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What is marketing?

Published on May 31, 2023   10 min

A selection of talks on Marketing & Sales

Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Hello, and welcome to this session on what is marketing and how has it changed. My name is Annmarie Hanlon, and I teach marketing at Cranfield University's School of Management in the UK. Some of these themes are taken from my book, Digital Marketing. Let's get started.
0:20
In this session, we explore marketing as an exchange process. We'll look into an overview of market channel decisions, and we'll explore official definitions of marketing and examine how it has changed, to better understand the concept.
0:38
Marketing has always existed where we exchange goods or services in return for something of value such as money or other goods. An exchange can be relatively straightforward between a customer and a retailer, or involve many parties. For example, if you buy bread or pasta from a food store, the food producer has to make the goods. The bread requires flour, water and salt, which the baker must buy. They turn the raw ingredients into a finished item, and when selling to a retailer, may place 12 loaves in a basket to be sold. Making pasta always requires flour and water, and sometimes eggs. This may be manufactured at an industrial scale, where many tonnes of flour are added into a machine mixed with water and other raw ingredients. After processing, it's transformed into shapes. When pasta shapes are formed, further ingredients may be added. The finished pasta product requires packaging in individual units and larger boxes for resale. In this situation, the parties involved include the makers, the machinery manufacturers, packaging suppliers, delivery companies, and the food stores. From the flour to the finished goods, there are many levels of exchange. The levels of exchange can be impacted by strategic channel decisions.