costs of any product or service by improving the
essential manufacturing and efficiency of the employees. Similarly, they work
towards raising the perceived value of any product or service in the minds and
hearts of a consumer (Kotler, 2000).

Place:
The place generally means the different activities of the companies to make any
product or service available to the consumers that are targeted. In explanation to
this, the place is a channel or distribution in the marketing terminology. In this
system or mechanism, the final products or services are moved from the
warehouses or the manufacturers to the final consumers or customers (Kotler
and Armstrong, 1991).
Product:
The product can be explained as any good or a service or a combination of both
offered by an organisation to a target market. Similarly, products can be tangible
having its physical existence that is bought or sold in the market. Services are
usually intangible but are bought and sold in the market as well.
Promotion:
Promotion refers to all the awareness tactics taken by the different marketers to
let their customers know about the products and services and raise the level of
encouragement in the potential customers or prospects to purchase the products
promoted to them. All the tools used in marketing communication mix is a part of
the promotion element of the promotion that may include the advertising,
promotion of sales, direct marketing, public relations and so on (Lamb, 2004).
Marketing communication mix:
Marketing is a very broad concept or function that has many subsections as they
have relevance to the different activities within marketing that may include
research and development, merchandising techniques, and the processes
related to distribution and pricing. The marketing communication mix usually
refers to the different activities that are used by the marketers to promote the
product or service to its targeted customer (Lamb, n.d.). There are following
elements of the marketing communication mix that are as follows:
 Advertising – Advertising involves different messages any business pays
for to deliver their message of awareness and promotion through any
medium to their targeted audience.

 Personal Selling – Personal selling many times integrated with the direct
marketing element but most of the times companies have the bigger sales
force to see personal selling concept distinctively.
 Discounts and promotions – This is also referred to paid promotion, but
the message the companies pass through is relevant to the offerings of
discount.
 Public Relations – Public relations deals with the messages of a company
passed or communicated through the mass media.
 Direct Marketing – Direct Marketing is a part of the interactive
communication with the customers and implores the answer from the
targeted customers.
 Event sponsorship – In this element, different events are sponsored by the
organisations to spread awareness about the brand value.
The marketing environment:
Marketing environment of any organisations is consisted of many factors that
may or may not be in control. The environment is usually consisted of place i.e.
the country or region and other operating factors that may affect the transactions
of the business. The elements of marketing environment may involve the legal,
political or the regulatory environment, budgets and the trends of the economy
that affects the marketing decisions taken by different organisations. Some of the
common elements that are considered as factors for the organisations to make
decisions are consumer preferences, budget and economy, political factors, legal
factors, competitors, economic factors, etc. (Pride and Ferrell, 2008).
Organisations usually make decisions on the factors that are often controllable or
uncontrollable, the factors that affect the organisational decision-making may be
micro or macro. These factors can be uncontrollable like political factors and its
effects on an organisation can be pretty critical. For example: Organizations may
need to take an extra care about the content of the advertisements and
promotions when they advertise or design a strategy to promote a certain product
or service in the middle eastern countries where the law is pretty strict, and the

content of the advertisement is usually verified before they allow the companies
to post the advertisements. Similarly, the overall marketing environment can also
affect the consumer behaviour that is a very broad area of the marketing, as this
can be seen as an influencer to direct the consumer behaviour of the individuals
in a certain way (Van der Westhuyzen and Van der Merwe, 2001).
Competitive advantage and its factors:
Competitive advantage is the advantage gained by the organisations for offering
something extra that is not offered or provided by the other organisations to gain
the competitive advantage against them. The concept of competitive advantage
comes with the innovations in the services and the management that is the force
that attracts customers and consumers towards that particular organisation.
Competitive advantage in the competition between the different organisations
can be determined by many factors such as efficiency, uniqueness, fitness, profit
boosters. An example of the factors that are used in gaining the competitive
advantage in a real life scenario can be taken from the Apple’s iPhones that are
considered to be uniquely designed and having a sophisticated system of
applications and the operating system helping different individuals to perform
their tasks of daily lives with utmost ease and style. These factors discussed here
are the clear indicators or winners for Apple as, it would obviously attract more
and more customers towards them with sleek design along with sophistication in
the software system (Krstic and Becic, 2011).
Theories of business communication:
Business communication with the passing time has become one of the most
important features in any business or organization to attract the businesses and
other individuals i.e. customers towards their organization by effective business
communication, in order to do this different organizations adapt and implement
the standards of different theories of communication (Varey, 2002): So that the
companies tend to perform well. Some of the mainly used theories in the field of
communication are:

