Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service.
What is the Marketing Evolutionary Process?.
This may be perceived as the stages a market passes through during the life cycle of a product, notably emergence, growth, maturity and decline. It involves the changes that occur in the basic demand of a product and the changes in technology involved. Whether we are referring to the door-to door salesman or the engaging advertising that attracts a potential customer, all these encompass marketing. Marketing aims at closely matching consumer needs with available products and services. Marketing is a rather long process that starts way before the product finds its way to the shelves. Ranging from the product's origin to its point of sale, there are a number of stages of marketing evolution involved that comprise several behaviors geared towards the target consumer.
What Are the Five Eras of Marketing?.
It is widely believed that marketing has advanced through five phases of evolution: the simple trade era, the production era, the sales era, the marketing department era and the marketing company era. However, there has been an emergence of two more eras: the relationship marketing era and social marketing era. The simple trade era was characterized by hand-made or hand-harvested commodities, which supply was rather limited. Any available surplus was duly sold. Commodities, at that time, ruled the day with exploration, exploitation and resource trade as the major economic activities.
This was followed by the production era which occurred mainly during the industrial revolution. It involved producing as many goods as possible at the least possible cost. It was believed that inexpensive products in ample supply would attract consumers the most. Products would be made available in the most possible outlets. This strategy is still adopted by some firms in new developing markets with low costs of labor.
