Chapter 1 - Marketing: Creating Customer Value and Engagement - Discussion Questions - Page 32: 1-1

Definition of marketing: Marketing is a holistic process of creating and capturing customer value. It involves several steps including, thus beyond, selling. A marketer first starts by assessing the customer needs and wants - known as the need gap analysis of the market. In response to this, the marketer creates products fulfilling those needs and wants of the customers being targeted. This step is called value creation. The target customers are made aware of the product through appropriate marketing campaigns - communication. Then comes the step where the product is delivered to the customers - selling. To summarize the above steps, Kotler gave the concept of C-C-DV-T-P which is an acronym for the phrase - create, communicate and deliver value to the target audience profitably. How marketing is more than just "telling and selling": The final step of delivering products to the target audience is more or less selling. However, if we do not consider selling in the ambit of marketing, then it would mean just the selling of product and not look beyond it. On the other hand, marketing would further try to deliver customer satisfaction and build customer relations. In simple words, selling would be limited to just selling off the products at hand which is a very short-term consideration, while marketing focuses on building a long-term customer relationship by continuously improving the products to meet the changing needs and wants of the consumers.

Ideal differences between marketing and "telling and selling': 1. selling product oriented; marketing is customer or market-oriented 2. selling is short-term target; marketing is a long-term effort 3. selling operates on the specifications of the products; marketing focuses on the need, want and desire of the customers 4. selling often is limited to the revenue through sales; marketing focuses on the market share and customer building 5. customer feedback may not be useful at the point of selling; customer feedback if instrumental to create a better product through marketing.