Marketing

Marketing is a process by which sellers find buyers and by which goods and services move from producers to consumers. Everyday life involves marketing activities. Advertising and selling are part of the marketing process. Other marketing activities include financing by banks and deliveries to stores and homes.

Marketing can be divided to 4 main elements: product, price, promotion and place.

Product element of marketing refers to the good or service that company wants to sell. This often involves research and development of new product, research of the potential market, testing of the product and introduction it to the market.

When setting the price of a product most manufactures start with their unit production cost, the expense of marking one unit of the item. They add percentage of this cost to provide a profit for themselves.

Promotion includes advertising, catalogues, direct mail, in-store displays and personal selling to inform customers about products and services and to persuade them to buy.

Distribution is the movement of goods and services from producer to consumer. A manufacture must establish a system that keeps products moving steadily from the factory to the customer. Such a system is called a marketing channel or a channel of distribution.

The most effective combination of all elements is the right marketing mix for each particular product or service.

What is tourism?

Tourist industry is very profitable in many countries. It is a multisectoral activity that requires inputs from many industries – agriculture, construction, manufacturing – and from both the public and private sectors to provide the goods and services used by tourists. It has no clearly determined boundaries, it is a provider of services which vary between countries; for example, in Singapore shopping is a major tourist activity but not entertainment; in London, both shopping and entertainment are important inputs to the tourism sector.

There are some categories of tourism:

1. Domestic tourism involving residents of a country visiting within that country;

2. Inbound tourism, involving nonresidents of some country, visiting this country;

3. Outbound tourism, involving residents of a country visiting other countries.

The three basic classifications can be further combined to derive the following categories of tourism:

• Internal tourism, which comprises domestic tourism and internal tourism;

• National tourism, which comprises domestic tourism and outbound tourism;

• International tourism, which comprises inbound and outbound tourism.

The term visitor can be further subdivided into same-day visitors and tourists as follows:

• Visitors are defined as those people who travel to a country other than their usual residence but outside their usual environment for a period not exceeding 12 months and whose main purpose of visit is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited;

• Same-day visitors are visitors who do not spend the night in the country visited;

• Tourists are visitors who stay in the country visited for at least one night.