What Is Marketing? - IELTS Listening Answers & Explanations

Last week we looked at some general principles associated with marketing and today I'd like to look at some of those points in a little more detail.

So what is marketing? Or put another way, what does the term "marketing" mean? Many people think of it simply as the process of selling and advertising. And this is hardly surprising when every day we are bombarded with television adverts, mail shots, and telephone sales. But selling and advertising are only two functions of marketing.

In fact, marketing, more than any other business function, deals with customers. So perhaps the simplest definition is this one: marketing is the delivery of customer value and satisfaction at a profit. In other words, finding customers, keeping those customers happy and making money out of the process!

The most basic concept underlying marketing is the concept of human needs. These include basic physical needs for things like food, as well as warmth and safety. And marketers don't invent these needs; they're a basic part of our human make-up. So besides physical needs, there are also social needs-for instance, the need to belong and to be wanted. And in addition to social needs, we have the need for knowledge and self-expression, often referred to as individual needs. As societies evolve, members of that society start to see things not so much in terms of what they need, but in terms of what they want, and when people have enough money these wants become demands.

Now, it's important for the managers in a company to understand what their customers want if they are going to create effective marketing strategies, so there are various ways of doing this. One way at supermarkets, for instance, is to interview customers while they're doing their shopping. They can be asked about their buying preferences and then the results of the survey can be analyzed. This provides reliable feedback on which to base future marketing strategies. It's also quite normal for top executives from department stores to spend a day or two each month visiting stores and mixing freely with the public, as if they were ordinary customers, to get an idea of customer behavior.

Another way to get information from customers is to give them something. For instance, some fast-food outlets give away vouchers in magazines or on the street that entitle customers to get part of their meal for nothing. As well as being a good way of attracting customers into the restaurants to spend their money, it also allows the managers to get a feel for where to advertise and which age-groups to target.

Another strategy employed at some well-known theme parks such as Disneyland is for top managers to spend at least one day in their career, touring the park dressed as Mickey Mouse or some other cartoon character. This provides them with the perfect opportunity to survey the scene and watch the customers without being noticed.

OK, well we mentioned customer satisfaction at the beginning of this lecture, and I'd like to return briefly to that, as it relates to what we've just been talking about. If the performance of a product falls short of the customer's expectations, the buyer is going to be dissatisfied. In other words, if the product you buy isn't as good as you'd expected, then the chances are you'll be unhappy about it. If, on the other hand, performance matches expectations, and the product you buy is as good as you expected then generally speaking the buyer is satisfied. But smart companies should aim one step high. They should aim to delight customers by promising only what they can be sure of delivering, all then delivering much more than they promised. So then, if as sometimes happens, performance is better than expected, the buyer is delighted and is twice as likely to come back to the store.

Now let's move on to look at the role of advertising.