Saturday, May 15, 2010

Evolution of the Marketing Concept

Evolution of the marketing concept has been closely linked to levels of competitive intensity arising from the immediate and remote environment of a company.

Early in the past century, competitive intensity had very low standards (scarce offer and few brands), and the Production Concept arose based on serial production (volume) and massive product distribution in the territory.

After a while, the Product Concept emerged, aimed to increase income by adding additional features to the product, making it more attractive for an ever-more competitive market.
In the early 50s in North America, brands began to soar, bringing along higher levels of competitiveness. From then on, generating income by simply adding new features to the product and/or improving distribution has grown far more complex. As a response to this phenomenon the Sales Concept was created, intended to increase the sales effort, thus increasing income for the company. This is a stock (start point) based concept, i.e. once the product is manufactured the sales campaigns begins.

In the late 50s, the Marketing Concept appears, unlike the sales approach, based on market needs not on available stock. With even higher levels of competitiveness, it is of paramount importance to do something different than the traditional sales approach, therefore the marketing approach intends to orient all activities of the organization to customer satisfaction, obtaining benefits in return.

Additional to the Marketing Concept, the social component thereof emerges to perform marketing in a responsible fashion in response to higher long-term interest of society over the specific needs and interest of a given target market. This new approach is called Social Marketing.

After the 60s, competitiveness kept on rising and marketing responded to these changes with the Market-Driven Marketing Concept. More than being market oriented, to satisfy what the customer needs and requires, this approach intends to teach the market how to satisfy its needs. Therefore, this concept brings about new ways to satisfy needs from disruptive innovations coming from within the organization.

In the 70s, competitiveness standards continue growing stronger, what translates into even lower margins and higher difficulty to differenciate from competitors, given the excessive proliferation of brands and products in their goods and services dimensions.

Starting from this new reality and along with the development of services (Service Concept), the Relationship Marketing Concept emerges to profit from customer relationships. To this effect, this approach operates through Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Beyond customer relationship arises the Clienting Concept intended to generate brand loyalty and eventually power up and develope loyalty economics.

In recent years, marketing researchers have explored the Emotional Marketing Concept to explain the effect of emotions over customer satisfaction and loyalty in highly or hypercompetitive environments.