VIII. Marketing

Task 1. Read and translate the text

What do we call marketing? Possibly the most general definition tells that marketing is the theory and practice of exchange relationship between buyers and sellers.

From this point of view we can discover several perspectives of marketing philosophy:

a) Seller’s perspective	This approach examines what firms and their managers should do in order to be more effective and to get more profit.
b) the perspective of buyer behavior	Marketers try to understand why, where, when and how buyers make purchases.
c) an interaction perspective	Here the buyers and sellers are interdependent rather than independent. In other words this perspective helps to attain the goals of individual consumer satisfaction and organizational needs for survival, growth and profitability.

Another meaning of the term “marketing” is the process of developing, pricing, promoting and distributing the goods and services that satisfy consumers’ needs. McCarthy called these stages “the marketing mix”, which is the combination of four “P”s:

Product: a firm has to find out what products the customer wants and how to satisfy consumers’ tastes, wants and needs more successfully. That is why the firm should pay attention to the quality, style, brand name, size and packaging of launched production. Marketers also should provide customers with services and guarantee.

Price: a firm has to decide on its pricing policy for list prices, discount for bulk-buying and credit terms. Price variations are very important in marketing. For example, a low price may make consumers think: “this product is cheap and not good” or they can think that “it is cheap and good”. If the price of the product is too high then the company may get itself out of the market. If the price of the product is higher than that of the competitors then it must be justified in some way, e.g. because the quality of the product is higher.

Promotion: to interest customers, clients or buyers in the product firms have to use advertising, personal selling, commercials and other promotional work.

Place: every product has to be in the correct place, where it can be sold. Place in a marketing mix includes such factors as distribution channels, coverage of the market, locations of points of sale and so on.

Each product has its life cycle (the period of time over which the product attracts customers). The length of this product life cycle differs from product to product.

Now we can conclude that the function of the marketing is to manage demand efficiently. Finally the marketer must get the buyer to take the desired action: purchase, rent, call, sell, follow the law, become a member, etc.

Vocabulary: definition – определение to launch – выпускать approach – подход in order to – для того, чтобы behavior – поведение term – (зд.) условие interaction – взаимодействие to attract – привлекать to carry out – проводить

policy – политика to pay attention to – уделять внимание list prices – прейскурантные цены discount for bulk-buying – скидка на оптовые закупки coverage of the market – границы рынка product life cycle – жизненный цикл товара variation – колебание, изменение rather than - скорее, чем to justify – оправдывать