What is Marketing?
Read this chapter, which defines and discusses the four components of marketing, identifies the various institutions and entities that engage in marketing activities, and emphasizes the importance of marketing in society. This chapter also outlines the marketing plan.
Themes and Organization of This Book
Marketing's Role in the Organization
We previously discussed marketing as a set of activities that anyone can do. Marketing is also a functional area in companies, just like operations and accounting are. Within a company, marketing might be the title of a department, but some marketing functions, such as sales, might be handled by another department. Marketing activities do not occur separately from the rest of the company, however.
As we have explained, pricing an offering, for example, will involve a company's finance and accounting departments in addition to the marketing department. Similarly, a marketing strategy is not created solely by a firm's marketing personnel. Instead, it flows from the company's overall strategy. We'll discuss strategy much more completely in Chapter 2 "Strategic Planning".