After World War II, the variety of products increased and hard
selling no longer could be relied upon to generate sales. With increased
discretionary income, customers could afford to be selective and buy
only those products that precisely met their changing needs, and these
needs were not immediately obvious. The key questions became:
- What do customers want?
- Can we develop it while they still want it?
- How can we keep our customers satisfied?
In response to these discerning customers, firms began to adopt the
marketing concept, which involves:
- Focusing on customer needs before developing the product
- Aligning all functions of the company to focus on those needs
- Realizing a profit by successfully satisfying customer needs over the long-term
When firms first began to adopt the marketing concept, they typically
set up separate marketing departments whose objective it was to satisfy
customer needs. Often these departments were sales departments with
expanded responsibilities. While this expanded sales department
structure can be found in some companies today, many firms have
structured themselves into marketing organizations having a company-wide
customer focus. Since the entire organization exists to satisfy
customer needs, nobody can neglect a customer issue by declaring it a
"marketing problem" - everybody must be concerned with customer
satisfaction.
The marketing concept relies upon marketing research to define market
segments, their size, and their needs. To satisfy those needs, the
marketing team makes decisions about the controllable parameters of the marketing mix.
