Page 27 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

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Marketing as a corporate function
Marketing is one of the central functions of a firm, the others typically being Research and Development (R&D), Manufacturing or Operations, Finance, IT and Human Resources (HR). Whereas the other functions concentrate on internal matters, marketing’s focus is solely the customer. Marketing is the most critical of all activities for without a customer there is no revenue, leaving little for the other functions to do. In this chapter, we take a closer look at how the overall strategy of the organization is connected to the marketing department.
MARKETING ORIENTATIONS
In the last chapter we stated that a business seeks to acquire new customers and retain those that they already have, regardless of what they sell. From that basic rule comes a number of different philosophies on how best to accomplish those two goals.
THE PRODUCTION CONCEPT
The production concept is a philosophy that states consumers will choose products that are affordable and widely available. Wal-Mart is the most famous of companies that operate with this philosophy.