 ACT theory of communication
 ADIA Model
 Agenda setting theory
 Attribution theory
 Cognitive dissonance theory
 Contextual design
 Lasswell’s model
 Social marketing theory
Issues faced by organisations in business communication:
The key issue that is faced by almost every organisation is a term that can be
explained as ‘misunderstanding', the gap in communication usually results in the
misunderstanding, and that leads to different hostile situations where the
accusations are the resultant. The reasons for the misunderstandings and
challenges present in the communication may be because of the faulty and
ineffective techniques that are used by the organisations. The skills of people
and individuals that include the listening skills can also lead to an unnecessary
conflict at the workplace (Varey, 2002). Some of the main factors that may
involve the key issues of communication are as follows:
Style of communication/ barriers – When the style of communication in a
specified situation is chosen wrongly this may affect the whole scenario of
communication and can act as a factor that may raise the key issues or
challenges in the business communication of any organisational setup.
Listening Skills and understanding – Many times the conflicts in the workplace
are erupted because of the poor communication skills of the people working in
the organisation. Some times people from diverse backgrounds work together,
having the different culture and they speak different languages as well may also
lead to big communication gaps that may affect the communication in the
workplace and may lead to the conflicts that no one has asked for.
Confusion/ Ambiguity – Confusion and ambiguous statements are also the
factors that are less famous but very commonly experienced by the individuals

working in different organisations where the instructions they deal with everyday
are at times not clear from the management of the organisations. They find it
really difficult on firstly to build understanding about the certain issues discussed
in those instructions and secondly to implement what they have asked for.
Instead these both activities could be done with a lot of ease if the instructions
provided by the management of the organization is clear, concise and straight
focusing on the point.
Solutions:
To prevent or resolve the issues relating to the business communications
problems, it is important that employees check their styles of communication that
obviously presents them on how expressive and assertive behaviour they have
adapted to communicate with the outer or inner world. Another important factor
are that employees should also focus on the communication style of the people
or audience they are reaching out to or would be communicating with. In many
cases the technique of repetition of the phrase already said work as a problem
solver for many managers when they say something and repeat it by
paraphrasing what they have said in different words makes their lives easier
because by doing that they can easily build an understanding of the issue he is
talking about. Similarly, the development of skills especially communication skills
are very important in the diverse world of today . Hence, more focus should be
paid by the organisations to instruct individuals on the different positive outcomes
of the skills of business communication if they tend to learn it. Encouragement
from the managers or leaders in different organisational setups about keeping
clear expectations along with controlling the emotional reactions and use active
listening techniques instead can play an important role in the overall pluses of
effective business communication. By adapting these techniques organizations
are very likely to gain advantages along with making their businesses more
profitable and sustainable (Varey, 2002).

Effective business communication techniques used by
organisations:
Effective business communication in any organisation is responsible for gaining
the productivity along with the decrease in the employee turnover and the
essential improvement in the office atmosphere. It doesn't matter if one holds a
managerial position or if he is just a staff member, all that matters is to
communicate effectively, and he will have a better relationships with everyone in
the organisation. Business communication doesn't come naturally to the people,
individuals when posed with a situation works harder to attain the necessary sills
and produce the extra effort to learn the techniques important for the effective
communication so that they can learn and use them. With many other methods
and techniques that are followed by the organisations worldwide, focusing on the
improvement of the listening skills of the employees plays a very important role in
any organisational setup and is considered to be the most effective technique to
improve the overall business productivity with it. Similar to this, learning how to
be a good speaker also plays a very vital role in understanding the issues of
different business activities and present in a manner where the high level of
communication skills can be seen. Along with these two techniques, the key to
anything used for better communication is doing a lot of preparation and work
harder towards mastering both of these techniques and the different activities
that you would be listening or speaking about in an organizational setup
(Guidelines for Special Issues of the Journal of Business Communication and
Business Communication Quarterly, 2009).

References
Armstrong, G. and Kotler, P. (2000). Marketing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Guidelines for Special Issues of the Journal of Business Communication and
Business Communication Quarterly. (2009). Business Communication Quarterly,
72(4), pp.464-466.
Kotler, P. (2000). Marketing management. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice
Hall.
Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G. (1991). Principles of marketing. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Krstic, I. and Becic, S. (2011). Implementation of marketing strategy: Factor of
competitive advantage. Marketing, 42(2), pp.118-126.
Lamb, C. (2004). Marketing. Cape Town, S.A.: Oxford University Press.
Lamb, C. (n.d.). Marketing.
Pride, W. and Ferrell, O. (2008). Marketing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Van der Westhuyzen, B. and Van der Merwe, J. (2001). The marketing mix.
Observatory, South Africa: Future Managers.
Varey, R. (2002). Marketing communication. London: Routledge.