What is marketing all about? What relevance does it have? What role does it play? These are all relevant and important questions for marketers to answer. Simple questions. Complex answers. Without an understanding of the issues raised by these questions, marketing is simply ineffective. It is like jumping into the deep end of a pool when you don't know how to swim properly. Unfortunately far too many marketers do precisely this. They then end up thrashing around, flailing helplessly. In desperation, money is thrown at inundating consumers in a veritable deluge of advertising, promotions and other marketing tactics. This only serves to put off people and then marketing is blamed for a problem whose roots are elsewhere.
So once again: what is marketing all about? The (very) short answer is information. Specifically, marketing is about giving consumers information to let them make informed choices. Note the emphasis here. Marketing is not about the manufacturer or the company. They are not important. Infact they are so unimportant that their very existence is irrelevant. Don't believe me? Consider Nokia. The world's largest producer of cell phones, its position seemed to be of one of central importance. The company has a lineup to satisfy all pockets. It stood for everything and thus it stood for nothing. Today it is in deep trouble because it became focused on the "wonderful" handsets it was making. Will the cell phone handset market be affected if Nokia were to somehow disappear tomorrow? No.
However, even the statement made above that marketing is about giving consumers information to let them make informed choices is too simplistic. There are cases where consumers may not be aware of what they want. This could be because of existing alternatives. For example, nobody was screaming for a car. The horse and carriage were perfectly acceptable alternatives and had been so for centuries. Right into the 1950s, there were ads in magazines touting the benefits of the all electric home. Obviously people were not breaking the doors of the electric companies demanding to be given connections.
Completely new product categories pose a special problem. They are so completely outside normal experience that potential consumers have no idea how to use them. The telephone is an example of this type of product. When it was introduced, no one had any idea how to use the new device. It took time for people to figure out proper usage and even then new uses kept on being developed over time. The internet is another example of a completely new type of product. All of us are still trying to figure out how to use the Net properly. It does not help that new ways of accessing and manipulating the information residing on the Net (which itself is increasing at an exponential rate) are constantly being developed. Just as we think we have some handle on how to use the Net, some new technology or method of accessing or interacting comes along and we find ourselves essentially at square one again.
So when we talk about giving consumers information, we need to dig deeper than simply asking them what they want though listening to consumers is a very important and integral part of marketing.
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