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Here is one of the commonly held, but mistaken, views of marketing
Marketing is selling. The view that marketing and selling are the same is the most common type of confusion, held not only by many members of the public but also by many business people.
Selling, of course, is part of marketing, but marketing includes much more than selling. Peter Drucker observed that "the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous." What Drucker meant is that marketing's task is to discover unmet needs and to prepare satisfying solutions. When marketing is very successful, people like the new product, word-of-mouth spreads fast, and little selling is necessary,
Marketing cannot be equivalent to selling because it starts long before the company has a product. Marketing is the homework that managers undertake to assess needs, measure their extent and intensity, and determine whether a profitable opportunity exists. Selling occurs only after a product is manufactured* Marketing continues throughout the product's life, trying to find new customers, improve product appeal and performance, learn from product sales results, and manage repeat sales.
Marketers criticize their senior management for not seeing marketing expenditures as an investment, not a cost, and for emphasizing short-term results, not focusing on the long term, and also for being too risk-averse.
See an outline of Marketing
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